The Ottoman conquest of Byzantium in 1453 cemented the status of the empire as the preeminent power in southeastern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. Over the next century, the empire would extend its influence into the heart of the Arab world and come to dominate southeast Europe. Sultan Selim I (1512–1520) dramatically expanded the empire's eastern and southern frontiers by defeating the young Safavid Shah of Persia, Ismail I, in the Battle of Chaldiran. Selim I established Ottoman rule in Egypt, and created a naval presence on the Red Sea. Selim's successor, Süleyman the Magnificent (1520–1566), further expanded upon Selim's conquests. After capturing Belgrade in 1521, Süleyman conquered Hungary by winning the Battle of Mohacs in 1526. He then laid siege to Vienna in 1529, but failed to take the city after the onset of winter forced his retreat. During the reign of Süleyman, Transylvania, Walachia and, intermittently, Moldavia, became tributary principalities of the Ottoman Empire. In the east, the Ottomans took Baghdad from the Persians in 1535, giving them control of Mesopotamia and naval access to the Persian Gulf.


Under Selim and Süleyman, the empire became a dominant naval force, controlling much of the Mediterranean Sea. The exploits of the Ottoman admiral Barbarossa Hayreddin Pasha, who commanded the Turkish navy during Süleyman's reign, included a number of impressive military victories. Among these were the conquest of Tunis and Algeria from Spain; the evacuation of Muslims and Jews from Spain to the safety of Ottoman lands (particularly Salonica, Cyprus, and Constantinople) during the Spanish Inquisition; and the capture of Nice from the Holy Roman Empire in 1543. This last conquest occurred on behalf of France as a joint venture between the forces of the French king Francis I and those of Barbarossa. France and the Ottoman Empire, united by mutual opposition to Hapsburg rule in southern and central Europe, became strong allies during this period. The alliance was economic as well as military, as the sultans granted France the right of trade within the empire without levy of taxation. In fact, the Ottoman Empire was by this time a significant and accepted part of the European political sphere, and entered into a military alliance with France, England and Holland against Habsburg Spain, Italy and Habsburg Austria.

As the 16th century progressed, Ottoman naval superiority was challenged by the upstart sea powers of western Europe, particularly Portugal, in the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean and the Spice Islands. With the Ottomans blockading sea-lanes to the East and South, the European powers were driven to find another way to the ancient Silk and Spice routes, now under absolute Ottoman control. On land, the empire was preoccupied by military campaigns in Austria-Hungary and Persia, two widely-separated theaters of war. The strain of these conflicts on the empire's resources, and the logistics of maintaining lines of supply and communication across such vast distances, ultimately rendered its sea efforts unsustainable and unsuccessful. Despite the Ottomans' strategic vision and partial success in global campaigning, the overriding military need for defense on the western and eastern frontiers of the empire eventually made effective long-term engagement elsewhere impossible.

The latter half of the 16th century marked the start of European efforts to curb the Ottoman chokehold on overland trade routes. A number of western European states began to circumvent the Turkish trade monopoly by establishing their own naval routes to Asia. In southern Europe, a coalition of European trading powers on the Italian peninsula formed an alliance to weaken the Ottoman grip on the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. Their victory over the Ottomans at the naval Battle of Lepanto (1571) hastened the end of the empire's primacy in the Mediterranean; and in fact, this battle was considered by some earlier historians to signal the beginning of Ottoman decline.

By the end of the 16th century, the golden era of sweeping conquest and territorial expansion was over. The Hapsburg frontier in particular became a more or less permanent border until the 19th century, marked only by relatively minor battles concentrating on the possession of individual fortresses. This stalemate was partly a reflection of simple geographical limits: in the pre-mechanized age, Vienna marked the furthest point that an Ottoman army could march from Istanbul during the early-spring to late-autumn campaigning season. It also reflected the difficulties imposed on the empire by the need to maintain two separate fronts: one against the Austrians, and the other against a rival Islamic state, the Safavids of Persia.

On the battlefield, the Ottomans gradually fell behind the Europeans in military technology as the innovation which fed the empire's forceful expansion became stifled by growing religious and intellectual conservatism. Changes in European military tactics caused the once-feared Sipahi cavalry to lose its military relevance. Discipline and unit cohesion in the army also became a problem due to relaxations of recruitment policy and the growth of the Janissary corps at the expense of other military units.

Economically, the huge influx of Spanish silver from the New World caused a sharp devaluation of the Ottoman currency and rampant inflation. This had serious negative consequences at all levels of Ottoman society. The period was marked by widespread lawlessness and rebellion in Anatolia in the late 16th and early 17th centuries (commonly known as the Celali rebellions), and Janissary revolts that toppled several governments.

However, the 17th century was not simply an era of stagnation and decline, but also key period in which the Ottoman state and its structures began to adapt to new pressures and new realities, internal and external. The warrior sultan Murad IV (1612–1640), who recaptured Yerevan (1635) and Baghdad (1639) from the Safavids, is the only example in this era of a sultan who exercised strong political and military control of the empire. Notably, Murad IV was the last Ottoman emperor who went to war in front of his army. Modern historians point out that the relative ineffectiveness of the sultans after his reign led to the diffusion of power to lower levels of the government; at first to powerful members of the Harem, and later to a sequence of Grand Viziers. Several important leaders arose at this time, including the sternly reactionary Grand Vizier Mehmed Köprülü (1656-1661) and his more moderate son Fazıl Ahmed Koprülü (1661-1676). Under their leadership the state began to reassert itself with some vigor. Despite internal conflicts within the Ottoman bureaucracy, and between the bureaucracy and military, the 17th century saw the empire expand its frontiers to their furthest reach, with notable gains under the Köprülü administration in Crete, Southern Ukraine and Podolia.

The defeat of Ottoman forces led by Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha at the Second Siege of Vienna in 1683, at the hands of the combined armies of Poland and the Holy Roman Empire under Jan III Sobieski, was the decisive event that swung the balance of power in the region in favor of the European nations. Under the terms of the Treaty of Karlowitz, which ended the Great Turkish War in 1699, the Ottomans ceded nearly all of Hungary, Transylvania, the Morea and Podolia to Austria and Poland. They also acknowledged, for the first time in their history, that the Austrian Empire could treat with them on equal terms.

The period of the Ottoman Empire's decline was characterised by the reorganization and transformation of most of the empire's structures in an attempt to bolster the empire against increasingly powerful rivals.

The Tanzimat period (from Turkish Tanzîmât, meaning "reorganisation") lasted from 1839 to 1876. During this period, many significant changes were implemented: a fairly modern conscripted army was organized; the banking system was reformed; and the guilds were replaced with modern factories.
Economically, the empire had difficulty in repaying its loans to European banks; at the same time, it faced military challenges in defending itself against foreign invasion and occupation: Egypt, for instance, was occupied by the French in 1798, while Cyprus was loaned to the British in 1878 in exchange of Britain's favours at the Congress of Berlin following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire at the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78. In a significant shift in military and diplomatic policy, the empire ceased to enter conflicts on its own and began to forge alliances with European countries. There were a series of such alliances with France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Russia. As an example, in the Crimean War the Ottomans united with the British, French, and others against Russia.

The rise of nationalism swept through many countries during the 19th century, and the Ottoman Empire was not immune. A burgeoning national consciousness, together with a growing sense of ethnic nationalism, made nationalistic thought one of the most significant Western ideas imported by the Ottoman empire, as it was forced to deal with nationalism-related issues both within and beyond its borders. There was a significant increase in the number of revolutionary political parties. Uprisings in Ottoman territory had many far-reaching consequences during the 19th century and determined much of Ottoman policy during the early 20th century. Many Ottoman Turks questioned whether the policies of the state were to blame: some felt that the sources of ethnic conflict were external, and unrelated to issues of governance. While this era was not without some successes, the ability of the Ottoman state to have any effect on ethnic uprisings was seriously called into question. Reforms did not halt the rise of nationalism in the Danubian Principalities and Serbia, which had been semi-independent for almost 6 decades; in 1875 Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Wallachia and Moldova declared their independence from the Empire; and following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, independence was formally granted to Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania and Montenegro, with the other Balkan territories remaining under Ottoman control.

The era of the empire's First Constitutional government (or Birinci Meşrûtiyet Devri in Turkish), was short-lived; however, the idea behind it (Ottomanism), proved influential. A wide-ranging group of reformers known as the Young Ottomans, primarily educated in Western universities, believed that a constitutional monarchy would provide an answer to the empire's growing social unrest. Through a military coup in 1876, they forced Sultan Abdülaziz (1861-1876) to abdicate in favour of Murad V. However, Murad V was mentally ill, and was deposed within a few months. His heir-apparent Abdülhamid II (1876-1909) was invited to assume power on the condition that he would accept to declare a constitutional monarchy, which he did on 23 November 1876. However, the subsequent constitution, called the Kanûn-ı Esâsî (meaning "Basic Law" in Ottoman Turkish), written by members of the Young Ottomans, survived for only two years.

Despite the empire's label as the "Sick man of Europe", from an economic perspective, the empire's actual weakness did not reside in its developing economy, but the cultural gap which separated it from the European powers. The empire's problems were, in fact, the result of an inability to deal with the new problems created by the conflict between external imperialism and rising internal nationalism. (See socioeconomics during the Ottoman reformation era.)

The period of the Ottoman Empire's final dissolution began with the onset of the Second Constitutional Era (or İkinci Meşrûtiyet Devri in Turkish). This era is dominated by the Committee of Union and Progress (or İttihâd ve Terakkî Cemiyeti in Turkish) and the movement that would become known as the "Young Turks" (or Jön Türkler in Turkish). The Young Turk Revolution began on 3 July 1908 and quickly spread throughout the empire, resulting in the sultan's announcement of the restoration of the 1876 constitution and the reconvening of parliament.

The Balkan Wars of 1912-13, following the Italian occupation of Libya in 1911, were the first real test for the Committee of Union and Progress. The new Balkan states which were formed at the end of the 19th century sought additional territories from the Ottoman provinces of Albania, Macedonia, and Thrace, on the grounds of ethnic nationalism. Initially, with Russia acting as an intermediary, agreements were concluded between Serbia and Bulgaria in March 1912, and between Greece and Bulgaria in May 1912. Montenegro subsequently concluded agreements between Serbia and Bulgaria in October 1912. The Serbian-Bulgarian agreement specifically called for the partition of Macedonia, which was the chief casus belli of the First Balkan War. The main cause of the Second Balkan War was the disputes between the former Balkan allies over their newly gained territories; this then gave the Turks an opportunity to take back some of their lost territories in Thrace. The political repercussions of the Balkan Wars led to the coup of 1913, and the subsequent rule of the Three Pashas.



The Ottoman Empire took part in the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I, under the terms of the Ottoman-German Alliance. The Ottomans managed to win important victories in the early years of the war, particularly at the Battle of Gallipoli and the Siege of Kut; but there were setbacks as well, such as the disastrous Caucasus Campaign against the Russians. The Russian Revolution of 1917 gave the Ottomans the opportunity to regain lost ground and Ottoman forces managed to take Azerbaijan in the final stages of the war, but the Empire was forced to cede these gains at the end of WWI. A significant event in this conflict was the creation of an Armenian resistance movement in the province of Van. The core Armenian resistance group formed an independent provisional government in May 1915, prompting the Ottoman government to accuse the Armenians of being in collaboration with the invading Russian forces in eastern Anatolia, against their native state. The Armenian militia and Armenian volunteer units were also part of this nationalist movement. At the end of 1917 the Armenian Revolutionary Federation formed the Democratic Republic of Armenia. The eventual Ottoman defeat came from a combination of coordinated attacks on strategic targets by British forces commanded by Edmund Allenby and the Arab Revolt of 1916-1918.

Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire happened in the aftermath of the WWI. The initial ceasefire agreement was the Armistice of Mudros; under the terms of the subsequent Treaty of Sèvres, the empire was to submit to a complete partition of its Middle Eastern territories under the mandates of Britain and France, cede the Turkish Mediterranean coast to Italy, the Turkish Aegean coast to Greece, cede the Turkish Straits and Sea of Marmara to the Allied powers as an international zone, and recognize a large Republic of Armenia in eastern Anatolia (in an area which was mostly inhabited by Turks and Kurds). The terms of this treaty were later superseded by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. Britain obtained virtually everything it had sought under the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement it had made with France in 1916 for the partitioning of the Middle East. The other powers of the Triple Entente, however, soon became entangled in the Turkish War of Independence.

The Turkish War of Independence was a response to the actions of the victorious Allies, in particular the harsh terms of the peace settlement. Turkish nationalists organized a Turkish national movement under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk). The establishment of the Turkish national movement resulted with Grand National Assembly (Büyük Millet Meclisi) in Ankara on 23 April 1920, which refused to recognize the Ottoman government in Istanbul and the invading forces in Turkey, raised a "people's army" and expelled the invading Greek, Italian and French forces. They took back the Turkish provinces which were given to the Republic of Armenia with the Treaty of Sèvres, and threatened the British forces controlling the Turkish Straits. Turkish revolutionaries eventually freed the Turkish Straits and Istanbul, and abolished the Ottoman sultanate on 1 November 1922. The last sultan, Mehmed VI Vahdettin (1918-1922), left the country on November 17, 1922, and the Republic of Turkey was officially declared with the Treaty of Lausanne on 29 October 1923. The Caliphate was constitutionally abolished several months later, on 3 March 1924. the Sultan and his family were declared persona non grata of Turkey and exiled. Fifty years later, in 1974, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey granted descendants of the former dynasty the right to acquire Turkish citizenship. Ertuğrul Osman V.

During the first World War, the Ottoman government also faced difficulties on the home front. There were isolated Armenian rebellions in eastern Anatolia that led to the April 24 circular and then the Tehcir Law deportations between June 1 1915 and February 8 1916. An estimated 1.5 million ethnic Armenians died during this period, which most academics refer to as the Armenian Genocide. Typically this is considered to be the first genocide of the 20th century and the second most studied case of genocide, after the Holocaust. Turkish authorities, however, do not believe the term genocide applies. The Turkish government does not believe that the Tehcir Law was the main contribution to Armenian deaths during the first World War. The claim that Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa or the Special Organization committed an organized crime against the Armenian people is also disputed, though the poor conditions of the Armenian and also some Muslims were not. In addition to any deliberate policy, fighting between Kurds and Armenians along with the Caucasus Campaign of the World War caused trouble for both the Armenian and Muslim populations of the region. The Turkish rejection of the genocide is widely viewed by western scholars as historical revisionism and is often compared to Holocaust denial. See the main Armenian Genocide article for more information on the dispute.

Ultimately, the fall of the Ottoman Empire can be attributed to the failure of its economic structure; the size of the empire created difficulties in economically integrating its diverse regions. Also, the empire's communication technology was not developed enough to reach all territories. In many ways, the circumstances surrounding the Ottoman Empire's fall closely paralleled those surrounding the fall of the Roman Empire, particularly in terms of the ongoing tensions between the empire's different ethnic groups, and the various governments' inability to deal with these tensions. In the case of the Ottomans, the introduction of a parliamentary system during the Tanzimat proved to be too late to reverse the trends that had been set in place.

In diplomatic circles, the empire was often referred to as the "Sublime Porte", a literal translation of the Ottoman Turkish Bâb-ı Âlî, which was the only gate of the imperial Topkapı Palace that was open to foreigners, and was where the sultan greeted ambassadors.


Unlike many states, the Ottoman Empire was happy to use the talents of Greeks (and other Christians), Muslims and Jews, in revolutionizing its administrative system. The rapidly expanding empire utilized loyal, skilled subjects to manage the empire, whether Phanariot Greeks, Armenians, Serbs, Bosniaks, Hungarians or others. This eclectic administration was apparent even in the diplomatic correspondence of the empire, which was initially undertaken in the Greek language to the west, using the Greek subjects. Like the Byzantines before them, the Ottomans practiced a system in which the state had control over the clergy. The nomadic Turkic forms of land tenure were largely retained —with a number of unique adjustments— in the Ottoman period. Certain pre-Islamic Turkish traditions that had survived the adoption of administrative and legal practices from Islamic Iran continued to be important in Ottoman administrative circles. In the Ottoman judiciary, for example, the courts were run by Kadı, i.e. religious judges appointed by the sultan who exercised direct control over members of the religious establishment. Ultimately, the Ottoman administrative system was a blend of influences derived from the Turks, the Byzantines, and the Islamic world.

The Ottomans were primarily administrators and not producers, in the sense that the empire did not employ a program of economic exploitation (as did the colonial empires of the modern European states). Its economic outlook (fiscalism) stressed abundance and regulated prices within the marketplace to ensure social stability, and the state never developed a Western mercantile outlook of maximum production, leaving commerce very largely in the hands of the non-Muslim population. According to Ottoman understanding, the state's primary responsibility was to defend and extend the land of the Muslims and to ensure security and harmony within its borders within the overarching context of orthodox Islamic practice and dynastic sovereignty.

Though the state apparatus of the Ottoman Empire underwent many reforms during its long history, a number of its basic structures remained essentially the same. Chief among these was the primacy of the sultan. Despite important decisions usually being made by the Divan, ultimate authority always rested with the sultan.

The Divan, in the years when the Ottoman state was still a Beylik, was composed of the elders of the tribe. Its composition was later modified to include military officers and local elites (such as religious and political advisors). These individuals became known as viziers. Later still, beginning in the year 1320, a Grand Vizier (or Sadrazam) was appointed in order to assume certain of the sultan's responsibilities. The Sublime Porte, which became synonymous with the Ottoman government, was in fact the gate to the Grand Vizier's headquarters, and the place where the sultan formally greeted foreign ambassadors. At times throughout Ottoman history, the authority of the Grand Vizier was to equal (and on some occasions even surpass) that of the sultan.

After the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, the Ottoman state became a constitutional monarchy without executive powers, and a parliament was formed, with representatives chosen from the provinces.

At the height of its power, the Ottoman Empire contained 29 provinces, in addition to the tributary principalities of Moldavia, Transylvania, and Wallachia.

Many different cultures lived under the umbrella of the Ottoman Empire, and as a result, a specifically "Ottoman" culture can be difficult to define. To some extent, there existed a Turkish Ottoman culture, a Greek Ottoman culture, an Armenian Ottoman culture, and so on. However, there was also, to a great extent, a specific melding of cultures that can be said to have reached its highest levels among the Ottoman elite, who were composed of a myriad of different ethnic and religious groups.

One of the roots of Ottoman culture comes from the Oghuz Turks with their Central Asian Turkic nomadic culture. As the Oghuz passed into Anatolia through Persia over a period of a few hundred years they absorbed many elements of Persian culture. Following Sultan Mehmed II's capture of Constantinople (later named Istanbul) in 1453, many aspects of Byzantine— and, more broadly, European— culture began to be integrated into Ottoman culture. As the empire expanded in subsequent years, even more cultures were brought into this mix, enriching it still further.

This Ottoman multicultural perspective is reflected in their policies. One of the reasons that the Ottoman Empire lasted as long as it did was its tolerant attitude, originating from the Ottomans nomadic inheritance, in comparison to the attitude prevailing elsewhere in medieval times (east and west). This meant that the Ottoman State pursued multi-cultural and multi-religious policies. (Two examples of this can be seen in the Ottoman justice system and the independent regional governors.) As the Ottomans moved further west, the Ottoman leaders absorbed some of the culture of conquered regions. Intercultural marriages also played their part in creating the characteristic Ottoman elite culture. When compared to Turkish folk culture, the influence of these new cultures in creating the culture of the Ottoman elite is very apparent.