You do realize that much of what is modern Saudi Arabia used to be part of the Ottoman empire, right, from the early 16th century to the end of world war 1… Mecca and Medina were under ottoman control and were governed by the Hashemites… the house of Saud were a minor tribal power until they were elevated by the British…
[ETA] On top of that, I don’t think the Ottoman empire - a multi-ethnic and mutli-religious empire would have thought of itself as a “turkish” empire in the same way that modern Turkey considers itself to be “Turkish.” They most certainly considered themselves to be the leader of the Islamic world for quite a long time, but nationalist identity doesn’t really enter the picture until the early 20th century.
I’m sure we’ll eventually find out how they fucked that up too, somehow. (Unless it’s true that they handed over the body to another, more competent party for disposal.)
Though if we’re being fair, really the only thing they were careless about was the body double, and that was probably not a very serious attempt at misdirection. Their problem was that they encountered an unexpected level of surveillance - from his fiance waiting outside to the Turkish government’s extensive recordings. That derailed what would have otherwise been a “good enough” operation that no one would have paid any attention to it. (I.e. they were primarily counting on the Saudi government being able to get away with murder, as usual.)
It was a huge, multiethnic state, but I was under the impression that it was relatively clear who was in charge. Indeed ethnic and religious divisions were definitely exploited by others that wanted to take over parts of the empire. That is, after all, how the Brits managed to get…compliant kings in Egypt and the Arabian peninsula.
Neutralize with a nice, buffered base. Depending on the acid, baking soda or lime with do, but you need patience. Dumping several kilos of baking powder into a bathtub of strong acid will result in a giant, uncontrolled, science-fair volcano!
Nominally, the sultan, but that depended on the time period. At times, although ruling in his name, the Grand Vizier, who would often rise through the ranks of the Dervshirme system/Janissary Corps (meaning he would not be Turkish, but either Slavic or more likely Albanian), would be the defacto ruler. Many of the Sultan’s wives would also not be Turkish, meaning the children would be of mixed heritage, as we understand it. More important in the hierarchy of the Ottoman empire was faith - people in power tended to be Sunni Muslim, and up to the 19th century, would be connected to the Bektashi order, which is a sufi order - until a riot of Bektashi soldiers, in the early 19th century and the eventually abolishment of the Janissary and the reconfiguration of the empire away from the religious model (which gave religious leaders in each faith a high level of autonomy) to a western administrative model (the millet system to the vilayet). This was not a popular shift, either, and it came with riots AGAINST the western model, which you’re correct in noting Europeans attempted to exploit to their own advantage (but did a piss poor job of it - even in Egypt, the reason it became autonomous had less to do with the Brits and more to do with Muhammad Ali Pasha himself). The “nations” recognized under the Ottoman empire until the 19th century were religious nations, not ethnic nations. Ethnic nations are a modern invention, and Turkish nationalism (as a secular national identity) really did not emerge until the end of the first world war. Even the early uprisings right before and during the war itself were much more interethnic, supported by various ethnic groups who saw an advantage to the Ottoman imperial model vs. the western model of governance.
