Who would you have supported in the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878)?

[GMantis]

You all know my answer as well...

You all already know my answer...

Would you have also supported the suppression of the April uprising which ultimately led to the war? Or do you just object to Russia invading the Ottoman Empire?

[GMantis]

You all know my answer as well...

You all already know my answer...

Would you have also supported the suppression of the April uprising which ultimately led to the war? Or do you just object to Russia invading the Ottoman Empire?

Assuming I was the Grand Vizier or something, I, admittedly, would've been inclined to suppress it on the principle of keeping peace and order. However, I believe that negotiating with the leaders of the uprising in allowing more rights and freedoms would've been the best course of action. No part in due to a commitment to the broader implementation of the Tanzimat reforms and the concept of Ottomanism instead of brutally suppressing it with the bashi bazouks.

So would you have supported the agreement reached at the Constantinople conference in 1876 which gave to Bulgaria broad autonomy while it was to remain in the Ottoman Empire?

As for negotiating with the rebels, it's certainly a novel idea, though far too late for it to work - at least without granting some sort of autonomy. The April uprising broke among the prosperous and most developed parts of Bulgaria, so these were the people who had the most to lose from an uprising and the most to gain from good relations with the Ottoman authority. In fact, for decades the Bulgarian elites had been opposed to any rebellions and had been the chief supporters of living in a reformed Ottoman Empire. That they had by 1876 joined the revolutionaries - a group largely composed of exiles until then - is a good indication of how ineffective the reforms had been and how little hope of them working had been left.

You all know my answer as well...

But yes, I primarily, object to the Russians invading.

It should be pointed out that Russia lost more than it gained from this war. Even Bulgaria didn't remain allied to Russia for long.

[GMantis]

I would have supported The Ottoman Empire.

I don't say this out of any love for the Turks, or their mode of government, or anything else. Instead, it would be purely down to strategic interests and geopolitics. For better or for worse, they were the ones somehow able to keep the Balkans and the Middle East from exploding into a series of awful conflicts that just entangled the Great Powers even further.

No, they weren't. Certainly not by the 19th century, when it hardly keep the peace within its own territories or even hold on to them. You seem to have forgotten that the war only happened because the British were too disgusted with the atrocities the Ottomans had used to crush a rebellion against their rule to back them up against Russia.

The Russian Empire, by contrast, sought to actively destabilize the region and force a new status quo that would see it conquer the Turkish Straits. From there, Russian fleets could act with impunity to threaten broader European commerce and trade carried through the Mediterranean Sea. Keeping them bottled up and impotent would restrict their freedom of action, so naturally backing the Turks makes sense.

Ignoring for a moment the nonsense that the minuscule Russian fleet would ever be a threat of Western interests in the Mediterranean, Russia didn't even have such objectives in the first place. Russia had tried their best to avoid war and even after that they tried their best to find accommodation with the other Great Powers. In fact, the historical evidence clearly proves how false your theories, since Russia gained nothing in the Balkans from the war and was no closer to gaining the straits after the war ended.

The best case for me would be if The Ottoman Empire was not necessarily a Great Power, but a Secondary Power, able to bear the cost of policing both of these historically unstable areas, and serving my geopolitical interests, but unable to realistically function without foreign support. Better to send Martini-Henry rifles, telegraphs, and coastal defense guns, rather than the lives of my own men.

The Balkans were unstable because of the Ottomans, who were a corrupt, oppressive and arbitrary government reigning over a mostly Christian population that they treated as second class subjects. They only became stable once they had exterminated or expelled the non-Muslim ethnicities.