The Ottomans, History of Turkey-Adiyamanli.org

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The Ottomans

The Ottoman Principality was founded by a Turkoman tribe living on the Turkish-Byzantine border. The geographic location of the principality and the weak state of the Byzantines combined to make the Ottoman principality the strongest state within the Islamic world by the 14th century.

When Fatih Sultan Mehmet II conquered the Byzantine capital in 1453, the Ottoman state became the strongest of the time. The tolerant approach taken by Fatih Sultan Mehmet II toward other religions and to the adherents thereof became a tradition accepted by his successors. Following the capture of Istanbul, the Orthodox Church was freed from obedience to the Catholic Church and granted its independence.

The technical superiority of the Ottoman army began to be evident during the reign of Selim I. The Ottomans had added, in addition to the major part of east Anatolia, the lands of Syria, Egypt and those lands considered holy in the Islamic world -- Mecca and Medine and their territories.

The brightest period of the Ottoman State was during the reign of Sultan Suleyman (1520-1555) when the boundaries of the Empire spread from the outskirts of Vienna to the Persian Gulf and from the Crimea to an expanded north Africa as far as Ethiopia.

The Ottoman Empire continued to acquire territory until the middle of the 17th century. In 1683 it suffered its first major defeat in the siege of Vienna.

As the losses of land and defeats continued, the Ottoman Empire sought salvation in a series of reform movements. The Ottomans established educational institutions modeled after the western institutions which had shown great developments after the Renaissance.

The declaration of the "Tanzimat" Reform movement in 1839 is considered a major link in the chain of modernization events which had continued unabated since the beginning of the 17th century.

The Tanzimat Decree is considered to be a kind of constitution which gave Turkey the means to enter the road to contemporary civilization. The principles inherent in the Tanzimat Reform Decree thereby laid the basis for the constitutional regime of modern Turkey and the realization of secularism.

Despite many internal problems and disturbances during the reign of Abdulaziz (1861-1876) the effects of westernization in society became even more evident, Namik Kemal, Ziya Pasha, published the newspaper "Hurriyet" (Freedom) in London in the year 1864. The literary themes of the newspaper later gave way to political issues. Although it is because of these trends that the first constitution was promulgated under the leadership of Mithat Pasha in 1876, Sultan Abdulhamid (1876-1909) used the Ottoman-Russian war (1877-78) as an excuse to dissolve Parliament and effectively put an end to this constitutional period. The Ottoman Empire entered the First World War in 1914 on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary.

The Ottoman State emerged from the war defeated, together with its allies, and was compelled to sign the Mudrow Armistice on October 30, 1918. Among the terms of the armistice was a provision that the occupying powers might occupy areas deemed to be of strategic importance. The powers started therefore to occupy Anatolia on November 1, 1918, according to these terms.

On May 15, 1919, the Greeks occupied Izmir. A national resistance movement commenced. In many areas of the country the Society For Defence of Rights (Mudafaa-i Hukuk) started to spring up, and the military arm of the society, called the Kuvayi Milliye, started to take action.

The resistance movement was, until Mustafa Kemal Ataturk landed at Samsun on May 19, 1919, sporadic and disorganized. Under his leadership the resistance became cohesive, its forces progressively turned into an organized army. The movement became a full scale war of independence.

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