Quote Originally Posted by LeftEyeNine
And I really don't see the reasoning of racial discrimination in Ottoman state.
The Ottoman State was based on both racial and religious discrimination.

From the time of its inception through its death throes the Ottoman State was always based on the premiss of inherent Turkish Islamic superiority. Non-Turks and non-Muslims were regarded as inferior and given lower administrative status. Even the latter-day attempts to introduce modern citizenship (for instance during Tanzimat) were never put into effect. As Bernard Lewis put it, the notion of superiority of Muslim Turks was as difficult for them to shed as it was for western Europeans to shed the notion that they were superior to the black race.

As a result, non-Turks and non-Muslims were never loyal to the Porte unless they could be bought off for a period of time. This crucial political weakness of the Ottoman State, which opened up the empire to endless interference by Christian nations, caused its eventual downfall. In the nineteenth century the centrifugal forces could no longer be contained. The second-rate Christian citizens of the Porte in particular were looking to western Europe as an example and inspiration, and to Christian Russia as a force of salvation. The Porte's own exclusive policies became its undoing.

The Ottoman State was too weak to keep the lid on the non-Turkish and non-Muslim peoples within its borders. It was militarily vulnerable because of its weakness, blindness and backwardness. And so foreign interference became systemic in the nineteenth century, to the point where (British- and Russian-backed) Armenians and other minorities in the Empire were granted privileges and immunities above those granted by Istanbul to its 'own' Muslim Turks.

This caused a growing rancour among Muslim Turks against Christians and other privileged 'inferiors'. That rancour was already evident in the progroms against Armenians and other Christians in the second half of the nineteenth century.

The rancour increased tenfold after Christians in the Balkans and elsewhere threw off the Ottoman yoke, established their own independent states and kiled or deported large parts of their Muslim inhabitants. This rancour among rank and file Muslims, in combination with the increasingly racist theories of the Turkish ruling elite, made the genocide possible.