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Turkic tribes first arrived in
Anatolia from Central Asia in the 11th century.
In 1071, Seljuk Turks inflicted a stunning defeat on the Byzantine army at Manzikert, capturing the emperor and establishing the Sultanate of Rüm — a
reference to the "Roman" empire whose territory it occupied. The Seljuks were superseded at the beginning of the 14th century by followers of
Osman, founder and namesake of the Ottoman Empire. Their expansion soon
took them across the Bosporus into Europe, where they established their capital
first at Adrianople, then Constantinople, which
finally fell to Mehmed II in
1453.
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The Ottomans continued to expand their empire over the next century
under the leadership of Selim I and his son, Suleiman the Magnificent.
Their successors proved much less capable leaders, however, and the empire
stagnated as a result of economic decline and political intrigue. In the
19th century, ethnic nationalism accelerated the dissolution of the empire, as
non-Turkish peoples rose up against their Ottoman overlords. Greece and
Egypt achieved independence in the 1830s, and most of the Balkans were liberated
from Turkish rule — with help from Austria-Hungary and Russia — by the late
1870s. Efforts at reforming the Ottoman state during the 19th-century "Tanzimat"
(reorganization) period produced a constitution, but could not reverse the
decline of the empire. The Balkan Wars (1912-13) deprived the Ottomans of
almost all of their remaining European territories.
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| Participation on the losing side of World
War I brought the empire to an end — but not before the Ottomans massacred
perhaps a million Armenians between 1915-23, in what may have been the
first modern genocide. |
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After the war, the Allies occupied Istanbul
and Thrace, Britain and France established mandates over Ottoman
territories in the Middle East, and Greece and Italy laid claim to large
portions of Anatolia itself. |
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Turkish national identity was forged in the struggle against
Greece, which attempted to annex the enclave around Smyrna (Izmir). This
conflict ended with the expulsion of approximately 1.5 million Greeks, the
abolition of the Ottoman sultanate and the establishment of the Republic of
Turkey in 1923, with its capital at Ankara.
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Mustafa Kemal Pasha, hero of the war of independence and the republic's first
president, was officially designated "Atatürk" (Father of the Turks) by the
National Assembly in 1934. Atatürk and his followers established Turkey as a strongly
nationalist, secular state prone to military dictatorship, where Muslim
religious expression is discouraged and the rights of ethnic minorities,
including Kurds and Armenians, are often suppressed. Despite these
transgressions, Turkey continues to play an important role in European affairs,
owing to its strategic importance as a Western-oriented Muslim country situated
on the borders of the former Soviet Union and adjacent to the hot spots of the
Middle East. Turkey is a long-standing member of the Council of Europe,
OECD, and NATO, and is even being considered for membership in the European
Union. |
We visited Turkey
in January 2005, and returned for a few more days in Istanbul the
following month:
Turkish Spelling & Pronunciation:
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- Cc: as the "j" in "jet"
- Çç: as the "ch" in "church"
- ğ: silent, lengthens preceding vowel
- Hh: weak "h" as in "half"
- Jj: as the "z" in "azure"
- Ss: always as in "stress", not as in "ease"
- Şş: as the "sh" in "show"
- Vv: soft, almost like "w"
- Ww: same as Turkish "v", only found in foreign words
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This page was last
updated 17 August 2008.
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