I meant that at the time, it was the Church that ruled Europe.  If the Ottomans had been able to go any farther, the Church's power would have crumbled because of it's inability to prevent the invasion by the "infidels" (or so I've heard).

I'm not very good at explaining what I mean the first time around.

Addition on the Ottomans - again having to add the Hungarian angle. A bit of history. After 150 years of battles, in 1526 the Ottomans decisively defeated the Hungarian kingdom. The next 150 years are generally known here as the miserable years of Turkish Subjection. However, there is some post-facto spin on this (winners write history and such). The historical fact is, that while Ottoman Occupation had a lot of casualties, the greatest misery was brought by the so-called 15-Year-War at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, which was this region's equivalent of the Thirty Years War. It was kicked off by the Habsburgs who held Northern Hungary at the time, ended in stalemate, and in-between most destruction was wrought by marauding vallon mercenaries who didn't receive pay, and robbed and raped and killed peasants instead. The central regions were practically depopulated, total population fell maybe by 50%.

A consequence was that a forming national independence movement wasn't fighting against the Ottomans, but the Austrians. In the next hundred years, there were several rebellions, some of them in alliance with the Ottomans. One of these gained control of most Austrian-held territory before the self-defeating 1683 Ottoman attack, which they helped. After the last one, the 1703-1711 rebellion in a Royal Hungary now largely reconquered from the Ottomans (again with elements of genocide) by the Habsburgs, its leader went to exile to a city near Istambul.

BTW, when the Hungarian capital of Buda was re-taken in 1686, in a kill-them-all siege reminiscent of the taking of Jerusalem by the Crusaders, the Ottoman castle captain was a convertite from beyond the conquered areas: a born Swissman.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

Well, I don't see the point in going over the history. For me, Turkey has a place in Europe.

However, I will say this. When the Turks arrived in Anatolia in the 1100s, there were only 25,000 Seljuks. So, obviously, a whole swath of the populace living in the region was converted. This population was not necessarily Christian either.

The initial invasions were actually quite brutal and consisted of forced conversions. Once in power, the Ottomans were more open to different religions. Of course, there were a few caveats. A Muslim paid less taxes and was allowed to own more property. Also, Muslims didn't have to give up their first-born males. The Janissaries were mostly Christian children. Nonetheless, other religions enjoyed a great deal of autonomy.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, you had many Muslims who spoke no Turkish at all. They only spoke Greek, Albanian or Slavic languages. It takes very little imagination to presume that they had been converted. Also, you had Turkish speakers who spoke no other language but were Christian. These were the Karamans. So, we don't necessarily HAVE to associate Turkey with a religion. The Ottomans were actually quite able to separate one's religious identity from an ethnic identity.

Only with nationalism, forced migrations and ethnic cleansing have the countries of the former Ottoman Empire come to seem so monolithic.

sorry but Turks do not mix at all !!!! alsace, germany or Dutch, the problem is still the same, and for wedding they systematically import from Turkey the other conjoint.

i am currently living in australia, i read a study about how the population mix (means inter-cultural wedding) in Australia and Turks were the worst : did not mix and same until 3rd generation !!!!!!

to compare French mix pretty well and as soon as the first generation ;-)

I tried to track down some of this from other sources. Of all places, I find the following at a Christian website:

"There's a reaction against Christianity by Islamists and nationalist groups," observed Ihsan Ozbek, chairman of the Alliance of Protestant Churches (APC). "The missionary issue is being used by them to spoil the relationship between Turkey and the EU."

...and then on the sermon, I was right to mistrust The Economist again:

Back in February, the Turkish Daily News had reported that a sermon prepared by the Religious Affairs Directorate would be read in all the nation's mosques on March 11, portraying Christian missionaries as the "new Crusaders." Reportedly this came "as a reaction to missionary activities in Turkey and EU demands for religious expression."

But in an apparent backdown, the directorate's website indicates that a different sermon was preached in its place.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}