I had not thought of the loss of institutional knowledge as an explanation of ottoman naval underperfomance. That makes perfect sense.Now why was the Ottoman navy underpreforming to such an extend? That's an interesting question to which I have seen no proper answer but let me note the Ottomans between 1770 and 1854 lost the better part of their navy with heavy loss of life not one but... four times, roughly once every generation. This can't have had good effects on retaining institutional knowledge within the fleet. Couple that with lack of a large merchant marine to draw upon and where was the Ottoman Navy getting its crews for the large numbers of battleships the sultan was so obligingly buying? If I understand correctly conscription and conscription done indiscriminately, in 1914 the crews sent to Britain to take delivery of the new super-dreadnoughts building for the navy supposedly included shepherds conscripted into the navy of all things. This can't have helped all that much, if anything it looks to me as a vicious cycle one Abdul Hamid managed to make even worse, come 1897 Von Der Goltz was reporting back to Berlin that it took crews two hours to load a gun and the fleet during the war couldn't even sail out of the Dardanelles...
Indeed, conscripting people that had absolutely no experience with the sea, is a recipe for disaster. To quote the phd thesis of Dilara Dal:
Accordingly, the main problem with naval recruitment was indicated as the process of the same regulation for both the army and the navy. Although sanjaks were located on the Anatolian coasts of the Black Sea and the shores of the Marmara Sea, in actual fact most of the conscription zones allocated for the Ottoman navy consisted of inland districts and a small number of coastal towns, which made up only about one-third of the total number of all districts. This led to endemic recruitment problems.
For the Naval Reforms Commission, the draft age specified from 19 to 25 in the conscription law was not applicable to the navy. Most of the recruits, who were randomly selected by lots, were not familiar with seafaring and their ages were relatively old to be trained for maritime applications, which prevented them from performing their active service in an effective manner. In Hobart Pasha’s opinion, these recruits, who made their living mostly from agriculture and farming, had intense concentration problems due to the stress generated from the challenging nature of naval service, and also homesickness.
There is one thing with the orthodox population around Valona: it is only recently became sedentary. In the 19th century they would have been Vlach semi-nomads that would move around with their flocks. The lowlands of Valona were their winter pastures. Now there is a border at the Aoos/Vjosa valley. When it comes to the pastoralists all bets are off. They might migrate to Epirus if they have better opportunities. Or they might find the greek agricultural policy oppressive and change their routes.Because there’s still several areas in southern Albania with an indeterminate religious majority or an outright orthodox majority the Greek government could easily be interested in taking regardless of their desire for an Albanian puppet. They could reasonably even go as north as Vlorë and take it to both weaken the Albanians by taking their last major port and strengthen themselves. That would likely end any hope of a productive partnership between the Albanians and Greeks though. There’s a big difference between an exploited puppet and a junior partner, and taking one of their last cultural centers and ports definitely says you’re a puppet. Greece could reasonably go either way though. We discussed the relationship between the two groups several times at this point, and there’s definitely bad blood between the groups. Which
The other thing with greek enroachment in Albania is that these lands do not constitute a core irredentist territory and they come along with heavy diplomatic baggage. Greek control of Valona would envoke italian hostility. Even Britain wouldn't be very enthusiastic of Greece controlling Valona. What would make better sense from an Athens POV, would be to make concessions in Albania and specifically Valona, to receive italian/british support for a core target.