The Balkans is the least developed region of Europe, which is squarely due to the backwardness of the Ottomans. Education was never valued and the Ottoman leaders preferred their harems instead of realising that they had to industrialise like the rest of imperial Europe.
Their lack of value to education, even among supposed favoured subjects of the empire, such as the Albanians, is reflected in the fact that the Austro-Hungarians built more schools in one year in Albania than the Ottoman Empire did in centuries.
Balkans expert Albert Bikaj tweeted, “Albania barely benefited anything from the Ottoman Empire; only individuals profited from it. Our cities, institutions, faith, law, traditions, etc. were damaged, if not destroyed by them. After the liberation, we were left out illiterate, weak, divided and poor. The Austro-Hungarian administration has built more schools, roads and institutions during one year in Albania than the Ottoman Empire for five long centuries. That explains a lot.”
Unsurprisingly, most of the newest “oldest university in each European country” is in former Ottoman possessions.
You can literally see the Ottoman-Austrian border in the Yugoslav literacy map in 1931 (Photo 2) – the literate were under Austro-Hungarian rule, and the illiterate were under Ottoman rule.
Even when looking at the Mean IQ of the Balkans, it is significantly lower than the rest of Europe.
Extending further, in today’s Turkey you can see that the common educational attainment level (at least in one specific age group) was significantly lower compared to the rest of Europe.
The Ottomans never valued education, and it brought an entire European region and its peoples down with it, including the Greeks, whose contributions to learning are well documented in the ancient times and underappreciated but vital in the Medieval times.
https://greekcitytimes.com/2023/09/25/ottoman-empire-education-balkans/