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In all fairness to the Turks, the Turks did not enter the Middle East until the 11th Century, and the Ottoman Turks did not arrive until a few hundred years later. I do not associate Turkish military aggression with Islam: the Turks were fighting and warlike before they found "religion."

I wonder whether Byzantium would have fallen at all if Constantinople had not been sacked during the fourth "crusade." The year-long siege of Constantinople by Western Europeans devastated the city, left it broke, toppled the government, and destroyed its army and navy. The Eastern empire never recovered.

That is true, but what happened just over a generation before the 4th Crusade was what really did the Empire in. In 1176AD, Emperor Manuel agreed to let one of his generals campaign against the Sultanate of Roum. What followed was the Battle of Myriokephallon, which was a disastrous defeat for the Eastern Empire, much worse than Manzikert in 1071AD. Before Myriokephallon, Manuel, and his predecessor, Michael, were launching campaigns into Syria and making the Muslims pay the butcher's bill against the Crusaders. Afterwards, the Empire could barely defend itself. It was the weakness caused by Myriokephallon that turned the avaricious eyes of Venice towards Constantinople. It was the Venetians who bribed the 4th Crusaders to go east instead of south. And yes, the Empire never fully recovered from this. There was a brief time under the Paleologi after 1261AD in which the Empire was respectable again, but that was short lived, as it was devoured by the Ottoman's.

As for the Turks and jihad, no, today they are not a part of that utterly insane mindset. That is because of the post-WWI reforms of Mustafa Kemal, aka Kemal Ataturk. He got rid of Turkey's Sultanate and replaced it with a Republic. He had a version of the Turkish written language made with Roman letters, replacing the Arabic. He wanted Turkey to have a Eyropean economy, not a degenerated Middle Eastern one, so he opened up his country to European business and that is why Turkey is the strongest country of the Middle East today.

Prior to Ataturk's reforms Turkey was totally into things like jihad and spreading the faith by fire and the sword. I, for one, am glad they made the change.