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> "descends from a multicultural, religiously tolerant empire (Ottoman)"

Where the terms "multicultural" and "religiously tolerant" apparently mean something quite a bit different from today (just like Athenian democracy from ours, for example).

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I don't think they are that different. Even romans had multiculturalism. Tolerance was not invented in the modern West.

Well, Romans, from what I can tell, had better multiculturalism than Ottomans centuries later. They did not split the society into religion-based classes. So "the West" was quite a bit more progressive centuries earlier in some ways.

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