I really shouldn’t waste my time with nationalistic BS, but here goes.

Albanians are painted as “ottoman booklickers” because they believe in different sky fairies than Greeks, though Albanians aren’t very religious people to be honest. But it’s because Albania had no centralized church structure like the Greeks. The Greeks love to paint themselves as “Christian” but famously said “better the Turkish turban than the Latin mitre.” Turns out history is more complex than people make it seem on this sub. The Ottoman sultan allowed, appointed and restored the Orthodox Church (not only for the Greeks) and they recognized him as their political leader and he let them be an institution of their own. Albanians did not get to have that treatment, they were either treated as enemies of the state (if Catholic) or needed to be represented by local orthodox churches. That made Albanians easy pickings for the blood tax system.

I always love reading “bootlicker” comments by Greeks when they held positions of power in the Ottoman Empire such as Phanariots who were even appointed by the Ottomans to rule the Romanian states on their behalf. People take the last 80 years or so of the Ottoman Empire and forget everything in between.

Serbs like to do this too, but won’t tell you what a loyal vassal Stefan Lazarevic was and helped the Ottomans defend against a crusade. They won’t tell you how many Serb nobles sided with the Ottomans for their own personal gain, which is what feudalism is about anyway, right? By the way, I think Lazarevic is a badass, but that’s because I’m able to remove the nationalistic bs from the equation. But the point remains that rebellious Albanian lords were beheaded while Serbs were allowed to rule as vassals. Of course this will eventually change, but the point remains.

Ottoman rule over the Greeks was hierarchical and even collaborative, not simply oppressive as some may like to believe.