"I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as the Ottoman Empire, is in fact, the Caliphate, or as I've recently taken to calling it, the Sublime State plus the Third Caliphate plus the Third Rome plus Turkey. Ottomans are not a regime, government or a nation unto themselves, but rather a dynasty that rules over Rumelia, Anatolia, Hejaz, Yemen, Arabia, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Armenia, Hungary, Romania, Egypt, North Africa and Crimea and claims to be the religious and political leaders of the entire Islamic world.
Many sovereign Islamic countries are in theory vassals of the Imperial House of Osman, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the political entity under direct rule of the Ottoman Dynasty is often called the "Ottoman Empire", and many historians are not aware that it is basically the central political structure of the Caliphate, directly ruled by the Ottoman Dynasty.
There really were Ottomans, but they were just another dynasty that ruled over Muslims and Romans. Ottoman is the dynasty: a family that rules over a huge land and legitimizes its authority with a succession system based on lineage and the concept of divine right to rule. The dynasty is an essential part of an absolute monarchy, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete political system. Ottomans could only rule in combination with a political system: the whole system is basically Islamic, Roman and Turkic political traditions and entities with Ottoman Dynasty added, or the SublimeState/Caliphate3/Rome3/Turkey. The so-called "Ottoman Empire" is really the central political entity that drove SublimeState/Caliphate3/Rome3/Turkey" (kmmmsyr9883, 2022).

References
kmmmsyr9883. (2022). I'd just like to interject for a moment. [Comment on the online forum post 'I'd just like to interject...']. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlD9UBTcSW4/