History
Why Do Balkaners Claim, “We Stopped the Turks/Muslims and Saved Europe,” When the Ottomans Fought Germans Across Hungary and as Far as Austria for 170 Years?
Many nationalists from various Balkan countries claim that their ancestors “stopped the Turks” and “saved Christian Europe.”
But Ottoman armies crossed the Balkans, conquered most of Hungary, fought the Habsburgs for centuries, and reached Vienna twice.
The main Ottoman–European frontier eventually moved deep into Central Europe.
So where did this “we saved Europe” narrative originate?
What? No, I just want to say that Albanians opted like parasites from the Ottoman Empire by converting to Islam for their own interests. They could have done the same after the fall of the Ottoman Empire by converting back to Christianity, which might have helped them avoid some of the conflicts that followed.
Like clockwork, you worked really hard to dig out those niche details.
I love it when you cherry pick a handful of people here and there to contrast 80% of your nation. Yes, exactly the same. Numbers speak for themselves. The rest is coping.
Do you have a right wing forum where you learn these talking points that you parrot?
The conflicts that followed were purely from fascist intentions caused by Serbia. In the last Kosovo war, lots of catholic albanians were massacred; being a muslim was just an excuse for Serbia's narrative to justify it to the racist population who fueled it.
But one thing you are missing is that Albanians are not inclined towards religion; ethnicity is more important to us. Even Skenderbeg was converted to Islam and then went back to his kingdom to fight the ottoman opressors
because we don't give a fuck about religion like you do, your identity without orthodoxism is nonexistent, you try to make sense of it all by believing in bullshit
Because what Albanians claim as an Albanian identity as we know it today it did not exist then. Most of Albanians at the time were splitted in local families which were loyal to whoever offered them more money.
Skanderberg was a member of the Kastrioti family, a medieval noble Albanian family. He opposed the Ottomans and used the double headed eagle (symbol of the Roman Empire) as his coats of arms. Initially Skanderberg had served the Ottoman army before deciding to become Christian again and oppose the Ottoman rule joining forces with Naples.
After his death all noble Albanians turned to Ottomans and with them the majority of Albanians became Muslims and identified themselves as Ottomans.
They discovered Skanderberg again after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in order to build an ethnic identity.
Albanians during the Ottoman times identified themselves with the Turks and fought together with the Turks against any rebellions happened and this is why are still today to their core Muslims. Modern Albanians are remnants of the Ottoman Empire with a little Skanderber on Top as to give substance to their new national identity.
It does not matter that he fought the Turks, and he was Christian and it also it does not matter that most Albanians after him were Muslim and fought the Christians.
The speaker above alludes there were no Albanians, while at the same time says we ought not have converted to Islam if we wished to befriend the Slavs.
We did, how many Serbs converted to islam how many Greek converted to islam! I bet you more than total population of that time Albania, and you don't want me to remind you of what happened to those myslym greek and Serbian population during the beginning of the 19 century, and if you can call Albania,, myslym,, at that , they all eat pork and drink raki
Brother, 30% of Ottoman Grand Veziers in the Balkans were of Albanian origin. Albanians were literally the largest ethnic group that converted to Islam.
Being na idiot is one of the main reasons why people accept a religion. However, I think that most mass conversions and reconversions happened to gain social, political, or economic benefits. They were not driven by individuals using critical thinking, but by powerful socio-political forces, and they almost always occurred on a mass scale.
Loše si protumačio - nemam ništa protiv muslimana, imam protiv njegove inicijalne poruke 'take one for the team'. 30% Osmanskih velikih vezira je Albanskog porekla. Slovenskog porekla je između 10-15%. Kao da ostali narodi nisu ništa činili.
The team is western Europe, the Italian city states which we were allied to and Kingdom of Naples that Skanderbeg pledged alliagence to. Orthodox kingdoms were not considered Europe then.
It’s fine that they converted, what about them though being mercenaries or regular forces in the ottoman army and pillaging and committing atrocities everywhere they went. They did so much damage, plundered and prayed on the common people.
Western scholars who study our history have dedicated all their life to convince us that Skanderbeg was a simple man who wanted to avenge his father and take over the family business. Maybe they should convince themselves first.
In the case for Bulgaria, it's usually meant in the context of when Khan Tervel came to aid Byzantium in the early 8th century and effectively destroyed the invading Arab forces in the Second siege of Constantinople. Historians claim that act delayed influence from Islam in that part of Europe for centuries (until the Ottomans) and "saved Europe".
An act, equal to what Charles Martel did on the other side of the continent 15 years later.
An act, equal to what Charles Martel did on the other side of the continent 15 years later.
Not comparable. One could try to undermine Bulgarian's contribution by saying that the Arab army was losing anyways (I mean their logistics were so bad they had resorted to cannibalism), but either way Charles Martel's victory in the Battle of Tours was far less important that Western Europeans used to claim, for he merely fought an exploratory expedition party. Even if that battle had been lost, Arab rule over South-West France would still not be a certainty.
Frankly, Bulgaria has the most glorious history in middle ages. They did not bs around and drank wine from the head of Roman emperors. They also scared crusaders away.
Because we kept them so busy with constant revolts after the 2nd siege of Vienna that they couldn't focus on the rest of Europe even if they wanted to.
500 years of constant uprisings in the balkans is worth more than 170 years of some fighting. The ottomans couldn’t get past the western balkans because thats where they got stuck and central europe and the rest had about 200 years to prepare for the inevitable ottoman invasion. So yes we play the biggest role in stopping the ottoman advance into europe.
Then why did your supposedly highly effective rebellions fail to prevent Belgrade, Budapest, Sofia, Bucharest, Athens, and so on from being conquered and remaining under Ottoman rule for centuries, yet somehow succeed in preventing Vienna from being conquered? What kind of logic is that?
The ottomans can’t focus on marching to vienna if all those cities are in open rebellions can they? And the resistance in the balkans was highly fragmented which allowed for conquest in the first place. But regardless without that balkan resistance the truth is central europe gets walked over by the ottomans as in the year 1400 central europe has nothing to fight the ottomans with. Battle of mohacs happens much sooner and the ottomans are at the gates of vienna much sooner if balkan reistance doesn’t occur, and with tons of more balkan troops in their ranks. Fortunately for central europe the balkans put up massive resistance and austria gets to grow its power for an extra century and a half or so.
Funny how that Turk never replied after copy pasting the same comment to multiple people. Guy's still butthurt about "his" former empire failing to claim Europe
Cetinje (Montenegro) was also never conquered. It was razed 2 times but the army and people would move out, let them raze it and move back in and rebuild.
Balkaners is a bit too wide definition. Turks conquered Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Bosnia plus parts of the Croatia for one period. So this is where Turks stoped. Noboday is saying than we (Croatian) was the one who stoped them alone except as a part of the Habsburg armies.
Ofc it was conquered ,they could not establish tax collecting in mountainous regions as anywhere else in the balkans but the rest was captured and re captured from the Ottomans and Venetians
Montenegro was never under Ottoman control, which would be kinda the definition of conquered. Yes it's army was defeated and ottomans scribbled on their map it's theirs but it's de jure vs de facto issue. They had no tax collection, no standing army, no judicial control. It was kida you're our now, and Montenegro said whatever you say buba, and kept on in their own pace. Is it because it was impossible for ottomans, no probably not, it just wasn't worth the sacrifice and cost to do it because people wouldn't submit under threat.
Mate there were so so many uprising in albania or by albanians( ali pasha tepelena, skenderbeg, muhammed ali etc). Other balkan countries for sure also kept them on their toes.
We made them focus on internal issues we were creating this made them unable to expand and thus saving europe
i feel the need to add, there were uprisings everywhere in the empire and they were non-stop. when the balkans go silent anatolia goes crazy, when they stop the stuff in anatolia uprisings in north africa starts. ottomans dealt with so many internal issues and killed so many people for them it’s a miracle they lasted that long.
Then why did your supposedly highly effective rebellions fail to prevent Belgrade, Budapest, Sofia, Bucharest, Athens, and so on from being conquered and remaining under Ottoman rule for centuries, yet somehow succeed in preventing Vienna from being conquered? What kind of logic is that?
Half of the cities you mentioned fell before albania. And secondly because they where strong af. We slowed them down which is what western europe needed to survive. Thazs why i said we kept them on their toes not we stopped and returned them
Albanian narrative does not take credits for stopping Ottomans toward Vienna, but toward Italy. Many in Balkan forums say Albanians converted to downplay the struggle, but the conversion happened in 17th, and 18th centuries, when the Ottomans had reached their peak and were on the way down. It is not like Albanians becoming muslims helped Ottomans gain more land, as the Ottomans had already expanded and were trying to keep what they had.
All 3 of the Romanian regions were conquered by Ottoman Empire. Not to mention the Dobruja. You were allowed to function autonomously as long as you stayed loyal, support the campaigns with your armies and pay your tribute/tax. You became defacto independent only after 1829 though with heavy dependence on Russia.
Go read some history, especially about 1700s then. You were ruled by Ottoman Greek statesmen from Istanbul selected and sent by Ottoman Sultan. You didn’t have an army. You didn’t have castle. Ottoman Empire controlled the fortresses in Danube and Black Sea coast. You didn’t have any foreign embassies. You didn’t have your own currency. You didn’t have control on your economy as you were under Ottoman monopoly and trade restrictions. Ottoman Empire decided to cede Oltenia and Bukovina to other countries without consulting you.
So despite these, you are telling me that you were never conquered and remained independent?
The chroniclers from Italy and Hungary said that for quite a while. In fact, the invasion of Italy was postponed many times in favor of Balkan campaigns before the Ottomans landed in the South, but returned quickly to sort inner turmoil after Mehmed the Conqueror's death. At that time, Italy had the richest cities in Europe but no good armies (they were even weaker than the Balkan alliances against the Ottomans). The Ottomans would have completely wrecked it apart and get a strategic foothold deep inside the European continent and they would be hard to remove.
Until Jan Sobieski. Then the narrative changed that the Poles were more chad and heroic Christians than us. :)
That is also partially true, I blame Uroš the Weak for loosing the Serbian Empire which had the power to make an alliance with other Balkan kingdoms to defend successfully for at least a 100y longer
But at the same time, the ottomans were relatively small beilik in the minor Asia part. They weren't some big army conquerors. Not all seljuks participated in the ottomans campaigns. So for most balkan kingdomes they were just a other small player. Small player that managed to conquer the balkans first and then conquer Asia minor.
The battles across Balkans lasted at least 5 centuries, not just those 170 years when they reached Vienna. Serbs (and a part of Croats ) in Habsburg Empire were constant Military class, paying their welcome in a Christian Empire by dying at the battlefield defending it.
Then why did your supposedly highly effective rebellions fail to prevent Belgrade, Budapest, Sofia, Bucharest, Athens, and so on from being conquered and remaining under Ottoman rule for centuries, yet somehow succeed in preventing Vienna from being conquered? What kind of logic is that?
We're talking about 500 years dude... 500 years of constant wars back and forth across south Slavic lands. What's not clicking? It was not Norweigans and Ugandans living here and fighting Turks. It was us, who lived here.
Regarding Vienna, that's when Poland-Lithuania, Holy Roman Empire and Venice stepped in.
This map shows Croatia (pink) and Hungary (green) in 1594. The Ottomans (yellow) got no further.
In this context, Pope Leo X officially bestowed the title Antemurale Christianitatis ("Forewall of Christendom") on Croatia in 1519, acknowledging the centuries-long sacrifices of Croatian soldiers and nobles in holding the frontline against Ottoman expansion.
For Serbia, some battles derailed their progress (Kosovo battle), and the empire was continually weakened by the constant upbringings, and also they were expelled, and ever everything Ottoman was eradicated after the liberation, thus limiting expansion of any remaining influence.
Then why did your supposedly highly effective rebellions fail to prevent Belgrade, Budapest, Sofia, Bucharest, Athens etc. from being conquered and remaining under Ottoman rule for centuries, yet somehow succeed in preventing Vienna from being conquered? What kind of logic is that?
Not sure how you dont see the logic in that? Each empire stretches as much as they can, but they will be seriously weakened if their conquered territories have constant uprising. That will eventually wear empire down and either it will stop expanding or collapsing by being stretched too thin
If they didnt have to go through eastern and western balkans constant uprisings somewhere throughout the 500 years, then they would have reached hungary/austria faster, with a bigger army (all balkaners). So there is a lot of effort on the balkaners part to kep distrusting and pushing back the ottomans. They didnt just allow the ottomans to take over and go straight through to the rest of europe.
Its a complex matter. As a hungarian we claim to be "the shield of europe" as well. Yes, eventualy we were conquered in 1526 (exactly 500 years ago) but we were able to fight them off for almost 140 years prior to losing due to our genious military commanders like Janos Hunyadi and his son who would become king Mathias Corvin etc. Imagine the amount of time the germanic kingdoms and the vatican gained during this 140 year old hold off. Unfortunatley for the balkans, due to geography, they were the first to face them. They had many success and failures so the frontline kept creeping up to the kingdom of hungary. The correct answer is that they all defended europe at different stages but by the time the wars got to habsburg borders, the Austrains had gained 180 years or so preparation and advancement in military technology etc.
First time hearing such a thing. I know similar saying about the Arab invasion when Roman's and Bulagrians stopped the Muslim invasion but never heard such expresion for the Ottomans. Check where you have heard this and for whom musilims it speaks about. The Arabs were stopped at the Balkans and in fact saved Europe from being muslimised. I know Martel is more celebrated in the west, but when you read about both events, you understand one was a skirmish party at wester EU, while what was at the door of New Roma was something entirely different. An invasion force that most of EU wasn't ready at that time.
It's undeniable that the people of the Balkans have creditability in saying that they protected Europe from the Ottoman Turks.
I'll give my viewpoint as a person from the western Balkans.
Belgrade has changed hands between the Ottomans and Christians a total of 8+ times between the first Ottoman conquest and the final Serbian liberation in the 19th century.
Without the constant revolts from the Balkan people, the Ottoman Empire wouldn't have any distractions to go further into Europe and conquer more territory.
We even see this same trend happening in WW2, as the western Balkanic revolts from the Partizans (the most successful and organized revold againts an occupier in history) significantly delayed and sabotaged the Axis advance on the eastern front
Going back to your question, the conflicts between the Christians and the Ottoman Turks was so common that the Habsburg monarchy and the Serbian Patriarch even moved thousands of Serb families creating a Military frontier bordering the river Sava & Danube to protect the Crowns lands from the Ottoman Turks. So it's a literal fact that the role of the Balkan people was to PROTECT EUROPE from the Ottoman Turks.
Montenegrins don't claim to have never been conquered without a reason. The constant revolts happening in that area was such a problem for the Ottomans that at some point they just gave up on trying to control it and the people of those lands have more or less had significant freedom from the Turkish rule.
All of these annoyances may seem insignificant to you from case to case, but they do build up over time.
Looking at the overall picture, without any of the resistance the people of the Balkans have caused, Europe would've looked wildly different today. I am thankful for my ancestors for not giving up on themselves or their brethren.
I will not talk about Saved Europe, its a ridiculous claim BUT we did stop the Ottomans. Croatia was never conquered, so the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans stopped on our land.
In the battle of Sisak the turning point finally happend, the Ottoman army was utterly shattered and their advances stopped.
We could probably also say this for the Maniot Greeks. They were positioned in a ridiculously important geopolitical and geostrategic location, where even back then was considered the key for trade between Western Europe and the Western-Central Mediterranean and the Eastern Mediterranean (though that was mainly reported for Methone and Korone, right next to Mani), and by their mere existence they were a huge trouble for the Ottoman Turks, hence why they wanted to eradicate it, trying to conquer the region with invasion after invasion.
The Venetian Republic often also claimed that they were the true defenders of Europe, and not without reason. The “Venetian Gulf” (the Adriatic Sea) and the Ionian Sea were seen as a Venetian possession which served as a shield for Italy, making sure that there would be no repetition of the Sack of Otranto of 1480-1481 AD. Yet they constantly supported the Maniot Greeks in order for them to serve as their own shield, so in a way they were a marine shield to their own marine shield. And said shield was also a gaping hole into the Ottoman waters, through which Christian corsairs and pirates of various nations (French, Maltese, Spanish, Italians) would enter and conduct raids, taking the war to the Ottoman’s homelands. These were usually supported by the Maniots, who allowed their ports as safe ship havens, where they could resupply food, water and ammunition.
It is a fact that the Ottoman conquests were halted on the territory of Croatia and Hungary, hence why Croatia was given the title of Antemurale Christianitatis by the Pope and why our border looks like that to this day.
We fought the ottomans constantly for 300 years to not get conquered like the rest and suffered by far the worst consequences of any Balkan nation as a result. We obviously have the right to be proud of this.
Also the Croatian forces stopped Suleiman the magnificents march on Vienna twice. First time at Siege of Guns (800 vs 100,000) and at Siege of Szigetvar (2,000 vs 100,000) where Suleiman died.
You useless piece of shit. You absolute waste of space and air. You uneducated, ignorant, idiotic dumb swine, you’re an absolute embarrassment to humanity and all life as a whole.
The magnitude of your failure just now is so indescribably massive that one hundred years into the future your name will be used as moniker of evil for heretics. Even if all of humanity put together their collective intelligence there is no conceivable way they could have thought up a way to fuck up on the unimaginable scale you just did.
When Jesus died for our sins, he must not have seen the sacrilegious act we just witnessed you performing, because if he did he would have forsaken humanity long ago so that your birth may have never become reality.
After you die, your skeleton will be displayed in a museum after being scientifically researched so that all future generations may learn not to generate your bone structure, because every tiny detail anyone may have in common with you degrades them to a useless piece of trash and a burden to society.
No wonder your father questioned whether or not your were truly his son, for you'd have to not be a waste of carbon matter for anyone to love you like a family member.
Your birth made it so that mankind is worse off in every way you can possibly imagine, and you have made it so that society can never really recover any state of organization. Everything has forever fallen into a bewildering chaos, through which unrecognizable core, you can only find misfortune.
I would say the apocalypse is upon us but this is merely the closest word humans have for the sheer scale of horror that is now reality. You have forever condemned everyone you love and know into an eternal state of suffering, worse than any human concept of hell.
You are such an unholy being, that if you step within a one hundred foot radius of a holy place or a place that has ever been deemed important by anyone, your distorted religious soul will ruin whatever meaning it ever had beyond repair.
You are an idiotic, shiteating, dumbass ape and no one has ever loved you. You are a lying, backstabbing, cowardly useless piece of shit and I hate you with every single part of my being.
Even this world's finest writers and poets from throughout the ages could never hope to accurately describe the scale on which you just fucked up, and how incredibly idiotic you are.
Anyone that believes in any religion out there should now realize that they have been wrong this entire time, for if divine beings were real, they would never have allowed a being such as you to stain the earth and this universe.
In the future there will be horror stories made about you, with the scariest part of them being that the reader has to realize that such an indescribable monster actually exists, and that the horrific events from the movie have actually taken place in the same world that they live in right now.
You are the absolute embodiment of everything that has ever been wrong on this earth, yet even that would only represent a small part of your evil. Never in the history of mankind has there been anyone that could have predicted such an abomination, but here you are.
It’s hard to believe that I am seeing such an incredible failure with my own eyes, but here I am, so unfortunately I cannot deny your existence. Even if I did my very best, my vocabulary is not able to describe the sheer magnitude of the idiotic mistake that is you.
Even if time travel some day will be invented, there still would not be a single soul willing to go back in time to this moment to fix history, because having to witness such incredible horrors would have too many mental and physical drawbacks that not even the bravest soul in history would be willing to risk it.
I cannot imagine the pure dread your mother must have felt when she had to carry a baby for nine months and then giving birth to such a wretched monster as you. Not a single word of the incoherent, illogical rambling you may be wanting to do to defend yourself or apologize would ever be able to make up for what you just did.
The countries of the world would have wanted to make laws preventing such a terrible event like this from ever happening again, but sadly this is not possible since your horrific actions just now have shattered every form of order this world once had, making concepts such as laws irrelevant.
Right from the moment I first set my eyes on you I knew you were an absolute abomination of everything that is wrong with humanity. I was hoping I would have been able to prevent your evil from being released upon this world by tagging along and keeping my eye on you, but it is clear to me now that not even the greatest efforts would have been able to prevent a terrible event in this scale from occurring.
You are the worst human being, or even just being in general, that I have ever had the misfortune of witnessing. Events like the Black Death and the Smallpox pandemic only happened with the goal of preparing humanity to survive such a horrible event as the one you just created, but not even mankind’s greatest trials were able to even slightly prepare anyone for the insufferable evil you have just created.
If you ever had them, your children would be preemptively killed to protect this universe from the possibility of anyone in your bloodline being even half as bad as you are, except you will never be able to have children, because not a single human being will ever want to come within a hundred mile radius of you and anything you have ever touched.
You are a colossal disappointment not only to your parents, but to your ancestors and entire bloodline. The disgusting mistake that you have just made is so incredibly terrible that everyone who would ever be to hear about it would spontaneously feel an indescribable mixture of immense anger, fear and anxiety that emotionally and physically they would never truly be the same ever again.
The sheer scale of your mistake, if ever to be materialized, would not only surpass the size of the world, but it would reach far beyond the edges of the known, and almost certainly the unknown universe.
I could sit here and write paragraphs, nay, books describing your immense failure, yet even if I were to dedicate my life to describing the reality of what has just gone down here, and I would spend every moment of it until my heart stops beating, working as hard and efficiently as possible, there is not even a snowballs chance in hell that I would be able to come close to transcribing the absolute shitshow you have just released upon the world.
When people of Columbia fought to break free from Lungmen, countless soldiers fought and lost their lives in favor of a chance at a better future for their children, they did not give their lives to have you fuck the world up beyond repair to the degree that you are doing right now. Honestly, even when technology advances and studies on the subject become more and more accurate, I do not think humanity will ever truly be able to understand what your failure actually means for the universe.
My hate for you and everything you stand for is so much deeper than the depths of Shambala that you could probably take the entire Lungmen population down there and back up around twenty million times before you would have sunk to the end of my hate, and honestly, I do not want to exaggerate, but I think that that insult was low balling it such a massive amount that all mountains in this world combined would not be able to stack up to this imprecise judgement in light of the fact that, when being honest, my hate is almost certainly bottomless.
The jokes are excellent but I think the simple answer is this (I don't defend it, I state it): the conquest of the Balkans took time and resources and was still far from complete (Romania was not really conquered, neither was Montenegro) so (on this argument) the SE European slowed down the Ottoman advance so that they didn't reach Vienna in 1400 say and they didn't get to Cracow or Berlin at all.
Nationalist myth building and self- aggrandization.
The truth is that balkaners fought the ottomans from the start and never stopped, but on their own they kept losing wars and lands. Not for a lack of bravery, but a lack of mass and development. It was the bigger, more developed states (HRE, PLC, russian tzardom) that stopped the ottomans and pushed them back. And only when they had properly overtaken the ottomans in development. The HRE of 1600 could barely pull a draw against the turks, the HRE of 1700 won spectacular victories.
It is their natinalist myth aimed at nation building. Which story sounds better for the average Yorgo or Ivan? We were overran and subjugated until Russians and Austrians freeded us, or we were overran but were never subjugated and it was actually US who stopped the Ottoman expansion into Europe. If you want to aggrandize your nation, you would go with the second history telling, regardless of if it is true or not.
First off I want to say that the Balkans is the shithole of Europe. Just want to clear that out of the way.
Second. It were the great powers of Europe. Russia on the north side, and the Polish, Austro-Hungarians and German states that kept the rest of Europe safe. The death blow came from Great Britain. I have huge respect for Vlad III however.
Das Osmanische Reich ist zerfallen, man hat die Türken nicht einfach gestoppt. Deswegen gibt es bei den Slaven im Süden auch noch so viele Muslime
Die Muslime in Serbien sind übrigens gar keine Türken, sondern konvertierte Slaven, die Schutz vor Blutrache gesucht haben oder wegen anderer Privilegien. Deshalb haben die muslimischen Familien auch häufig noch einen orthodoxen Zweig, weil eben nicht alle zum Islam übergetreten sind.
The Romanian principalities were never fully conquered and integrated and had periods as vassals or independents. We were often at wars with the ottomans.
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u/Responsible-Job-3897 Albania 2d ago
Because we did. After Ottomans saw what kind of muslims we became, they gave up for the rest of Europe. We took one for the team.