The basic information is here: Battle of Vienna .
In the aftermath, Hungary and Transylvania were liberated and the Turks no longer were a threat to Western and Central Europe. Russia achieved dominance over its southern borders as well, and in 19 c. liberated Bulgaria. This is what I mean by Catholic West and Russia stopping the Turkish expansion. That Turkey still commands Constantinople and its European territories is unfortunate, but if the victory at the gate of Vienna did not occur, Turkey would still be a major player in Europe, with the Italian, Hungarian, Austrian and Romanian nations lowered to the condition of Bosnia and Albania. Certainly the collapse of the Turkish rule in Greece would not have occurred, regardless of the bravery of the Greeks.
had we as the Laos tou Theou, agreed, as so many of our miserable hierarchs did, to grovel before the feet of the Bishop of Rome, all would have been well?
The pivot between the "mitres" and the "turbans" was not invented by "our arrogant cardinals"; that was the conscious choice of the ruling class of Byzantium. They chose the turbans. What the status of Constantinople would have been if the Florentine Union had held, we do not know, but again, Catholic countries such as Austria and Hungary fought off the aggression, and Orthodox Greece that refused the union did not.
“The pivot between the “mitres” and the “turbans” was not invented by “our arrogant cardinals”; that was the conscious choice of the ruling class of Byzantium. They chose the turbans.”
Not the ruling class, Alex. It was the bakers and butchers and shoemakers who overthrew the decision of the hierarchs at Florence. Of the hierarchs, only +Mark of Ephesus stood with the Laos tou Theou, who had always and to this day constitute the guardians of Orthodoxy. Holy Russia almost immediately repudiated the apostasy of Florence. Without us groveling before the Bishop of Rome, the military aid from the West was all but cut off and we know the rest.
The turbans were never chosen; my ancestor didn’t choose the turban. He died on the walls at the side of the God Ordained Emperor Constantine XI Paleologus and the women and children of the family were raped at Agia Sophia, near the altar where the good Roman Catholic boys of the 4th Crusade set up a whore and dressed her as the Patriarch.