TR Casual Discussion Çay Bahçesi

GoatsMilk said:

You misunderstood, the reason feto type islamists and their agendas can progress within Turkish society is because they manipulate the common Muslim. FETO is CIA, part of that agenda was to attack the army, secularism, Ataturk, Turkish identity and history, all to pave the way for balkanisation of the state.

The only real way to counter it is for those who see the agenda to learn the religion and warn the common Muslim. As soon as you take the position that these islamists are all frauds and Islamist is an enemy of the Turkish people, the common Muslim just sees that his CIA overlords are right.

If the common Turk took back the religion, people like erdogan/feto wouldnt be possible.

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Ryder said:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ottomans/comments/1s7mko4
Deserves a documentary movie or a tv show I guess he doesnt fit the narrative for both sides.

Shows you if the Ottomans reformed and modernised they would have not lost to Russia in the late 1700s to the 1800s.

Too little too late. I think Mahmud II deserves a movie just for him crushing those Balkan Jannisary shits lmaooo

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Şok Tedavisi said:

TRT 1 fatihi yeniçeriler ile beraber çorba içirmekle meşgul (adamı gören yeniçeri sayısı 2-3 falandır)

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Ryder said:

Hala insanlar zannediyor. Yeniceriler. Osmanlinin butun Ordusu. Resmen sadece 10 bine ya da 20 bine ulasdilar ve en cok savas eden normal Turklerdi.

Ottoman army was formed mainly by regulars. People think the Jannisaries are the entire armed forces.

Jannisaries are overrated as the Samurai. I dont deny they were good soldiers played a role in our history and victories. As soon as they wanted more privledges they dragged everybody down.

They even tookover a entire country. Whole glazing of Jannisaries is also done by Europeans because they want to showcase that Turks cant fight have to rely on Europeans.

Sipahis were literally better. They fought and died for both victories and defeats and Mahmud II granted them the long needed retirement they deserved. Instead of rebelling they gladly accepted it retired which allowed their children to become part of a new cavalry unit.

Jannisaries were the bad ending the Sipahi was the good ending.

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Ryder said:

Hala insanlar zannediyor. Yeniceriler. Osmanlinin butun Ordusu. Resmen sadece 10 bine ya da 20 bine ulasdilar ve en cok savas eden normal Turklerdi.

Ottoman army was formed mainly by regulars. People think the Jannisaries are the entire armed forces.

Jannisaries are overrated as the Samurai. I dont deny they were good soldiers played a role in our history and victories. As soon as they wanted more privledges they dragged everybody down.

They even tookover a entire country. Whole glazing of Jannisaries is also done by Europeans because they want to showcase that Turks cant fight have to rely on Europeans.

Sipahis were literally better. They fought and died for both victories and defeats and Mahmud II granted them the long needed retirement they deserved. Instead of rebelling they gladly accepted it retired which allowed their children to become part of a new cavalry unit.

Jannisaries were the bad ending the Sipahi was the good ending.

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YeşilVatan said:

Ottoman military history is a little more complicated than that.

Janissarries were a glorified palace guard corps at the start. And remember the very first ones were literal convert prisoners of war. Over the course of this beginning stage they gradually built their esprit d'corps, traditions, laws etc. Most people don't know (or care to know) but Janissary Hearth was actually an honest to god Sufi lodge. It was a religious organization built to support the state, sort of like knightly orders of the Catholic West.

By the mid 1400s they transformed into the elite core of the army. This also coincides with the advances in gunpowder weapons. Which necessitated some kind of standing army to build, operate and use artillery and muskets. In this role, they excelled. Because they adopted muskets very early and in great numbers and drilled with it as their professionalism allowed this. We know for a fact that Janissaries performed fire by rank at Mohaç, for example. But the more important aspect of the Corps was that they had immense political weight. Sultans Bayezid the Thunderbolt and Mehmed the Conqueror utilized devşirme to curb Turkish aristocracy and fill state offices with people loyal only to the central authority, the sultan. But westoid fever dreams of kidnapped christian kids tortured into super soldiers was a fucking lie. There is significant evidence that points to the devşirmes keeping in touch with their families, and some of them went on to actually run the entire government. It was also in this period that we see Janissaries starting to get rebellious, demanding extra pay and privileges, demanding resignation of high officials. To be honest, the Hearth always had this troublesome streak, but it increased in frequency and intensity.

The true change for the corps came after 1590. The Europe wide 'military revolution' took the Ottoman state and society off-guard. Battlefields now demanded masses of musket-armed infantry that can campaign for years on end. This led to the "sekban" system in which contractors recruited peasantry to gather manpower, which was a significant factor for Celâli Rebellions. But the number of Janissaries balooned too, at least five fold (from about 5000 to 40.000 AFAIK). This enlargement brought with it a loosening of standards. From mid 1600s on, Janissary Corps was a majority Muslim-born, if not outright Turkish organization. The overall performance of the army was moderate, with significant highs and lows, until 1768-78 war agains Russians (Küçük Kaynarca / Çeşme Felaketi). The warfighting ability of the Hearth gradually diminished into nothing after that.

When Mahmud II (God rest his soul) abolished the Corps, it was basically a collection of criminal conglomerates (Orta's). Janissaries divided İstanbul's neighbourhoods and ran a giant racketeering operation in the city. Fun fact, the saying "baldırı çıplak" comes from those times, as criminals would wear attires that exposed their calves with tattoos signalling their affiliation with whichever Orta they were aligned with. Treasury was already struggling and they demanded extra pay for trivial reasons. They had neither willingness nor interest to defend the empire. There was an acute ghost registry problem, as a lot (and I mean A LOT) of the janissaries were just on the roll and never actually showed up. It was a completely auspicious event (as it is named) that the Hearth was destroyed.

The janissaries that exist in orientalism-soaked imaginations of westerners never actually existed. They were set up as a counterweight against Turkish aristocracy, but ended up running the government and having power struggles with the monarch himself. Aristotle says: “Another mark of a tyrant is that he likes foreigners better than citizens, and lives with them and invites them to his table; for the one are enemies, but the Others enter into no rivalry with him.” Whenever a foreign group is empowered as a warfighter/law enforcement role, this means central authority is going for a power grab. And it always backfires.

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Ryder said:

Turkish Aristocracy was formed by Anatolian Beyliks and lesser extent the Seljuk Sultanate of Anadolu. Ottomans conquered most of them and became apart of the Turkish aristocracy.

The Beyliks that actually teamed up with the Ottomans also got brushed aside.

Doesnt make the Ottomans backstabbers but showcases the cold and calculated politics they engaged in it. As soon as the Ottomans conquered most of the Balkans. Power shifted away from Bursa and Konya to Istanbul.

I can see why the Ottomans are called a Balkan Empire rather than a Anadolu Empire.

Genc Osman actually wanted to shift power away from the Balkans to Anadolu but got tortured to death for it.

Prince Mustafa I think also wanted to shift power away from Europeans/Balkaners/Devshirme but got killed thanks to Hurrem who wanted her son to be on the throne.

Honestly im not a fan of monarchy will never be a fan of it. I really never understood why people defend monarchy especially the ones who dont come from nobility.

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TurkWolf said:

Genç Osman not having a proper movie or series about him is honestly ridiculous. His story is one of the most dramatic turning points in Ottoman history. He wasn’t just a young sultan who got killed... he was the first ruler who seriously tried to break the Janissary grip on the empire and shift power back toward Anadolu. The Janissaries had become a political mafia by that point, and Osman’s attempts to cut their privileges, shut down their coffeehouses, and rebuild the army with Anatolian and Arab troops made him a target. His plan to go on Hajj was actually a covert move to raise a new loyal army in Egypt and Syria. Once the Janissaries discovered it, they revolted, dragged him out, tortured him, and killed him. That moment marks the beginning of the irreversible decline of the Ottoman Empire.

You see the same pattern earlier with Şehzade Mustafa. He was talented, popular, and respected by the army. He wanted to shift power away from palace factions and devşirme elites. His execution, driven by palace politics and succession paranoia, shattered morale and created long‑lasting instability. These events show how dangerous monarchy can be when succession becomes a battlefield of factions instead of a stable system.

As Turks, we’ve basically always lived under some form of monarchy or single‑ruler authority, from the Huns to Göktürks to Seljuks to Ottomans. When that figure disappears, the political culture feels directionless because our historical default was always one state, one ruler, one center of authority. But monarchy is a lottery. You might get an Attila, an Alp Arslan, a Fatih, or a Selim. Or you might get a ruler who is too young, too inexperienced, or too controlled by palace politics. The difference between a golden age and a collapse can literally be the personality of one man.

Pros of monarchy - fast decision‑making, clear chain of command, long‑term planning, strong symbolic unity, and cultural continuity. Cons of monarchy: succession chaos, incompetent rulers with no removal mechanism, factional capture, lack of accountability, and instability when young rulers take power. Osman II is the perfect example of how a brilliant reformer can be destroyed by the very institution he tries to fix.

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