Rise (c. 1299–1453) of
Osman I by Yahya Bustanzâde (18th century)|left|upright As the
Rum Sultanate declined in the 13th century,
Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the
Anatolian Beyliks. One of these, in the region of
Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman I ( 1323/4), a figure of obscure origins from whom the name Ottoman is derived. Osman's early followers consisted of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, with many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the
Sakarya River. A Byzantine defeat at the
Battle of Bapheus in 1302 contributed to Osman's rise. It is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbours, due to the lack of sources surviving. The
Ghaza thesis popular during the 20th century credited their success to rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam, but it is no longer generally accepted. No other hypothesis has attracted broad acceptance. In the century after Osman I, Ottoman rule had begun to extend over Anatolia and the
Balkans. The earliest conflicts began during the
Byzantine–Ottoman wars, waged in Anatolia in the late 13th century before entering Europe in the mid-14th century, followed by the
Bulgarian–Ottoman wars and the
Serbian–Ottoman wars in the mid-14th century. Much of this period was characterised by
Ottoman expansion into the Balkans. Osman's son,
Orhan, captured the northwestern Anatolian city of
Bursa in 1326, making it the new capital and supplanting Byzantine control in the region. The important port of
Thessaloniki was captured from the
Venetians in 1387 and sacked. The Ottoman victory in
Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the
end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe. The
Battle of Nicopolis for the
Bulgarian Tsardom of Vidin in 1396, regarded as the last large-scale
crusade of the
Middle Ages, failed to stop the advance of the victorious Ottomans. in 1396, as depicted in an
Ottoman miniature from 1523|right|upright=.8 As the Turks expanded into the Balkans, the
conquest of Constantinople became a crucial objective. The Ottomans had already wrested control of nearly all former Byzantine lands surrounding the city, but the strong defence of Constantinople's strategic position on the
Bosporus Strait made it difficult to conquer. In 1402, the Byzantines were temporarily relieved when the
Turco-Mongol leader
Timur, founder of the
Timurid Empire, invaded Ottoman Anatolia from the east. In the
Battle of Ankara in 1402, Timur defeated Ottoman forces and took Sultan
Bayezid I as prisoner, throwing the empire into disorder. The
ensuing civil war lasted from 1402 to 1413 as Bayezid's sons fought over succession. It ended when
Mehmed I emerged as the sultan and restored Ottoman power. The Balkan territories lost by the Ottomans after 1402, including Thessaloniki, Macedonia, and Kosovo, were later recovered by
Murad II between the 1430s and 1450s. On 10 November 1444, Murad repelled the
Crusade of Varna by defeating the Hungarian, Polish, and
Wallachian armies under
Władysław III of Poland and
John Hunyadi at the
Battle of Varna, although Albanians under
Skanderbeg continued to resist. Four years later, John Hunyadi prepared another army of Hungarian and Wallachian forces to attack the Turks, but was again defeated at the
Second Battle of Kosovo in 1448. According to modern historiography, there is a direct connection between the rapid Ottoman military advance and the consequences of the
Black Death from the mid-14th century onwards. Byzantine territories, where the initial Ottoman conquests were carried out, were exhausted demographically and militarily due to the plague, which facilitated Ottoman expansion. In addition, slave hunting was the main economic driving force behind Ottoman conquest. Some 21st-century authors re-periodise conquest of the Balkans into the
akıncı phase, which spanned 8 to 13 decades, characterised by continuous slave hunting and destruction, followed by administrative integration into the Empire.
Expansion and peak (1453–1566) 's entry into
Constantinople; painting by
Fausto Zonaro (1854–1929)|upright=.8|left The son of Murad II,
Mehmed the Conqueror, reorganised both state and military, and on 29 May 1453 conquered
Constantinople, ending the Byzantine Empire. Mehmed allowed the
Eastern Orthodox Church to maintain its autonomy and land in exchange for accepting Ottoman authority. Due to tension between the states of western Europe and the later Byzantine Empire, most of the Orthodox population accepted Ottoman rule, as preferable to Venetian rule. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Ottoman Empire entered a
period of expansion. The Empire prospered under the rule of a line of committed and effective
Sultans. It flourished economically due to its control of the major overland trade routes between Europe and Asia. Sultan
Selim I (1512–1520) dramatically expanded the eastern and southern frontiers by defeating
Shah Ismail of
Safavid Iran, in the
Battle of Chaldiran. Selim I established
Ottoman rule in Egypt by defeating and annexing the
Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and created a naval presence on the
Red Sea. After this Ottoman expansion, competition began between the
Portuguese Empire and the Ottomans to become the dominant power in the region.
Suleiman the Magnificent (1520–1566) captured
Belgrade in 1521, conquered the southern and central parts of the
Kingdom of Hungary as part of the
Ottoman–Hungarian Wars, and, after his historic victory in the
Battle of Mohács in 1526, he established Ottoman rule in the territory of present-day Hungary and other Central European territories. He then laid
siege to Vienna in 1529, but failed to take the city. In 1532, he made another
attack on Vienna, but was repulsed in the
siege of Güns.
Transylvania, Wallachia and, intermittently,
Moldavia, became tributary principalities of the Empire. In the east, the Ottoman Turks took
Baghdad from the Persians in 1535, establishing
Ottoman rule in Iraq and gaining naval access to the
Persian Gulf. After the end of the
Ottoman–Safavid War (1532–1555), the
Caucasus became partitioned for the first time between the Safavids and the Ottomans, a
status quo that persisted until the
Russian conquest of the Caucasus in the 19th century. By this partitioning as signed in the
Peace of Amasya,
Western Armenia, western
Kurdistan, and
Western Georgia fell into Ottoman hands, while southern
Dagestan,
Eastern Armenia,
Eastern Georgia, and
Azerbaijan remained Persian. in 1526|upright|left In 1539, a 60,000-strong Ottoman army besieged the
Spanish garrison of
Castelnuovo on the
Adriatic coast; the successful siege cost the Ottomans 8,000 casualties, but
Venice agreed to terms in 1540, surrendering most of its empire in the
Aegean and the
Morea.
France and the Ottoman Empire, united by mutual opposition to
Habsburg rule, became allies. The French conquests of
Nice (1543) and
Corsica (1553) occurred as a joint venture between French king
Francis I and Suleiman, and were commanded by the Ottoman admirals
Hayreddin Barbarossa and
Dragut. France supported the Ottomans with an artillery unit during the 1543 Ottoman
conquest of Esztergom in northern Hungary. After further advances by the Turks, the Habsburg ruler
Ferdinand officially recognised Ottoman ascendancy in Hungary in 1547. Suleiman died of natural causes during the
siege of Szigetvár in 1566. Following his death, the Ottomans were said to be declining, although this has been rejected by many scholars. By the end of Suleiman's reign, the Empire spanned approximately , extending over three continents. defeated the
Holy League of
Charles V under the command of
Andrea Doria at the
Battle of Preveza in 1538. The Empire became a dominant naval force, controlling much of the
Mediterranean Sea. The Empire was now a major part of European politics. The Ottomans became involved in multi-continental religious wars when Spain and Portugal were united under the
Iberian Union. The Ottomans were holders of the Caliph title, meaning they were the leaders of Muslims worldwide. The Iberians were leaders of the Christian crusaders, and so the two fought in a worldwide conflict. There were zones of operations in the Mediterranean and
Indian Ocean, where Iberians circumnavigated Africa to reach India and, on their way, wage war upon the Ottomans and their local Muslim allies. Likewise, the Iberians passed through newly-Christianised
Latin America and
had sent expeditions that traversed the Pacific to Christianise the formerly Muslim Philippines and use it as a base to attack the Muslims in the
Far East. In this case, the Ottomans
sent armies to aid its easternmost vassal and territory, the
Sultanate of Aceh in Southeast Asia. The
Spanish–Ottoman wars took place primarily in the Mediterranean.
Barbary corsairs from the North African cities of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, which were nominally part of the Ottoman Empire, captured thousands of merchant ships and raided coastal towns in Europe,
enslaving the people they captured. During the 1600s, the world conflict between the Ottoman Caliphate and Iberian Union was a stalemate since
both were at similar population, technology and economic levels. Nevertheless, the success of the Ottoman political and military establishment was compared to the
Roman Empire, despite the difference in size, by the likes of contemporary Italian scholar
Francesco Sansovino and French political philosopher
Jean Bodin.
Stagnation and reform (1566–1827) Revolts, reversals, and revivals (1566–1683) galley known as
Tarihi Kadırga at the
Istanbul Naval Museum, built in the period between the reigns of Sultan
Murad III (1574–1595) and Sultan
Mehmed IV (1648–1687) In the second half of the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire came under increasing strain from inflation and the rapidly rising costs of warfare that were impacting both Europe and the Middle East. These pressures led to a series of crises around the year 1600, placing great strain upon the Ottoman system of government. The empire underwent a series of transformations of its political and military institutions in response to these challenges, enabling it to successfully adapt to the new conditions of the 17th century and remain powerful, both militarily and economically. Historians of the mid-20th century once characterised this period as one of stagnation and decline, but this view is now rejected by the majority of academics. Under
Ivan IV (1533–1584), the
Tsardom of Russia expanded into the Volga and Caspian regions at the expense of the
Tatar khanates. In 1571, the Crimean khan
Devlet I Giray, commanded by the Ottomans,
invaded Russia and
burned Moscow. The next year, the invasion was repeated but repelled at the
Battle of Molodi. The Ottoman Empire and its vassal, the Crimean Khanate, continued to invade Eastern Europe in a series of
slave raids, and remained a significant power in Eastern Europe until the end of the 17th century. The Crimean cavalry became indispensable for the Ottomans' campaigns against Russia,
Poland,
Hungary, and
Persia. , with an allegory of the three powers of the
Holy League in the foreground, fresco by
Giorgio Vasari The Ottomans decided to conquer
Venetian Cyprus and on 22 July 1570, Nicosia was besieged; 50,000 Christians died, and 180,000 were enslaved. On 15 September 1570, the Ottoman cavalry appeared before the last Venetian stronghold in Cyprus, Famagusta. The Venetian defenders held out for 11 months against a force that at its peak numbered 200,000 men with 145 cannons; 163,000 cannonballs struck the walls of Famagusta before it fell to the Ottomans in August 1571. The
Siege of Famagusta claimed 50,000 Ottoman casualties. Meanwhile, the
Holy League consisting of mostly Spanish and Venetian fleets won a victory over the Ottoman fleet at the
Battle of Lepanto (1571), off southwestern Greece; Catholic forces killed over 30,000 Turks and destroyed 200 of their ships. It was a startling, if mostly symbolic, blow to the image of Ottoman invincibility, an image which the victory of the
Knights of Malta over the Ottoman invaders in the 1565
siege of Malta had recently set about eroding. The battle was far more damaging to the Ottoman navy in sapping experienced manpower than the loss of ships, which were rapidly replaced. The Ottoman navy recovered quickly, persuading Venice to sign a peace treaty in 1573, allowing the Ottomans to expand and consolidate their position in North Africa. By contrast, the
Habsburg frontier had settled somewhat, a stalemate caused by a stiffening of the
Habsburg defences. The
Long Turkish War against Habsburg Austria (1593–1606) created the need for greater numbers of Ottoman infantry equipped with firearms, resulting in a relaxation of recruitment policy. This contributed to problems of indiscipline and outright rebelliousness within the corps, which were never fully solved. Irregular sharpshooters (
Sekban) were also recruited, and on demobilisation turned to
brigandage in the
Celali rebellions (1590–1610), which engendered widespread anarchy in
Anatolia in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. With the Empire's population reaching 30 million people by 1600, the shortage of land placed further pressure on the government. In spite of these problems, the Ottoman state remained strong, and its army did not collapse or suffer crushing defeats. The only exceptions were campaigns against the
Safavid dynasty of Persia, where many of the Ottoman eastern provinces were lost, some permanently. This
1603–1618 war eventually resulted in the
Treaty of Nasuh Pasha, which ceded the entire Caucasus, except westernmost Georgia, back into the possession of
Safavid Iran. The treaty ending the
Cretan War cost Venice much of
Dalmatia, its Aegean island possessions, and
Crete. During his brief majority reign,
Murad IV (1623–1640) reasserted central authority and
recaptured Iraq (1639) from the Safavids. The resulting
Treaty of Zuhab of that same year decisively divided the Caucasus and adjacent regions between the two neighbouring empires as it had already been defined in the 1555 Peace of Amasya. The
Sultanate of Women (1533–1656) was a period in which the mothers of young sultans exercised power on behalf of their sons. The most prominent women of this period were
Kösem Sultan and her daughter-in-law
Turhan Hatice, whose political rivalry culminated in Kösem's murder in 1651. During the
Köprülü era (1656–1703), effective control of the Empire was exercised by a sequence of
grand viziers from the Köprülü family. The Köprülü Vizierate saw renewed military success with authority restored in Transylvania, the conquest of
Crete completed in 1669, and
expansion into
Polish southern Ukraine, with the strongholds of
Khotyn, and
Kamianets-Podilskyi and the territory of
Podolia ceding to Ottoman control in 1676. in 1683, by
Frans Geffels (1624–1694) This period of renewed assertiveness came to a calamitous end in 1683 when Grand Vizier
Kara Mustafa Pasha led a huge army to attempt a second Ottoman siege of
Vienna in the
Great Turkish War of 1683–1699. The final assault being fatally delayed, the Ottoman forces were swept away by allied Habsburg, German, and Polish forces spearheaded by the Polish king
John III Sobieski at the
Battle of Vienna. The alliance of the
Holy League pressed home the advantage of the defeat at Vienna, culminating in the
Treaty of Karlowitz (26 January 1699), which ended the Great Turkish War. The Ottomans surrendered control of significant territories, many permanently.
Mustafa II (1695–1703) led the counterattack of 1695–1696 against the Habsburgs in Hungary, but was undone at the disastrous defeat at
Zenta (in modern Serbia), 11 September 1697.
Military defeats Aside from the loss of the
Banat and the temporary loss of
Belgrade (1717–1739), the Ottoman border on the
Danube and
Sava remained stable during the 18th century.
Russian expansion, however, presented a large and growing threat. Accordingly, King
Charles XII of Sweden was welcomed as an ally in the Ottoman Empire following his defeat by the Russians at the
Battle of Poltava of 1709 in central Ukraine (part of the
Great Northern War of 1700–1721). Charles XII persuaded the Ottoman Sultan
Ahmed III to declare war on Russia, which resulted in an Ottoman victory in the
Pruth River Campaign of 1710–1711, in Moldavia. capture
Belgrade in 1717. Austrian control in Serbia lasted until the Turkish victory in the
Austro-Russian–Turkish War (1735–1739). With the 1739
Treaty of Belgrade, the Ottoman Empire regained northern
Bosnia,
Habsburg Serbia (including Belgrade),
Oltenia and the southern parts of the
Banat of Temeswar. After the
Austro-Turkish War, the
Treaty of Passarowitz confirmed the loss of the Banat, Serbia, and "Little Walachia" (
Oltenia) to Austria. The Treaty also revealed that the Ottoman Empire was on the defensive and unlikely to present any further aggression in Europe. The
Austro-Russian–Turkish War (1735–1739), which was ended by the
Treaty of Belgrade in 1739, resulted in the Ottoman recovery of northern
Bosnia,
Habsburg Serbia (including Belgrade), Oltenia and the southern parts of the
Banat of Temeswar; but the Empire lost the port of
Azov, north of the Crimean Peninsula, to the Russians. After this treaty the Ottoman Empire was able to enjoy a generation of peace in Europe, as Austria and Russia were forced to deal with the rise of
Prussia.
Educational and technological reforms came about, including the establishment of higher education institutions such as the
Istanbul Technical University. In 1734 an artillery school was established to impart Western-style artillery methods, but the Islamic clergy successfully objected under the grounds of
theodicy. In 1754 the artillery school was reopened on a semi-secret basis. Muteferrika's press published its first book in 1729 and, by 1743, issued 17 works in 23 volumes, each having between 500 and 1,000 copies. In North Africa, Spain
conquered Oran from the autonomous
Deylik of Algiers. The
Bey of Oran received an army from Algiers, but it failed to recapture
Oran; the siege caused the deaths of 1,500 Spaniards, and even more Algerians. The Spanish also massacred many Muslim soldiers. In 1792, Spain abandoned Oran, selling it to the Deylik of Algiers. in 1788 In 1768 Russian-backed Ukrainian
Haidamakas, pursuing Polish confederates, entered
Balta, an Ottoman-controlled town on the border of Bessarabia in Ukraine, massacred its citizens, and burned the town to the ground. This action provoked the Ottoman Empire into the
Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774. The
Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca of 1774 ended the war and provided freedom of worship for the Christian citizens of the Ottoman-controlled provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia. By the late 18th century, after a number of defeats in the wars with Russia, some people in the Ottoman Empire began to conclude that the reforms of
Peter the Great had given the Russians an edge, and the Ottomans would have to keep up with Western technology in order to avoid further defeats. In 1821, the
Greeks declared war on the Sultan. A rebellion that originated in Moldavia as a diversion was followed by the main revolution in the
Peloponnese, which, along with the northern part of the
Gulf of Corinth, became the first parts of the Ottoman Empire to achieve independence (in 1829). In 1830, the French invaded the
Deylik of Algiers.
The campaign took 21 days, and resulted in over 5,000 Algerian military casualties, and about 2,600 French ones. Before the French invasion the total population of Algeria was most likely between 3,000,000 and 5,000,000. By 1873, the population of Algeria (excluding several hundred thousand newly arrived French settlers) had decreased to 2,172,000. In 1831, Muhammad Ali of Egypt revolted against Sultan
Mahmud II due to the latter's refusal to grant him the governorships of
Greater Syria and
Crete, which the Sultan had promised him in exchange for sending military assistance to put down the
Greek revolt (1821–1829) that ultimately ended with the formal
independence of Greece in 1830. It was a costly enterprise for Muhammad Ali, who had lost his fleet at the
Battle of Navarino in 1827. Thus began the first
Egyptian–Ottoman War (1831–1833), during which the French-trained army of Muhammad Ali, under the command of his son
Ibrahim Pasha, defeated the Ottoman Army as it marched into
Anatolia, reaching the city of
Kütahya within of the capital, Constantinople. In desperation, Sultan Mahmud II appealed to the empire's traditional arch-rival Russia for help, asking Emperor
Nicholas I to send an expeditionary force to assist him. the
British Empire and
Austrian Empire provided military assistance, and the second
Egyptian–Ottoman War (1839–1841) ended with Ottoman victory and the restoration of Ottoman suzerainty over Egypt Eyalet and the Levant. and guilds with modern factories. The Ottoman Ministry of Post was established in Istanbul in 1840. American inventor
Samuel Morse received an Ottoman patent for the telegraph in 1847, issued by Sultan
Abdülmecid, who personally tested the invention. The reformist period peaked with the Constitution, called the
Kanûn-u Esâsî. The empire's
First Constitutional era was short-lived. The parliament survived for only two years before the sultan suspended it. The empire's Christian population, owing to their higher educational levels, started to pull ahead of the Muslim majority, leading to much resentment. In 1861, there were 571 primary and 94 secondary schools for Ottoman Christians, with 140,000 pupils in total, a figure that vastly exceeded the number of Muslim children in school at the time, who were further hindered by the amount of time spent learning Arabic and Islamic theology. The war caused an exodus of the
Crimean Tatars, about 200,000 of whom moved to the Ottoman Empire in continuing waves of emigration. Toward the end of the
Caucasian Wars, 90% of the
Circassians were
ethnically cleansed and exiled from their homelands in the Caucasus, fleeing to the Ottoman Empire, resulting in the settlement of 500,000 to 700,000 Circassians in the Ottoman Empire. Crimean Tatar refugees in the late 19th century played an especially notable role in seeking to modernise Ottoman education and in first promoting both
Pan-Turkism and a sense of Turkish nationalism. (
Napoleon III is at the centre, Sultan
Abdulaziz is second from right), fictional representation of the opening of the
Universal Exposition of 1867.|left|upright=1.3 In this period, the Ottoman Empire spent only small amounts of public funds on education; for example, in 1860–1861 only 0.2% of the total budget was invested in education. As the Ottoman state attempted to modernise its infrastructure and army in response to outside threats, it opened itself up to a different kind of threat: that of creditors. As the historian Eugene Rogan has written, "the single greatest threat to the independence of the Middle East" in the 19th century "was not the armies of Europe but its banks". The Ottoman state, which had begun taking on debt with the Crimean War, was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1875. By 1881, the Ottoman Empire agreed to have its debt controlled by the
Ottoman Public Debt Administration, a council of European men with presidency alternating between France and Britain. The body controlled swaths of the Ottoman economy, and used its position to ensure that European capital continued to penetrate the empire, often to the detriment of local Ottoman interests. The Ottoman
bashi-bazouks suppressed the
Bulgarian uprising of 1876, massacring up to 100,000 people in the process. The
Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) ended with a decisive victory for Russia. As a result, Ottoman holdings in Europe declined sharply:
Bulgaria was established as an independent principality inside the Ottoman Empire;
Romania achieved full independence; and
Serbia and
Montenegro finally gained complete independence, but with smaller territories. In 1878,
Austria-Hungary unilaterally occupied the Ottoman provinces of
Bosnia-Herzegovina and
Novi Pazar. British Prime Minister
Benjamin Disraeli advocated restoring the Ottoman territories on the Balkan Peninsula during the
Congress of Berlin, and in return, Britain assumed the administration of
Cyprus in 1878. Britain later sent troops to
Egypt in 1882 to put down the
Urabi Revolt (Sultan
Abdul Hamid II was too paranoid to mobilise his own army, fearing this would result in a coup d'état), effectively gaining control in both territories. Abdul Hamid II was so fearful of a coup that he did not allow his army to conduct war games, lest this serve as cover for a coup, but he did see the need for military mobilisation. In 1883, a German military mission under General Baron
Colmar von der Goltz arrived to train the Ottoman Army, leading to the so-called "Goltz generation" of German-trained officers, who played a notable role in the politics of the empire's last years. From 1894 to 1896, between 100,000 and 300,000 Armenians living throughout the empire were killed in what became known as the
Hamidian massacres. In 1897 the population was 19million, of whom 14million (74%) were Muslim. An additional 20million lived in provinces that remained under the sultan's nominal suzerainty but were entirely outside his actual power. One by one the Porte lost nominal authority. They included Egypt, Tunisia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Lebanon. As the Ottoman Empire gradually shrank, 7–9million Muslims from its former territories in the Caucasus,
Crimea, Balkans, and the
Mediterranean islands migrated to Anatolia and
Eastern Thrace. After the Empire lost the
First Balkan War (1912–1913), it lost all its
Balkan territories except
East Thrace (European Turkey). This resulted in around 400,000 Muslims fleeing with the retreating Ottoman armies (with many dying from
cholera brought by the soldiers), and 400,000 non-Muslims fled territory still under Ottoman rule.
Justin McCarthy estimates that from 1821 to 1922, 5.5million Muslims died in southeastern Europe, with the expulsion of 5million. In addition the Ottoman state encouraged transnational migration, including Circassians, Bosnians, and Russian Jews resettled in the
southern Levant. These communities, alongside internal Arab resettlement, reshaped rural society and land use in ways that reflected broader imperial patterns of demographic engineering and agrarian expansion.
Defeat and dissolution (1908–1922) Young Turk movement by the leaders of the Ottoman
millets in 1908 The defeat and
dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (1908–1922) began with the
Second Constitutional Era, a moment of hope and promise established with the
Young Turk Revolution. It restored the
Constitution of the Ottoman Empire and brought in
multi-party politics with a
two-stage electoral system (
electoral law) under the
Ottoman parliament. The constitution offered hope by freeing the empire's citizens to modernise the state's institutions, rejuvenate its strength, and enable it to hold its own against outside powers. Its guarantee of liberties promised to dissolve inter-communal tensions and transform the empire into a more harmonious place. Instead, this period became the story of the twilight struggle of the Empire. Members of
Young Turks movement who had once gone underground now established their parties. Among them "
Committee of Union and Progress", and "
Freedom and Accord Party" were major parties. On the other end of the spectrum were ethnic parties, which included
Poale Zion,
Al-Fatat, and
Armenian national movement organised under
Armenian Revolutionary Federation. Profiting from the civil strife, Austria-Hungary officially annexed
Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908. The last of the
Ottoman censuses was performed in
1914. Despite
military reforms which reconstituted the
Ottoman Modern Army, the Empire lost its North African territories and the Dodecanese in the
Italo-Turkish War (1911) and almost all of its European territories in the
Balkan Wars (1912–1913). The Empire faced continuous unrest in the years leading up to
World War I, including the
31 March Incident and two further coups in
1912 and
1913.
World War I , who commanded the
Black Sea raid on 29 October 1914, and his officers in Ottoman naval uniforms The Ottoman Empire entered
World War I on the side of the
Central Powers and was ultimately defeated. The Ottoman participation in the war began with the combined
German-Ottoman surprise attack on the
Black Sea coast of the
Russian Empire on 29 October 1914. Following the attack, the Russian Empire (2 November 1914) and its allies
France (5 November 1914) to more than 1 million, people were killed. In 1915 the Ottoman government and Kurdish tribes in the region started the extermination of its ethnic Armenian population, resulting in the deaths of up to 1.5million Armenians in the
Armenian genocide. The genocide was carried out during and after World War I and implemented in two phases: the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and subjection of army conscripts to forced labour, followed by the deportation of women, children, the elderly and infirm on
death marches leading to the
Syrian desert. Driven forward by military escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to periodic robbery,
rape, and systematic massacre. Large-scale massacres were also committed against the Empire's
Greek and
Assyrian minorities as part of the same campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Arab Revolt The
Arab Revolt began in 1916 with British support. It turned the tide against the Ottomans on the Middle Eastern front, where they seemed to have the upper hand during the first two years of the war. On the basis of the
McMahon–Hussein Correspondence, an agreement between the British government and
Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, the revolt was officially initiated at Mecca on 10 June 1916. The Arab nationalist goal was to create a single unified and independent
Arab state stretching from
Aleppo, Syria, to
Aden, Yemen, which the British promised to recognise. The
Sharifian Army, led by Hussein and the
Hashemites, with military backing from the British
Egyptian Expeditionary Force, successfully fought and expelled the Ottoman military presence from much of the
Hejaz and
Transjordan. The rebellion eventually took
Damascus and set up a short-lived monarchy led by
Faisal, a son of Hussein. Following the terms of the 1916
Sykes–Picot Agreement, the British and French later partitioned the Middle East into
mandate territories. There was no unified Arab state, much to Arab nationalists' anger. Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria became British and French mandates.
Treaty of Sèvres and Turkish War of Independence , the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, leaving the country after the abolition of the Ottoman sultanate, 17 November 1922 Defeated in World War I, the Ottoman Empire signed the
Armistice of Mudros on 30 October 1918.
Istanbul was occupied by combined British, French, Italian, and Greek forces. In May 1919, Greece also
took control of the area around Smyrna (now İzmir). The
partition of the Ottoman Empire was finalised under the terms of the 1920
Treaty of Sèvres. This treaty, as designed in the
Conference of London, allowed the Sultan to retain his position and title. Anatolia's status was problematic given the occupied forces. A nationalist opposition arose in the
Turkish national movement. It won the
Turkish War of Independence (1919–1923) under the leadership of
Mustafa Kemal (later given the surname "Atatürk"). The sultanate was abolished on 1 November 1922, and the last sultan,
Mehmed VI (reigned 1918–1922), left the country on 17 November 1922. The
Republic of Turkey was
established in its place on 29 October 1923, in the new capital city of
Ankara. The
caliphate was abolished on 3 March 1924. == Historiographical debate on the Ottoman state ==