It's no magic - the Ottomans lost the Balkans in the two Balkan wars at teh beginning of the 20th century, then they lost the WW1 and an independent Turkish state almost ceased to exist, because the allies parcelated the country, (Treaty of Sèvres), but then Atatürk came and conquered the area we now know as modern Turkey. He couldn't conquer the Balkans back - it was backed by Western powers. And he couldn't include Arab countries due to Arab nationalism. So he ethnically cleansed the state - Armenians had already been genocided by the sultan, who saw them as Russian agents, so he kicked out all Christians to Greece in a giant population exchange. He called Kurds "Mountain Turks" and believed they would eventually be turkified.