Ottoman decline in the face of foreign threat produced genuine brutality toward subject peoples

Evidence

With the decline of the Ottoman Empire, some of the traditional charges against the Turks become in part justified. Ottoman culture declined into mere repetition and imitation of earlier models. Ottoman administration ran down until the Empire really was ramshackle. Increasing weakness in the face of foreign invasion and internal rebellion often led to oppression and brutality and tyranny. Suspicion, hatred, fear—and sometimes, we may add, the example of Western intolerance—transformed the Turkish attitude to the subject peoples. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 643

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Pairs with the earlier passage on toleration: decline, not ‘Turkishness,’ is the causal driver of cruelty — a structural rather than essentialist explanation.

Related

• Ottoman decline eventually made Western charges against the Turks partly accurate (similarity 0.91)
• Ottoman decline stripped Turks of both imperial and religious authority to feel superior (similarity 0.85)
• Ottoman decline stemmed from institutional resistance to Western science, not internal decay (similarity 0.81)
• Europeans read Ottoman decline as a loss of strength and will, not mere power (similarity 0.80)
• Late-19th-century reformers blamed Islam’s decline on Ottoman tyranny, not on Islam itself (similarity 0.79)
• Ottoman decline is cited as the paradigm for the Soviet empire’s collapse. (similarity 0.78)
• Ottoman rule was relatively non-persecuting compared with Christian reconquests (similarity 0.78)
• Ottoman interest in Europe only began once Europe seemed dangerous (similarity 0.78)