The major 3 experiences a Balkan or a Middle Eastern country must do.

Posted by OpportunityNice4857

33 Comments

  1. Excellent_Ring_9070 on

    This feels a bit reductive tbh. Some countries here had Ottoman rule for centuries, others barely at all — does lumping them together actually explain much?

  2. Ludovic_Adonis on

    Interesting idea but this is missing probably more than half of the actual countries in the Middle East. Also I’ve never seen anyone claim that the Caucasus countries are part of the Middle East.

    You should rather label this as former countries of the Ottoman Empire. But then it’s not that interesting I guess.

  3. The Ottomans ruled Azerbaijan and Tabriz for 18 years until Safavid Turcomans recaptured it in 1603.

  4. OpportunityNice4857 on

    I forgot to put Saudi Arabia, particularly Hejaz, they did experience Ottoman rule and they are part of the Middle East. My bad.

  5. This is not the Middle East. Secondly, Egypt had a huge empire during the New Kingdom and occupied the Levant and Nubia. Why isn’t this included in the list like the Ottomans?

  6. Egypt was strictly an Arabian socialistic republic after the collapse of the Egyptian kingdom. They seized foreign brands and turned them into Egyptian brands. So much later after death of Nasser that Egypt started to open up again and invite them back. This created the funny experience we have today where you go buy snacks and find two brands that are too similar to each other, one Egyptian and one foreign.

    Today Egypt is hybrid but the military is gaining too much power over Egyptian infrastructure, taking over brands and pushing away foreign investors (even when they try to, it’s just not safe to invest in)

  7. Just_Nefariousness55 on

    Did the US really never have a war with Turkey? Not even back in the Ottoman days? They were on different sides of World War 1 at least right? No invasion back then?

  8. Available-Badger-163 on

    Montenegro was also bombed by the US. it was the first to get bombed around 15 to 16 when coastal city of Bar got struck, later Danilovgrad Military station was bombed where the first casualty of the bombing was recorded when a soilder died

  9. Most people don’t know that Greece and Italy both had extremely effective leftist/Communist partisans who fought very well against the fascists occupying their countries and were very popular locally. As soon as they could, the US and Brits disbanded them and took their weapons so as to better control the political future of those two countries. The US had a very strong hand in their post-war political path. So you can talk about leftist regimes if you want, but you’ve completely missed the far-right influence. Greece has been a veritable laboratory for US far-right aggression ever since. There’s a very good documentary about it: [https://labgreece.org/en/home/](https://labgreece.org/en/home/)

  10. Sad-Compote-5416 on

    A socialist dictatorship is worse than the evils of Egypt and the Ottoman yoke combined.

  11. Refugee_InThisWorld on

    In 1997, during civil unrest, first united European military mission ever entered Albania. This was before Kosovo war and before Kfor. We called them the “multinational troops”. It was not invasion, but it was one big intervention.

  12. Should include Saudi Arabia, but also Yemen. In parts of South Yemen, like Aden which the Ottoman controlled too. South Yemen was also once under communist regime from 1967 to 1990.

  13. Actually Azerbaijan was briefly occupied by Ottomans in different periods of time like twice or something

  14. A Serbian, Iraqi, Syrian, Kosovan and Bosnian sit down together at a pub. One of them says: “America huh?” They all proceed to laugh.