[Rayearth]

World history class taught us that Suleiman's domestic policy was what made him legendary. Much later I learned that he almost took Vienna - essentially the high water mark of the Ottomans. Imagine what the world would have been like if he succeeded...

[Swizec]

Story goes that's how we got croissants and coffee. Croissants as a nod to Viennese victory over the Ottoman siege in 17th century (crescent shape), and coffee apparently became popular in Europe because of that same Ottoman siege.

Them's the legends at least.

All I know about that part of history is that the Hapsburg empire used Slovenia as a buffer zone between them and the turks. Now my country has a lot of very fortified churches because the peasants had to hide somewhere while the Turks raided.

[Radim]

Interestingly, this also goes toward explaining the attitude of many south-eastern European countries toward the current immigration waves.

Most countries in the Balkans (not just Slovenia) have fought the Turks for extended periods of time. For example, in Romania, Stephen the Great had a habit of celebrating victories over the Ottomans by building new churches and monasteries [1]. These still form the country's landmarks and pilgrimage points today, and Stephen is a celebrated hero.

Basically many nations have linked their national identities to resisting waves of the "Musulman". It's hard to rewrite peoples' roots and archetypes at the strike of a politician's pen now.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_churches_established_b...

[Swizec]

It's even worse than you think. The last wars we had about Christian vs. Muslim were in the 90's and led to NATO bombing the hell out of the Balkans.

People are still sore about that. I have friends who remember hiding from NATO bombs.

[NotSammyHagar]

Innocent people must have been killed, it was a war. I remember the US accidentally bombed the Chinese Embassy. What the US was trying to do was stop the genocide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_Genocide

[acqq]

> the US was trying to do was stop the genocide

That's just how the West media presented the events at that time. In reality, the event you link to happened after the more years of war, where the victims of the mass-murder event renamed as genocide were the side which the US actively supported (Bosnian Muslims), and which had their own "kind-of-ISIS" fighters and committed enough atrocities before:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_mujahideen

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33345618

The US supported these Muslims the same way they supported Mujaheddin in Afghanistan before

http://www.counterpunch.org/1998/01/15/how-jimmy-carter-and-...

and just how they effectively supported Al-Qaeda and other extremists in Libya later, or all the Islamic extremist "rebels" in Syria.

The US has a long history of using the Muslim fanatics to destroy the countries the leaders of which it doesn't favor, like Assad's now.

The Yugoslavia events were of course with more actors just like in today's Syria it's not just Assad and ISIS.

The basis of US foreign policy is the commitment to prevent the rise of powers capable of constraining Washington’s unilateral action. Washington is not opposed to terrorism. Washington has been purposely creating terrorism for many years. Weakening Russia is one of the decades-long tasks, read honest Brzezinski in the article from 1998 I've linked.

[wsc981]

The documentary "Dossier Srebrenica" is a must see with regards to the Balkan war: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xwtny39iMs

[Swizec]

They bombed Serbia in 1999 as well. That was supposedly about Kosovo, but they were bombing cities that weren't in Kosovo and didn't have military infrastructure to "destroy economy and infrastructure". It was kind of a dick move really. Serbian economy already wasn't much back then.

Kosovo being a majority muslim state within orthodox Serbia. Afaik their independence/sovereignty is still questionable so the NATO bombings didn't really do much.

[ahoka]

No, it was not an accident. Serbia shot down an F-117. The downed stealth bomber was sold to the Chinese and it was stored in the embassy. CIA wanted to destroy the wreck, but it was in an other part of the building. This story makes sense because China started developing a stealth plane right after this Kosovo war (Chengdu J-20).

[Mikeb85]

> People are still sore about that.

Vladimir Putin's whole foreign policy relates to these events... It's the reason he intervened in Georgia (remember that?), Ukraine, and now Syria.

[varjag]

It's a pretext, not the reason.

[mirimir]

> People are still sore about that. I have friends who remember hiding from NATO bombs.

"Death From Above" in Party Animals (2005) by Turbonegro.

[trhway]

>Most countries in the Balkans (not just Slovenia) have fought the Turks for extended periods of time.

Count Dracula - Vlad the Impaler - comes immediately to mind. I'm always surprised at the similarity between how Dracula and Milosevic were both demonized for defending their people against the "Musulman" aggression.

[yread]

The Schwarzenberg aristocratic family has an interesting coat of arms - http://www.almanachdegotha.org/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilde...

A crow eating an eye out of a decapitated turkish head. They got it as a reward for helping defeat the Turks at Vienna. Quite a gruesome image. And they were very proud of it, Hluboka castle (re)built in 19th century has these as door handles https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/3a/15/ae/3a15aef5d...

[dghughes]

Maybe it's bagels not croissants?

[Arnt]

Let me guess, the next sultan's tomb would have been found near Nuremberg.

I've just spent a test run trying to think of a great conqueror who kept the gains, and couldn't. Some of them lost most of the gains in their lifetimes, in other cases it was lost shortly after their deaths, or disintegrated.

[eponeponepon]

Genghis Khan? Charlemagne, arguably..? Maybe one of the Qin emperors... yeah, there aren't many great military conquerors whose gains lasted.

Start digging in the arts and philosophy though, and there are plenty, after a fashion.

[riffraff]

Julius Caesar and Augustus? Those conquests lasted for a few centuries.

[pqs]

Napples and Sicily also have been part of the Spanish crown for centuries.

The Spanish kings held half of South America for centuries.

[Arnt]

Yes, South America is much bigger than Spain itself, was conquered quickly and then kept... good point. Thanks.

[Arnt]

Didn't Ghengis Khan's realm contract and then split when he died? IIRC Charlemagne gained two thrones (not by conquest), then added to that area by conquest, and largely kept the military gains.

[jeorgun]

Mehmed II? In any case a lot of the territory Suleiman conquered did remain part of the Ottoman Empire into the 20th century.

[cup]

Probably would have been a lot more Jews alive in Europe for starters.

Edit: People seem to be unhappy with this comment. Rather than vote on it, why not comment on it.

[jmspring]

You should have justification.

Looking at Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Ott..., it seems like Jews were at the whim of the Sultan, but during the "classic" Ottoman Empire (1300-1600s), tended to prosper.

There may be counters to this, but first couple of sources I looked at indicate your initial comment either needs backing or is incorrect.

[vessenes]

Arab-Jew conflict like we have today is a relatively modern thing, starting around the turn of the 19th century and intensifying during WW2 for a variety of reasons, including oil politics for Hitler and increasing land / nationalism tensions.

An interesting book about this and Iraq in specific is Banking on Baghdad; published in 2008, it's aimed at an interested Western reader, and is a good read.

[smcl]

Thanks for this reccomendation, it's in my queue now :)

[_nedR]

Probably the lot of Jews under Christian Europe at the time was not much better (maybe even worse) than under the Ottomans.

[ZanyProgrammer]

Why not justify it?