Because one of them happened “recently” and the other happened thousands of years ago. Also the romans were so good/good at converting people, that most of those nations consider themselves as the continuation of the roman empire.

People living under the Eastern Roman Empire(aka Byzantine Empire) and then under the Ottoman Empire, kept on living without any significant improvement to their lives. The ottomans just kept things going as they were, for the most part.

The ottomans converted people too, thats how there are millions of muslims/self-identifying turks in the area nowadays. 90% of them are native people who converted to muslim/turkish identity. The turks were originally steppe people, yet almost noone in Turkey has “asian eyes”.

The greeks did it too. Anatolia(Turkey) was full of “non greeks”, people like Hittites. They were converted to persians and then greeks and then roman, then greek and then turkish. I dont think there are many hittite independence supporters nowadays, it is a dead identity.

Greeks themselves abandoned the greek identity and became “christians” and “romans”, because greek started meaning “pagan” and they were not pagans. Eventually the greek identity rose into prominence again, especially as the Eastern Roman Empire started becoming more greek and less roman(or empire). Even nowadays, “romios”(roman) means greek, in modern greek. Though the latin romans are called “romaios”, which is different.

History is written and interpreted by the winners and current status quo. Most modern countries were defined by the rise of national identity a few centuries ago. So their current identity is defined by opposing whoever governed them at that time.

Well, Romans left no witnesses… Ottomans Achilles heel may have been their tolerance after all

You could extend this with the Red Army.

What have the Romans…

There’s quite a difference going from being a disorganised area of towns/counties to being a part of the Roman empire to the sort of difference that it was a few thousand years later.