So you are arguing with history, but in History we had far more modern naval battles involved with the Ottoman Empire just here some examples:
Battle of Măcin 1877, Battle of Kaliakra 1912, Battle of Elli 1912, Battle of Beirut 1912, Battle of Kunfuda Bay 1912, Battle of Lemnos 1913, Black Sea Raid 1914, Battle of the Dardanelles 1915, Battle of Kirpen Island 1915, Battle of Imbros 1918.
Its possible the Devs want a balance for Japan but still i feel here a huge gap in the game just to ignore the Ottoman Empire.
Also the Ottomans even developed and build their own Pre-Dreadnought Warship in 1892 the Abdül Kadir in the Imperial Arsenal (main shipyard of Istanbul), due to the financel crisis they couldnt finish the build and stopped with the works on it in 1909.
Considering those facts just feels quite unreasonable to have a Chinese Empire inside the game but not an Ottoman Empire.