The Empire wasn’t a slave-based society; I’m not sure where you got that impression from. The elite military corps (the Janissaries) were technically slaves but they weren’t in any way the majority of the population nor were they slaves in the same sense as agricultural slaves in European colonies. The majority of the population were peasants, but they weren’t slaves.

Basically what this means is that the empire had potential—lots of land that could be used, but not enough population to work it, nor enough investment or investors who could drive innovation.

Anatolia (what today constitutes the Republic of Turkey) was more sparsely populated than the Empire’s lands in the Balkans; in addition until the 19th century there was no private landownership. All land belonged to the Sultan (I.e., to the state) and was leased by tax farmers who were awarded the right to collect taxes from the peasantry who worked the land. Because the peasants didn’t own the land, in the event of a bad harvest they could literally wander off in the middle of the night and move somewhere else.

The Empire had a lot of land, but rarely was it under full cultivation before the 19th century—the population wasn’t large enough and the technology didn’t exist. Elites tended to be business owners or tax farmers who had assets, but didn’t always have access to coin (I.e., capital).

I’d point you to Donald Quataert’s book on The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922 or Sam White’s The Climate of Rebellion in the Ottoman Empire for more on how all this worked.