You do not know much about the crusades. The crusades actually helped the muslims in the east. The forth crusade completely destroyed the byzantine empire which

You do not know much about the crusades. The crusades actually helped the muslims in the east. The forth crusade completely destroyed the byzantine empire which was the force holding the muslims in the east. Why did the crusaders attack the christian byzantine empire? Because it was the richest place in the world at the time, full of gold and silver and the crusaders were more interested in loot than in defending the faith. After the crusaders took constantinople, the byzantine empire broke up into several countries, some controlled by crusaders, some by greeks. Eventually the greeks took constantinople back but by that time it was depopulated from continuous war. And the greeks were never able to get the entire empire back together. The turks then easily took over the various parts of the empire and took over constantinople. Then the turks took over southeastern europe. Thus the crusaders doomed most of southeastern europe to be ruled over by the turks. I am not going to get into the debate of whether christianity is better than islam. But it is obvious to me that self determination is better. Thus it was better for the christian peoples of south eastern europe to be ruled by their own christian rulers rather than the foreign muslim turks. This was quite a tragedy for most eastern european peoples. The turks dealt with them with various degrees of cruelty. They tried to completely wipe the armenians out, for example. And yes the crusaders were mostly responsible for it.