Sure, but they were not mercenaries. They did not enroll, but were taken from their families in occupied lands as small children, raised and educated as warriors, and the only career option they had, and family they knew of is the army.

Certainly. I just wanted to clarify what "slave-warrior" meant in this context, because in itself the word makes me think of actual slaves living in misery and getting thrown onto enemies to keep them busy getting killed. Originally janissaries were taken forcefully, but the careers they made, many families bribed the collectors to pick their children, and later, muslims too forced the govenrment to make the concession of accepting their children into janissary "ocak"s. Not only, but janissaries started getting families (forbidden initially), and making their children janissaries too, and thus the corruption of the janissaries. Also, janissaries were not mere warriors. They took part in many activities and had many responsabilities in peace time. E.g. the firemen of Constantinople were janissaries. They were also the ruling elite in some remote parts of the empire.

BTW while "taken from their families" is correct, many kept ties with the families. The Sokollu dynasty of grand viziers who practically ruled the empire for decades were taken the same way, but the first of Sokollus, Mehmen Sokollu, was not only able to pass on his position to his relatives, he re-established the Serbian Orthodox Church and got his brother to become its patriarch. We can discuss the humanitarian aspects of this, but practically, these people are not slaves at all; in fact, thinking that these people were slaves is downplaying what a disaster actual slavery is.

I am living in Serbia and, although you are right about Mehtmet-Pasha Sokolovic (Sokollu), it was certainly not the norm. It is difficult to judge different times from the modern perspective, but the actual term that is used for the period of Serbian history from the 14th to 19th century is "Turkish enslavement". Whether it is worse to live as a Christian "raya" under Ottomans or a serf under Christian kings is maybe open to discussion, but no one here consider that time as a glorious time of the opportunity for Serbian/Christian culture here. Quite the opposite, it stagnated the whole Balkan region from one of the centers of European culture to the backwaters.

PS. There is a book by the Nobel laureate Ivo Andric about exactly the times of Sokollu, that HN readers might find interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bridge_on_the_Drina

While I will not dispute the Empire did cause all its region to become stagnant and backwards in comparison to Renaissance and post-Renaissance Europe (because that's an indisputable fact), both you as a Serb and I as a Turk should be very careful and sceptic with regards to national historical narratives of our respective countries, because they are infested with lies and misrepresentations, like in all over what was Ottoman territory in Asia Minor and the Balkans. The shitshow that 19th century through WWI was in this region has produced the worst incarnations of nationalist states that have caused the bloodiest of massacres and the worst of baseless yet pertinent illusions. If I return to the actual topic, while I do agree that the Ottoman Empire was not a time of glory for the Eastern Christians, and that we all can be glad that it does not exist any longer, most of that time was way better than most national narratives represent it, including that of Turkey up until quite recently (now there's a wave of neo-Ottomanism here, based on anachronic and nationalistic illusions on what the empire was; before, the view of the Empire was not much different here that what you describe).

I think we agree more than we disagree.

My comment was mentioned to highlight that in many practical ways, the Christian population was practically enslaved to the Muslim overlords (regardless whether them being "real" Turks, or, more commonly, local converts, or even Janissaries). Much more than a Christian serfdom was a lightweight variation on slavery.

Christian population as a whole had very little to choose whether their children will be taken away and become Janssaries, at least until late times, and once taken away, those people had very little influence about their career choices. They were slaves in all practical ways the slavery means. For some exceptions, that slavery turned out to lead to high positions (like Sokollu) but, on the other hand, if the subject population retained their independence, talented people like Sokollu might have had opportunity to build up their local communities/states, instead of conquering the world for Ottoman sultans? :)

PS. I am personally an atheist, so I do not tend to look at the things here from the Christianity: right; Islam: wrong perspective.

We disagree at the definition of what slavery is. My definition of it is complete subordination to some masters, with no rights and in an inhumane situation (e.g. Afro-American slavery). Your definition seems to be that it is any sort of subjugation to some foreign powers. Even the fact that almost all businesses in the Empire were run by Christians prove, with my definition, that the situation was not that of enslavement, but instead that of imperial dominance. According to your definition, almost all imperial rule since Hittites necessarily include some sort of mass enslavement (which is not totally unagreable, but IMHO probably not a very useful way to assess history). I guess we can safely disagree there, as both definitions can be correct, depending on the viewpoint. Apart from that, we also agree on being atheists, as I can say I'm one too (I'm also of the opinion that "nation" is a useless and perilous abstaction, BTW, which means I'm not getting at this from a nationalistic PoW).

Serbian (and other smaller nations) in Austria-Hungary were under what you would call imperial dominance. In Ottoman Turkey, it was definitely much heavier. In many ways, local Christian population in Balkans was literally enslaved. That's one of the reasons that large part of Serbian population collectively fled en masse from old Serbia to then Austria-Hungary in 16th century, and left a literally empty countryside, which was later re-populated by Serbian and Albanian population from even poorer mountainous areas.

I mean, finding cases of African American slaves that lived and worked as cooks or home attendants, or nannies, or whatever easier jobs were available in the South, in addition to much harder cotton picking would not be an argument that those people were not enslaved. The fact that one does not literally carry chains the whole day does not mean that he is not a slave, if the owner can literally decide on the life and death, without much consequence.

If we talk about imperial dominance in Ottoman Balkans, I would accept that local Muslim population (largely converts) lived under imperial dominance. Christian peasants - much, much heavier.