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.