Can the Ottoman Empire stagnate its stagnation?

[Pachac]

But if we replace one of the stagnations with a negative growth, how does this affect Ottoman Stagnation?

s = 0 so o will regress backwards, but due to the fact that s is negative, it will be a double-negative and therefore be a positive, so a regressing stagnation is actually forward progress

 

[mats]

But if we replace one of the stagnations with a negative growth, how does this affect Ottoman Stagnation?

That is obvious, it will stagnate exponentially.

 

[Laurentia]

s = 0 so o will regress backwards, but due to the fact that s is negative, it will be a double-negative and therefore be a positive, so a regressing stagnation is actually forward progress

Ah. So we can regress the stagnation by replacing both s's with negatives.

OP, you have your answer.

 

[mats]

s = 0 so o will regress backwards, but due to the fact that s is negative, it will be a double-negative and therefore be a positive, so a regressing stagnation is actually forward progress

But the ottomans are stagnating in their stagnation, now stagnating even more makes it a triple negative, add that to your double negative, and we get a quitiple negative, and since 5 times - means -, it is still stagnating.

 

[Midas]

I think you'd have to go back and change things, almost, right at the beginning. Ok, not the very beginning but immediately after the 1453 conquest of Constantinople. A rather radical PoD should have to come during the reign of Mehmet II himself if possible.
If instead of becoming the Ottoman Empire it evovlved into a completely different beast, I'm thinking there's no reason why it couldn't have survived.
I'm thinking it would have been an Empire where all subjects regardless of religion were considered legally equal and where christian or jewish subjects could rise in the hierarchy without having to convert and without having to "turkify" themselves. The Turks would still be the predominant constituent within the Empire in terms of their language being the official state language and their model of administration being the standard but other communities would get equal opportunities. And let's not forget that the Ottoman model of administration heavily emulated the Byzantine in the first place.
And most probably the Ottoman dynasty would have to go down at some point for any serious change to occur. Other contenters would, thus, get their chance to sit on the throne. It would make sense, if those contenters were predominantly of Turkish stock but I imagine that sooner or later Sultans of Greek, Arab, Jewish, Persian, Slavic, Armenian or whatever descent could rise to the throne. Already OTL most sultans had foreign mothers, but of course they were raised as Ottoman Turks. What if with the extinction of the Ottoman dynasty that was no longer necessary?

I don't know maybe I'm oversimplifying things here.

You're describing the Ottoman Empire of OTL. Many of its Emperors had non-Turkic stock in them, Jews and Christians held massively important positions throughout the realm and were treated far better than Muslims or Jews were in Christian realms even really until modern times. You realize that most of the Sephardim were welcomed with open arms, and boats provided directly by the Sultan himself, when Spain expelled them, yes? I could provide other examples but it'd get exhaustive and old pretty quick. They weren't amazing benefactors of humanity, but proto-liberals who understood multiculturalism a lot better than most of their European counterparts do even today.

Ottoman Turkic was no more intelligible to regular Anatolian Turks than Middle English is now to us; it was a foreign language, which imported loads of vocabulary and grammar from Arabic and Persian. Arabic was the de facto language of the realm below Syria and Mosul, and had been so since it had conquered Hejaz. Remember also that the pre-Green Revolution population of the Arabs was pitifully small compared to Anatolia. In 1914, it totalled a paltry 7 million.. that's 7 million people all living in the space that makes up Iraq, Syria, Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. There's that many people in Israel/Palestine right now alone. Anatolia in contrast, had over 20 million at the time.

Even when we eliminate religion out of the equation, the Arabs still wanted to rule themselves instead of being subjected to Turkish rule. Ironically, this was in reaction to the Ottoman's increasingly self-identification as Turks in response to their subjects identification own ethnic nationalities (Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian, etc.)

This isn't true at all. The Arab national consciousness really didn't develop until after WWII, and certainly wasn't crystallized until Nasser came around. Prior to that Arabs were more than happy to participate in the Ottoman Empire, under the Rightly Guided Caliph of Islam.

Multiethnic identites certainly weren't what fractured the Ottomans though- it was external forces and some truly terrible luck. Multiple ethnicities certainly were a catalyst for this to happen, but it isn't multiple ethnicities alone that can break apart a state.

@OP, I suggest googling site:alternatehistory.com Ottoman Empire survives. You'll find plenty of TLs from some of our more esteemed members of the past, who aren't as jaded as some of the posters here.. who can nonetheless, be quite frank about the Ottoman Empire's chances at modernity and survival with earlier conquests (1453-1500s), earlier reforms (Selim III, etc.), a victory in 1878, staying neutral in WWI (1900s and Balkan Wars) and even Central Powers victory TLs (1914+).

 

[Elfwine]

And it has to be noted that to some extent, the Ottoman Empire's decline looks worse because Europe was moving ahead at the same period - the British Empire in 1800 is a lot stronger relative to its neighbors than England of 1500, the Ottoman Empire is (relative to its neighbors) weaker in the later date.

There's not much you can do about that.

 

[Snake Featherston]

The OE was pretty much doomed by then, WWI or not. They may survive for a few more decades, but with the Soviets in the North and Arab nationalism rising in the south, I don't think they'll last that long.

What can be done to have the OE still stagnate almost to the brink of collapse, but then become a competent regional power once more?

No Ottoman entry into WWI removes a lot of the strategic issues that helped economically weaken Russia's empire (such as inability to trade with its Allies). It's quite arguable that without the closing of the Straits that Russia, with an overall more advantageous strategic position sees Tsarism also survive WWI. Or at the very least winds up with a descendant of the Provisional Government, as the Bolsheviks won't have Constantinople to begin raking in the Marks from.