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Timeline of Anatolia, Turkey, Türkiye
(Chronology of Anatolia, Turkey)
Anatolia (Turkey) is that region lying to the south of the
Black Sea, to the east of the Aegean Sea, north of the eastern Mediterranean Sea
and, inland, the Fertile Crescent, and west of the Caucasus-Azerbaijani
districts. A very roughly hewn upland region for the most part, it has been both
a home and a highway for a bewildering variety of peoples for as long as there
have been humans.
Brief Overview of Timeline of Anatolia Turkey
Timeline
- Paleolithic
Peoples............................+500000-8000
- Mesolithic
Peoples................................8000-5500
- Neolithic
Peoples.................................5500-4000
- Chalcolithic
Cultures.............................4000-3300
- Bronze and Iron age cultures thereafter...
7500
BC |
First Stone age settlements at Çatalhüyük |
1900-1300 BC |
Hittite Empire with Hattusas as capital,
contemporary with ancient Egypt and Babylon |
1250 BC |
The Trojan war and the fall of Troy |
1200-700 BC |
Migration of Greeks to Aegean coastal
regions. Establishment of the Phrygian, Ionian, Lycian, Lydian, Carian
and Pamphylian Kingdoms. The East of Turkey is the home of the Urartians |
700 BC |
Homer is born in Izmir (Smyrna). Aegean
Hellenism begins |
546 BC |
Cyrus the Great leads the Persians into
Anatolia |
334 BC |
Alexander the Great drives out the
Persians |
130 BC |
The Romans incorporate Anatolia as the
province of Asia, controlled from Ephesus (Efes) |
40 BC |
Antioch sees the marriage of Antony and
Cleopatra |
47-57 AD |
St. Paul spreads Christianity and a
community at Antioch is established |
313 |
Roman Empire adopts Christianity |
330 |
Constantine lays out the boundaries of
his new capital, Constantinople |
527-65 |
Glory of Byzantium under Justinian |
638-718 |
Muslim Arabs besiege Constantinople |
1054 |
Greek and Roman Churches split over
theology |
1071-1243 |
Rise and rule of the Selcuk Turks in
Anatolia, Konya is their capital |
1096-1204 |
The Crusades, marking the beginning of
the end for Byzantium, a fascinating period in Byzantine history |
1288 |
Ottoman Empire appears in Bursa |
1453 |
The fall of Constantinople - the birth
of Istanbul |
1520-66 |
Suleyman the Magnificent sits on the
Ottoman throne controlling a huge and powerful empire |
1682-1725 |
Peter the Great initiates Russo-Turkish
rivalry |
1854 |
Crimean war |
1909 |
Abdul Hamid, the last of an unbroken
line of Ottoman sultans is deposed |
1914 |
Turkey allies with Germany in the first
world war |
1915 |
Gallipoli |
1919 |
Ataturk leads resistance to the allied
plan to carve up Turkey |
1923 |
Foundation of the modern Republic of
Turkey by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Many things happen all at once |
1938 |
Ataturk dies in Istanbul's Dolmabahce
palace |
1939-45 |
Turkey manages to remain neutral during
the second world war |
1946 |
Charter membership of the UN |
1952 |
Turkey joins NATO |
1960 |
Military coup, successive governments
ineffective |
1964 |
Associate member status of EU |
1974 |
Cyprus crisis
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Ancient Anatolia (Turkey)
There is abundant archaeological evidence of a
thriving neolithic culture in Anatolia at least as early as the seventh
millennium B.C. What may have been the world's first urban settlement (dated ca.
6500 B.C.) has been uncovered at Çatalhüyük in the Konya Ovasi (Konya Basin).
Introduced early in the third millennium B.C., metallurgy made possible a
flourishing "copper age" (ca. 2500-2000 B.C.) during which cultural patterns
throughout the region were remarkably uniform. The use of bronze weapons and
implements was widespread by 2000 B.C. Colonies of Assyrian merchants, who
settled in Anatolia during the copper age, provided metal for the military
empires of Mesopotamia, and their accounts and business correspondence are the
earliest written records found in Anatolia. From about 1500 B.C., southern
Anatolia, which had plentiful sources of ore and numerous furnace sites,
developed as a center of iron production. Two of the area's most celebrated
archaeological excavations are the sites at Troy and Hattusas (Bogazköy) (see
fig.).
The cape projecting into the Aegean between the
Dardanelles and the Gulf of Edremit was known in antiquity as Troas. There, a
thirty-meter-high mound called Hisarlik was identified as the site of ancient
Troy in diggings begun by German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann in the 1870s.
The first five levels of the nine discovered at Hisarlik contained remains of
cities from the third millennium B.C. that controlled access to the shortest
crossing of the Dardanelles and that probably derived their prosperity from
tolls. Artifacts give evidence of 1,000 years of cultural continuity in the
cities built on these levels. A sharp break with the past occurred on the sixth
level, settled about 1900 B.C. by newcomers believed to have been related to the
early Greeks. Built after an earthquake devastated the previous city about 1300
B.C., the seventh level was clearly the victim of sacking and burning about 1150
B.C., and it is recognized as having been the Troy of Homer's Iliad .
Hisarlik subsequently was the site of a Greek city, Ilion, and a Roman one,
Ilium. Top
Troy
(Ilium)
An ancient city located in far northwestern Anatolia,
near the southern coast of the Hellespont. It is perhaps one of the best known
Bronze-Age city states, at least in terms of name recognition, from its role in
the Iliad, Homer's account of a war between Mycenaean Hellenes and the
Trojans. The actual history of the place is very poorly understood, although it
is known that as many as nine separate cities occupied the site between roughly
1600 BCE and about 400 CE, each being destroyed by natural disaster or warfare,
and each being built anew upon the remains of the previous. The community which
seems to be the one described by Homer is Troy VIIa, existing in perhaps the
13th century BCE.
- Troy I (3000-2500 BCE) -
featured a
rubblework wall and mud-brick houses.
- Troy II (2500-2200) -
The so-called "Burnt
City" with extended towered walls and royal treasure found by
Schliemann. The royal megaron was similar to those at Mycenae and Pylos.
Pottery wheels were found for production of distinctive flaring bowls and
goblets which can be found from Bulgaria to Syria. In addition, excavations
suggest major textile production
- Original homeland of the Hittites..............c. 2300-c. 1900
- Troy III (2200-2050) -
Dominated by stone
houses and ubiquitous evidence of deer as a primary source of food and other
goods. Troy III was sacked and burned in the 21st century BCE.
- Troy IV (2050-1900) -
the rebuilt city was
dominated by a reconstructed citadel that covered four acres. The mud-brick
houses featured domed ovens. Cause of destruction is unknown.
- To the Luvians.................................c.
1900-c. 1600
- Troy V (1900-1800) -
Roomier houses with
corner seats and clay benches. Brighter colored pottery which is more
symmetrical, suggesting greater sophistication in production methods. The town
was again demolished, possibly by earthquake 1900-1800 BC
- Troy VI (1800-1300)
Middle Bronze Age - Troy
during this period had an enormous citadel and shows signs of great wealth.
During this period horses were introduced, the area of the city was terraced,
making room for large stone houses on terraces. The city was destroyed by an
earthquake.
- Troy VII (1300-1100) -
Late Bronze Age
Citadel. The city was far less grand than the one described by Homer, who
seems to have borrowed elements from Troy VI in his retelling. Many houses
were merely small cubicles along fortress wall which had been repaired from
Troy VI, albeit in smaller and less grand a scale. Jars set in floors suggests
rationing. The city plaza boasted a public well. Troy VIIa was sacked
and burned c. 1260 BCE but rebuilt c. 1190 by Thracians (Troy VIIb) who
produced knobbed pottery. VIIb was destroyed by fire at beginning of Iron Age
(possibly by the Sea Peoples
?)
- ??
- DARDANID Dates are culled from traditional sources, and may be viewed
with indulgent scepticism.
- Tros (also Lord of the
Dardani)...................1423-1402
- Ilos..............................................1402-1347
- Ilos was the son of Tros and the brother of Assaracus,
who ruled Dardania.
- Laomedon..........................................1347-1311
- Priam.............................................1311-1270
- Paris (Alexandros).................................mid 1200's ?
- Hittite letters refer to a kingdom called Wilusa, which
some scholars believe is a Hittite version of Ilos, the legendary
ancestor-king of Troy. Here follows some data on that state...
Wilusa A kingdom referred to in Hittite sources as a member of the Assua,
a confederacy of minor states in northwest Anatolia allied with Hatti. Many
scholars now believe that "Wilusa" is the Hittite version of "Ilios", or
Troy.
- Kikunni............................................fl. c. 1300
BCE
- Piyamaradu (Priam ?)
- Piyamaradu was a Hittite renegade who slew Kikunni and
seized the throne of Wilusa with the help of the Ahhiyawa, or Achaeans. He was
in turn overthrown by the Hittites who installed Alakshandu in his
place.
- Alakshandu (Alexander, Paris ?)...................fl. c. 1280
- A letter from the mid 1200s refers to "Alakshandu" as
king of Wilusa. Since another name for Paris, the prince of Troy in the Iliad,
was Alexandros, scholars have jumped on the possibility that the two documents
refer to the same individual.
- Wilmu ?
- ?
- Returning to the Troy archeological sequence...
- Site abandoned, c. 1200-c. 700
- To the Phrygians...............................c.
1200-c. 900
- To the Aeolians.................................c.
900-546
- Troy VIII (700-200 BC) -
The site is
reoccupied by Aeolian (Thessalian Greek) settlers and becomes a cultic center
- Both Xerxes and later Alexander the Great made sacrifices at its
shrines.
- To Persia..........................................546-333
- To
Macedon.........................................333-323
- To the Empire of Antigonus.........................323-301
- Troy IX (300 BCE to 400 CE) -
Hellenistic
Ilion and Roman Ilium
- To the
Seleucid
Empire.............................301-263
- To Pergamon........................................263-c. 210
- To the
Seleucid
Empire..........................c. 210-197
- To Pergamon........................................197-133
- To the Roman
Republic..............................133-27
- To the Roman
Empire.............................27 BCE-395 CE
- Site abandoned once again, c. 400, and never
rebuilt.
- Within the Byzantine
Empire........................395-1204
- Within the Latin
Empire...........................1204-1261
- Within the Byzantine
Empire.......................1261-c. 1325
- Within the
Ottoman
Empire......................c. 1325-1922
- Within the Republic of
Turkey.....................1922-
Top
Hittites
Late in the third millennium B.C., waves of
invaders speaking Indo-European languages crossed the Caucasus Mountains into
Anatolia. Among them were the bronze-working, chariot-borne warriors who
conquered and settled the central plain. Building on older cultures, these
invaders borrowed even their name, the Hittites, from the indigenous Hatti whom
they had subjugated. They adopted the native Hattic deities and adapted to their
written language the cuneiform alphabet and literary conventions of the Semitic
cultures of Mesopotamia. The Hittites imposed their political and social
organization on their dominions in the Anatolian interior and northern Syria,
where the indigenous peasantry supported the Hittite warrior caste with rents,
services, and taxes. In time the Hittites won reputations as merchants and
statesmen who schooled the ancient Middle East in both commerce and diplomacy.
The Hittite Empire achieved the zenith of its political power and cultural
accomplishment in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C., but the state
collapsed after 1200 B.C. when the Phrygians, clients of the Hittites, rebelled
and burned Hattusas
- Hittite Empire-The
Hittites, arising in central Anatolia within what later was known as
Cappadocia, were one of the earliest peoples to make extensive use of iron.
They are also the first Aryan people to achieve a civilization.
- 1st Hittite Dynasty
- Pitkhana
- Anitta
- 2nd Hittite Dynasty
Dates
here are approximate only.
- Tudhaliya
I.......................................1740-1710
- Pu-Sarruma........................................1710-1680
- Labarna...........................................1680-1650
- Hattusila
I.......................................1650-1620
- Mursili
I.........................................1620-1590
- Hantili
I.........................................1590-1560
- Zidanta
I.........................................1560-1550
- Ammuna............................................1550-1530
- Huzziya
I.........................................1530-1525
- Telipinus.........................................1525-1500
- Alluwamna.........................................1500-1490
- Hantili
II........................................1490-1480
- Zidanta
II........................................1480-1470
- Huzziya
II........................................1470-1460
- 3rd Hittite Dynasty
Dates
here begin to become reliable after about 1350 BCE.
- Tudhaliya
II......................................1460-1440
- Arnuwanda
I.......................................1440-1420
- Hattusila
II......................................1420-1400
- Tudhaliya
III.....................................1400-1380
- Suppiluliuma
I....................................1380-1346
- Arnuwanda
II......................................1346-1345
- Mursili
II........................................1345-1315
- Muwatalli.........................................1315-1296
- Urhi-Teshub.......................................1296-1289
- Hattusili
III.....................................1289-1265
- Tudhaliya
IV......................................1265-1235
- Arnuwanda
III.....................................1235-1215
- Suppiluliuma
II...................................1215-c. 1200
- The empire begins disintigrating from c.
1500 on into numerous Neo-Hittite local Kingdoms. See, for example,
Kizzuwadna, Kummuhu, Milid, Sam'al, Tabal, Tarhuntassa.
- The era from c. 1200 BCE to 546 BCE is
characterized by four primary groups; the Kingdom of Phrygia (central), the
Kingdom of Lydia (western), the People of the Sea (southern and southwest) ,
and Urartu (east).
- All of Anatolia to the Persian
Empire...........c. 550-335
- To the Macedonian Empire of Alexander
the Great....335-306
- Most to the Syriac Kingdom of Antigonus
One-Eye....306-301
- Much to the Seleucid
Empire........................301-c. 145
- Divided among numerous local states, i.e.
Armenia, Cappadocia, Galatia, Pergamum, Pontus, etc.
- To the Romans (Republic to 27 BCE, Empire
thereafter), partially from 133 BCE, more-or-less entirely by 17 CE.
- To the Byzantine
Empire............................395-1071
- To the Great Seljuqs..............................1071-1092
- Most to the Rum Seljuqs...........................1092-1243
- To the Persian
Il-Khans...........................1243-c. 1300
- Fragmented into numerous competing Ghazi
states during the 13th and 14th centuries. The Ghazi state based on ancient
Bithynia, the Ottomans, eventually absorbed all it's neighbours, and was in
control of most of Anatolia by the 1420's...Top
Phrygians and Lydians
The twelfth to ninth centuries B.C. were a time
of turmoil throughout Anatolia and the Aegean world. The destruction of Troy,
Hattusas, and numerous other cities in the region was a collective disaster that
coincided with the rise of the aggressive Assyrian Empire in Mesopotamia, the
Dorian invasion of Greece, and the appearance of the "sea peoples" who ravaged
the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean.
The first light to penetrate the dark age in
Anatolia was lit by the very Phrygians who had destroyed Hattusas. Architects,
builders, and skilled workers of iron, they had assimilated the Hittites'
syncretic culture and adopted many of their political institutions. Phrygian
kings apparently ruled most of western and central Anatolia in the ninth century
B.C. from their capital at Gordium (a site sixty kilometers southwest of modern
Ankara). Phrygian strength soon waned, however, and the kingdom was overthrown
in the seventh century B.C. by the Cimmerians, a nomadic people who had been
pursued over the Caucasus into Anatolia by the Scythians.
Order was restored in Anatolia by the Lydians,
a Thracian warrior caste who dominated the indigenous peasantry and derived
their great wealth from alluvial gold found in the tributaries of the Hermus
River (Gediz Nehri). From their court at Sardis, such Lydian kings as Croesus
controlled western Anatolia until their kingdom fell to the Persians in 546 B.C.
Top
Armenians and Kurds
The Armenians took refuge in the Lake Van
region in the seventh century B.C., apparently in reaction to Cimmerian raids.
Their country was described by Xenophon around 400 B.C. as a tributary of
Persia. By the first century B.C., a united Armenian kingdom that stretched from
the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea had been established as a client of the Roman
Empire to buffer the frontier with Persia.
Xenophon also recorded the presence of the
Kurds. Contemporary linguistic evidence has challenged the previously held view
that the Kurds are descendants of the Medes, although many Kurds still accept
this explanation of their origin. Kurdish people migrated from the Eurasian
steppes in the second millennium B.C. and joined indigenous inhabitants living
in the region. Top
Greeks
The Aegean coast of Anatolia was an integral
part of a Minoan-Mycenean civilization (ca. 2600-1200 B.C.) that drew its
cultural impulses from Crete. During the Aegean region's so-called Dark Age (ca.
1050-800 B.C.), Ionian Greek refugees fled across the sea to Anatolia, then
under Lydian rule, to escape the onslaught of the Dorians. Many more cities were
founded along the Anatolian coast during the great period of Greek expansion
after the eighth century B.C. One among them was Byzantium, a distant colony
established on the Bosporus by the city-state of Megara. Despite endemic
political unrest, the cities founded by the Ionians and subsequent Greek
settlers prospered from commerce with Phrygia and Lydia, grew in size and
number, and generated a renaissance that put Ionia in the cultural vanguard of
the Hellenic world.
At first the Greeks welcomed the Persians,
grateful to be freed from Lydian control. But when the Persians began to impose
unpopular tyrants on the city-states, the Greeks rebelled and called on their
kinsmen in Greece for aid. In 334 B.C., Alexander the Great crossed the
Hellespont, defeated the Persians at the Granicus River (Biga Çayi), and during
four years of campaigning liberated the Ionian city-states, incorporating them
into an empire that at his death in 323 B.C. stretched from the Nile to the
Indus.
After Alexander died, control of Anatolia was
contested by several of the Macedonian generals among whom his empire was
divided. By 280 B.C. one of them, Seleucus Nicator, had made good his claim to
an extensive kingdom that included southern and western Anatolia and Thrace as
well as Syria, Mesopotamia, and, for a time, Persia. Under the Seleucid Dynasty,
which survived until 64 B.C., colonists were brought from Greece, and the
process of hellenization was extended among the non-Greek elites.
The Seleucids were plagued by rebellions, and
their domains in Anatolia were steadily eaten away by secession and attacks by
rival Hellenistic regimes. Pergamum became independent in 262 B.C., during the
Attalid Dynasty, and won fame as the paragon of Hellenistic states. Noted for
the cleanliness of its streets and the splendor of its art, Pergamum, in
west-central Anatolia, derived its extraordinary wealth from trade in pitch,
parchment, and perfume, while slave labor produced a food surplus on
scientifically managed state farms. It was also a center of learning that
boasted a medical school and a library second in renown only to that of
Alexandria. But Pergamum was both despised and envied by the other Greek states
because of its alliance with Rome. Top
Rome and the Byzantine
Empire
The last of the Attalid kings bequeathed
Pergamum to his Roman allies upon his death in 138 B.C. Rome organized this
extensive territory under a proconsul as the province of Asia. All of Anatolia
except Armenia, which was a Roman client-state, was integrated into the imperial
system by A.D. 43. After the accession of the Roman emperor Augustus (r. 27
B.C.-A.D. 14), and for generations thereafter, the Anatolian provinces enjoyed
prosperity and security. The cities were administered by local councils and sent
delegates to provincial assemblies that advised the Roman governors. Their
inhabitants were citizens of a cosmopolitan world state, subject to a common
legal system and sharing a common Roman identity. Roman in allegiance and Greek
in culture, the region nonetheless retained its ethnic complexity.
In A.D. 285, the emperor Diocletian undertook
the reorganization of the Roman Empire, dividing jurisdiction between its
Latin-speaking and Greek-speaking halves. In 330 Diocletian's successor,
Constantine, established his capital at the Greek city of Byzantium, a "New
Rome" strategically situated on the European side of the Bosporus at its
entrance to the Sea of Marmara. For nearly twelve centuries the city,
embellished and renamed Constantinople, remained the capital of the Roman
Empire--better known in its continuous development in the East as the Byzantine
Empire.
Christianity was introduced to Anatolia through
the missionary activity of Saint Paul, a Greek-speaking Jew from Tarsus in
Cilicia, and his companions. Christians possibly even constituted a majority of
the population in most of Anatolia by the time Christianity was granted official
toleration under the Edict of Milan in A.D. 313. Before the end of the fourth
century, a patriarchate was established in Constantinople with ecclesiastical
jurisdiction over much of the Greek East. The basilica of Hagia Sophia (Holy
Wisdom), whose construction in Constantinople was ordered by Emperor Justinian
in 532, became the spiritual focus of Greek Christendom.
Although Greek in language and culture, the
Byzantine Empire was thoroughly Roman in its laws and administration. The
emperor's Greek-speaking subjects, conscious of their imperial vocation, called
themselves romaioi --Romans. Almost until the end of its long history,
the Byzantine Empire was seen as ecumenical--intended to encompass all Christian
peoples--rather than as a specifically Greek state.
In the early seventh century, the emperor in
Constantinople presided over a realm that included not only Greece and Anatolia
but Syria, Egypt, Sicily, most of Italy, and the Balkans, with outposts across
North Africa as far as Morocco. Anatolia was the most productive part of this
extensive empire and was also the principal reservoir of manpower for its
defense. With the loss of Syria to Muslim conquest in the seventh century,
Anatolia became the frontier as well as the heartland of the empire. The
military demands imposed on the Byzantine state to police its provinces and
defend its frontiers were enormous, but despite the gradual contraction of the
empire and frequent political unrest, Byzantine forces generally remained strong
until the eleventh century Top
Turkish Origins
The first historical references to the Turks
appear in Chinese records dating around 700 B.C. These records refer to tribes
called the Hsiung-nu (an early form of the Western term Hun ), who
lived in an area bounded by the Altai Mountains, Lake Baykal, and the northern
edge of the Gobi Desert, and who are believed to have been the ancestors of the
Turks (see fig. 3). Specific references in Chinese sources in the sixth century
A.D. identify the tribal kingdom called Tu-Küe located on the Orkhon River south
of Lake Baykal. The khans (chiefs) of this tribe accepted the nominal suzerainty
of the Tang Dynasty. The earliest known example of writing in a Turkic language
was found in that area and has been dated around A.D. 730.
Other Turkish nomads from the Altai region
founded the Görtürk Empire, a confederation of tribes under a dynasty of khans
whose influence extended during the sixth through eighth centuries from the Aral
Sea to the Hindu Kush in the land bridge known as Transoxania (i.e., across the
Oxus River). The Görtürks are known to have been enlisted by a Byzantine emperor
in the seventh century as allies against the Sassanians. In the eighth century,
separate Turkish tribes, among them the Oguz, moved south of the Oxus River,
while others migrated west to the northern shore of the Black Sea.Top
Great Seljuks
The Turkish migrations after the sixth century
were part of a general movement of peoples out of central Asia during the first
millennium A.D. that was influenced by a number of interrelated
factors--climatic changes, the strain of growing populations on a fragile
pastoral economy, and pressure from stronger neighbors also on the move. Among
those who migrated were the Oguz Turks, who had embraced Islam in the tenth
century. They established themselves around Bukhara in Transoxania under their
khan, Seljuk. Split by dissension among the tribes, one branch of the Oguz, led
by descendants of Seljuk, moved west and entered service with the Abbasid
caliphs of Baghdad.
The Turkish horsemen, known as gazis ,
were organized into tribal bands to defend the frontiers of the caliphate, often
against their own kinsmen. However, in 1055 a Seljuk khan, Tugrul Bey, occupied
Baghdad at the head of an army composed of gazis and mamluks
(slave-soldiers, a number of whom became military leaders and rulers). Tugrul
forced the caliph (the spiritual leader of Islam) to recognize him as sultan, or
temporal leader, in Persia and Mesopotamia. While they engaged in state
building, the Seljuks also emerged as the champions of Sunni (see Glossary)
Islam against the religion's Shia (see Glossary) sect. Tugrul's successor,
Mehmet ibn Daud (r. 1063-72)--better known as Alp Arslan, the "Lion
Hero"--prepared for a campaign against the Shia Fatimid caliphate in Egypt but
was forced to divert his attention to Anatolia by the gazis , on whose
endurance and mobility the Seljuks depended. The Seljuk elite could not persuade
these gazis to live within the framework of a bureaucratic Persian
state, content with collecting taxes and patrolling trade routes. Each year the
gazis cut deeper into Byzantine territory, raiding and taking booty
according to their tradition. Some served as mercenaries in the private wars of
Byzantine nobles and occasionally settled on land they had taken. The Seljuks
followed the gazis into Anatolia in order to retain control over them.
In 1071 Alp Arslan routed the Byzantine army at Manzikert near Lake Van, opening
all of Anatolia to conquest by the Turks.
Armenia had been annexed by the Byzantine
Empire in 1045, but religious animosity between the Armenians and the Greeks
prevented these two Christian peoples from cooperating against the Turks on the
frontier. Although Christianity had been adopted as the official religion of the
state by King Titidates III around A.D. 300, nearly 100 years before similar
action was taken in the Roman Empire, Armenians were converted to a form of
Christianity at variance with the Orthodox tradition of the Greek church, and
they had their own patriarchate independent of Constantinople. After their
conquest by the Sassanians around 400, their religion bound them together as a
nation and provided the inspiration for a flowering of Armenian culture in the
fifth century. When their homeland fell to the Seljuks in the late eleventh
century, large numbers of Armenians were dispersed throughout the Byzantine
Empire, many of them settling in Constantinople, where in its centuries of
decline they became generals and statesmen as well as craftsmen, builders, and
traders. Top
Sultanate of Rum
Within ten years of the Battle of Manzikert,
the Seljuks had won control of most of Anatolia. Although successful in the
west, the Seljuk sultanate in Baghdad reeled under attacks from the Mongols in
the east and was unable--indeed unwilling--to exert its authority directly in
Anatolia. The gazis carved out a number of states there, under the
nominal suzerainty of Baghdad, states that were continually reinforced by
further Turkish immigration. The strongest of these states to emerge was the
Seljuk sultanate of Rum ("Rome," i.e., Byzantine Empire), which had its capital
at Konya (Iconium). During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Rum became
dominant over the other Turkish states (see fig. 4).
The society and economy of the Anatolian
countryside were unchanged by the Seljuks, who had simply replaced Byzantine
officials with a new elite that was Turkish and Muslim. Conversion to Islam and
the imposition of the language, mores, and customs of the Turks progressed
steadily in the countryside, facilitated by intermarriage. The cleavage widened,
however, between the unruly gazi warriors and the state-building
bureaucracy in Konya. Top
The Crusades
The success of the Seljuk Turks stimulated a
response from Latin Europe in the form of the First Crusade. A counteroffensive
launched in 1097 by the Byzantine emperor with the aid of the crusaders dealt
the Seljuks a decisive defeat. Konya fell to the crusaders, and after a few
years of campaigning Byzantine rule was restored in the western third of
Anatolia.
Although a Turkish revival in the 1140s
nullified many of the Christian gains, greater damage was done to Byzantine
security by dynastic strife in Constantinople in which the largely French
contingents of the Fourth Crusade and their Venetian allies intervened. In 1204
these crusaders installed Count Baldwin of Flanders in the Byzantine capital as
emperor of the so-called Latin Empire of Constantinople, dismembering the old
realm into tributary states where West European feudal institutions were
transplanted intact. Independent Greek kingdoms were established at Nicaea and
Trebizond (present-day Trabzon) and in Epirus from remnant Byzantine provinces.
Turks allied with Greeks in Anatolia against the Latins, and Greeks with Turks
against the Mongols. In 1261 Michael Palaeologus of Nicaea drove the Latins from
Constantinople and restored the Byzantine Empire, but as an essentially Balkan
state reduced in size to Thrace and northwestern Anatolia.
Seljuk Rum survived in the late thirteenth
century as a vassal state of the Mongols, who had already subjugated the Great
Seljuk sultanate at Baghdad. Mongol influence in the region had disappeared by
the 1330s, leaving behind gazi amirates competing for supremacy. From
the chaotic conditions that prevailed throughout the Middle East, however, a new
power emerged in Anatolia--the Ottoman Turks. Top
The
Great Seljuqs
The original Seljuqs, who swarmed out of
Central Asia in the first half of the 11th century.
- Toghril
Beg.......................................1037-1063
Alp Arslan........................................1063-1072
Malik Shah
I......................................1072-1092
Mahmud
I..........................................1092-1095
Berk Yaruq........................................1095-1104
Malik Shah
II.....................................1104-1105
Mohammed..........................................1105-1118
Abul Harith Sanjar................................1118-1158
Fragmented into local spheres of influence, most
eventually taken by the Mongols.
Top
The Rum Seljuqs
A large state taking up most of the interior of modern
Turkey. The name stems from the Turkish attempt to pronounce the word
"Roman", meaning the old Byzantine territories. From 1243 the Rum Seljuqs
were Persian Mongol vassals.
- Suleiman
I......................................1077/8-1086
- To the Great Seljuqs..............................1086-1092
- Qilich Arslan
I.................................1092/3-1106/7
- Malik Shah
I....................................1106/7-1116/7
- Masud...........................................1116/7-1156/7
- Qilich Arslan
II................................1156/7-1192
- Kai Khusrau
I.....................................1192-1195/6 d. 1210
- Suleiman
II.....................................1195/6-1204
- Qilich Arslan
III......................................1204
- Kai Khusrau I
(restored)..........................1204-1210
- Kai Kaus..........................................1210-1219/20
- Kai Qubadh.....................................1219/20-1236/7
- Kai Khusrau
II..................................1236/7-1245
- To the Persian
Il-Khans...........................1243-c. 1308
- Mu`in al-Din Süleyman, overall regent for the Il-Khans
in Anatolia 1256-1277
- Kai Kaus
II..................................1245-1257/8 with...
- Qilich Arslan
IV...........................1248/9-1264/5 and...
- Kai Qubadh................................1249/50-1257/8
- Kai Khusrau
III............................1264/5-1282/3
- Masud
II...................................1282/3-1284/5
- Kai Qubadh
III.............................1284/5-1284/5
- Masud II
(restored)........................1284/5-1292/3
- Kai Qubadh III
(restored)..................1292/3-1293/4
- Masud II
(re-restored).....................1293/4-1300/1
- Kai Qubadh III
(re-restored)...............1300/1-1302/3
- Masud II
(re-re-restored)..................1302/3-1305
- Kai Qubadh III
(re-re-restored)..............1305-1307/8
- Masud
III.........................................1307/8
Complete fragmentation of authority, cotemporous with
similar failure of Ilkhanate control, complete by 1336. Thereafter,
Anatolia as a whole is enveloped by growing Ottoman hegemony
Top
|
The Ottoman Empire
Documentation of the early history of the
Ottomans is scarce. According to semilegendary accounts, Ertugrul, khan of the
Kayi tribe of the Oguz Turks, took service with the sultan of Rum at the head of
a gazi force numbering "400 tents." He was granted territory--if he
could seize and hold it--in Bithynia, facing the Byzantine strongholds at Bursa,
Nicomedia (Izmit), and Nicaea. Leadership subsequently passed to Ertugrul's son,
Osman I (r. ca. 1284-1324), founder of the Osmanli Dynasty--better known in the
West as the Ottomans. This dynasty was to endure for six centuries through the
reigns of thirty-six sultans (see
Sultans and Viziers).
Osman I's small amirate attracted
gazis
from other amirates, who required plunder from new conquests to maintain their
way of life. Such growth gave the Ottoman state a military stature that was out
of proportion to its size. Acquiring the title of sultan, Osman I organized a
politically centralized administration that subordinated the activities of the
gazis to its needs and facilitated rapid territorial expansion. Bursa
fell in the final year of his reign. His successor, Orhan (r. 1324-60), crossed
the Dardanelles in force and established a permanent European base at Gallipoli
in 1354. Murad I (r. 1360-89) annexed most of Thrace (called Rumelia, or "Roman
land," by the Turks), encircling Constantinople, and moved the seat of Ottoman
government to Adrianople (Edirne) in Europe. In 1389 the Ottoman gazis
defeated the Serbs at the Battle of Kosovo, although at the cost of Murad's
life. The steady stream of Ottoman victories in the Balkans continued under
Bayezid I (r. 1389-1402). Bulgaria was subdued in 1393, and in 1396 a French-led
force of crusaders that had crossed the Danube from Hungary was annihilated at
Nicopolis.
In Anatolia, where Ottoman policy had been
directed toward consolidating the sultan's hold over the gazi amirates
by means of conquest, usurpation, and purchase, the Ottomans were confronted by
the forces of the Mongol leader Timur (Tamerlane), to whom many of the Turkish
gazis had defected. Timur crushed Ottoman forces near Ankara in 1402
and captured Bayezid I. The unfortunate sultan died in captivity the next year,
leaving four heirs, who for a decade competed for control of what remained of
Ottoman Anatolia. By the 1420s, however, Ottoman power had revived to the extent
that fresh campaigns were undertaken in Greece.
Aside from scattered outposts in Greece, all
that remained of the Byzantine Empire was its capital, Constantinople. Cut off
by land since 1365, the city, despite long periods of truce with the Turks, was
supplied and reinforced by Venetian traders who controlled its commerce by sea.
On becoming sultan in 1444, Mehmet II (r. 1444-46, 1451-81) immediately set out
to conquer the city. The military campaigning season of 1453 commenced with the
fifty-day siege of Constantinople, during which Mehmet II brought warships
overland on greased runners into the Bosporus inlet known as the Golden Horn to
bypass the chain barrage and fortresses that had blocked the entrance to
Constantinople's harbor. On May 29, the Turks fought their way through the gates
of the city and brought the siege to a successful conclusion.
As an isolated military action, the taking of
Constantinople did not have a critical effect on European security, but to the
Ottoman Dynasty the capture of the imperial capital was of supreme symbolic
importance. Mehmet II regarded himself as the direct successor to the Byzantine
emperors. He made Constantinople the imperial capital, as it had been under the
Byzantine emperors, and set about rebuilding the city. The cathedral of Hagia
Sophia was converted to a mosque, and Constantinople--which the Turks called
Istanbul (from the Greek phrase eis tin polin , "to the
city")--replaced Baghdad as the center of Sunni Islam. The city also remained
the ecclesiastical center of the Greek Orthodox Church, of which Mehmet II
proclaimed himself the protector and for which he appointed a new patriarch
after the custom of the Byzantine emperors.
-
Ottoman
EmpireThe ancestors of the
Ottomans (Osmanli, Uthmanli) were Oghuz Turks who followed the victorious
Seljuqs into Anatolia in the 11th century. The Ottoman state began as a
Ghazi Kingdom based in old Bithynia, on the fringes of the Mongol dominated
regions of central Anatolia. As Ilkhanate authority waned, Ottoman power
grew and, successfully vanquishing other Ghazi domains, they became the new
Power of the region.
- Osman
I..........................................1293-1324
- Orhan............................................1324-1360
- Murad
I...........................................1360-1389
- Beyazid I
Thunderbolt.............................1389-1402
- Mehmet
I........................................1402-1421 with...
- Isa (in Bursa)....................................1402-1406
and...
- Suleyman (in Rumelia).............................1402-1410
followed by...
- Musa..............................................1410-1413
- Murad
II..........................................1421-1444 d. 1451
- Mehmet II the
Conqueror.........................1444-1446 d. 1481
- Murad II
(restored)...............................1446-1451
- Mehmet II the Conqueror
(restored)..............1451-1481
- Beyazid
II........................................1481-1512
- Selim I the
Grim..................................1512-1520
- Suleyman I
Law-giver..............................1520-1566
- Selim II the
Sot..................................1566-1574
- Murad
III.........................................1574-1595
- Mehmet
III......................................1695-1603
- Ahmed
I...........................................1603-1617
- Mustafa
I.........................................1617-1618 d. 1623
- Othman
II.........................................1618-1622
- Mustafa I
(restored)..............................1622-1623
- Murad
IV..........................................1623-1640
- Ibrahim...........................................1640-1648
- Mehmet
IV.......................................1648-1687 d. 1693
- Suleyman
II.......................................1687-1691
- Ahmed
II..........................................1691-1695
- Mustafa
II........................................1695-1703
- Ahmed
III.........................................1703-1730 d. 1736
- Mahmud
I..........................................1730-1754
- Osman
III........................................1754-1757
- Mustafa
III.......................................1757-1773
- Abdulhamid
I......................................1773-1789
- Selim
III.........................................1789-1807
- Mustafa
III.......................................1807-1808
- Mahmud
II.........................................1808-1839
- Abdulmecid........................................1839-1861
- Abdulaziz.........................................1861-1876
- Murad
V................................................1876
- Abdulhamid
II.....................................1876-1909 d. 1918
- Mehmet
V........................................1909-1918
- Mehmet
VI.......................................1918-1922 d. 1926
Top
Ottoman Institutions
At the apex of the hierarchical Ottoman system
was the sultan, who acted in political, military, judicial, social, and
religious capacities, under a variety of titles. He was theoretically
responsible only to God and God's law--the Islamic seriat (in Arabic,
sharia ), of which he was the chief executor. All offices were filled
by his authority, and every law was issued by him in the form of a firman
(decree). He was supreme military commander and had official title to all land.
During the early sixteenth-century Ottoman expansion in Arabia, Selim I also
adopted the title of caliph, thus indicating that he was the universal Muslim
ruler. Although theocratic and absolute in theory and in principle, the sultan's
powers were in practice limited. The attitudes of important members of the
dynasty, the bureaucratic and military establishments, and religious leaders had
to be considered.
Three characteristics were necessary for
acceptance into the ruling class: Islamic faith, loyalty to the sultan, and
compliance with the standards of behavior of the Ottoman court. The last
qualification effectively excluded the majority of common Turks, whose language
and manners were very different from those of the Ottomans. The language of the
court and government was Ottoman Turkish, a highly formalized hybrid language
that included Persian and Arabic loanwords. In time Greeks, Armenians, and Jews
were also employed in state service, usually in diplomatic, technical, or
commercial capacities.
The day-to-day conduct of government and the
formulation of policy were in the hands of the divan, a relatively small council
of ministers directed by the chief minister, the grand vizier. The entranceway
to the public buildings in which the divan met--and which in the seventeenth
century became the residence of the grand vizier--was called the Bab-i Ali (High
Gate, or Sublime Porte). In diplomatic correspondence, the term Porte
was synonymous with the Ottoman government, a usage that acknowledged the power
wielded by the grand vizier.
The Ottoman Empire had Turkish origins and
Islamic foundations, but from the start it was a heterogeneous mixture of ethnic
groups and religious creeds. Ethnicity was determined solely by religious
affiliation. Non-Muslim peoples, including Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, were
recognized as millets (see Glossary) and were granted communal
autonomy. Such groups were allowed to operate schools, religious establishments,
and courts based on their own customary law. Top
Selim I and Süleyman the
Magnificent
Selim I (r. 1512-20) extended Ottoman
sovereignty southward, conquering Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. He also gained
recognition as guardian of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
Selim I's son, Süleyman I (r. 1520-66), was
called the "lawgiver" (kanuni ) by his Muslim subjects because of a new
codification of seriat undertaken during his reign. In Europe, however,
he was known as Süleyman the Magnificent, a recognition of his prowess by those
who had most to fear from it. Belgrade fell to Süleyman in 1521, and in 1522 he
compelled the Knights of Saint John to abandon Rhodes. In 1526 the Ottoman
victory at the Battle of Mohács led to the taking of Buda on the Danube. Vienna
was besieged unsuccessfully during the campaign season of 1529. North Africa up
to the Moroccan frontier was brought under Ottoman suzerainty in the 1520s and
1530s, and governors named by the sultan were installed in Algiers, Tunis, and
Tripoli. In 1534 Kurdistan and Mesopotamia were taken from Persia. The latter
conquest gave the Ottomans an outlet to the Persian Gulf, where they were soon
engaged in a naval war with the Portuguese.
When Süleyman died in 1566, the Ottoman Empire
was a world power. Most of the great cities of Islam--Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem,
Damascus, Cairo, Tunis, and Baghdad--were under the sultan's crescent flag. The
Porte exercised direct control over Anatolia, the sub-Danubian Balkan provinces,
Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia. Egypt, Mecca, and the North African provinces
were governed under special regulations, as were satellite domains in Arabia and
the Caucasus, and among the Crimean Tartars. In addition, the native rulers of
Wallachia, Moldavia, Transylvania, and Ragusa (Dubrovnik) were vassals of the
sultan.
The Ottomans had always dealt with the European
states from a position of strength. Treaties with them took the form of truces
approved by the sultan as a favor to lesser princes, provided that payment of
tribute accompanied the settlement. The Ottomans were slow to recognize the
shift in the military balance to Europe and the reasons for it. They also
increasingly permitted European commerce to penetrate the barriers built to
protect imperial autarky. Some native craft industries were destroyed by the
influx of European goods, and, in general, the balance of trade shifted to the
disadvantage of the empire, making it in time an indebted client of European
producers.
European political intervention followed
economic penetration. In 1536 the Ottoman Empire, then at the height of its
power, had voluntarily granted concessions to France, but the system of
capitulations introduced at that time was later used to impose important
limitations on Ottoman sovereignty. Commercial privileges were greatly extended,
and residents who came under the protection of a treaty country were thereby
made subject to the jurisdiction of that country's law rather than Ottoman law,
an arrangement that led to flagrant abuses of justice. The last thirty years of
the sixteenth century saw the rapid onset of a decline in Ottoman power
symbolized by the defeat of the Turkish fleet by the Spanish and Portuguese at
the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 and by the unbridled bloody succession struggles
within the imperial palace, the Seraglio of Constantinople. Top
Köprülü Era
Ottoman imperial decadence was finally halted
by a notable family of imperial bureaucrats, the Köprülü family, which for more
than forty years (1656-1703) provided the empire with grand viziers, combining
ambition and ruthlessness with genuine talent. Mehmet, followed by his son Ahmet,
overhauled the bureaucracy and instituted military reforms. Crete and Lemnos
were taken from Venice, and large provinces in Ukraine were wrested temporarily
from Poland and Russia. The Köprülü family also resumed the offensive against
Austria, pushing the Ottoman frontier to within 120 kilometers of Vienna. An
attempt in 1664 to capture the Habsburg capital was beaten back, but Ahmet
Köprülü extorted a huge tribute as the price of a nineteen-year truce. When it
expired in 1683, the Ottoman army again invaded Austria, laying siege to Vienna
for two months, only to be routed ultimately by a relief force led by the king
of Poland, Jan Sobieski.
The siege of Vienna was the high-water mark of
Ottoman expansion in Europe, and its failure opened Hungary to reconquest by the
European powers. In a ruinous sixteen-year war, Russia and the Holy
League--composed of Austria, Poland, and Venice, and organized under the aegis
of the pope--finally drove the Ottomans south of the Danube and east of the
Carpathians. Under the terms of the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699, the first in
which the Ottomans acknowledged defeat, Hungary, Transylvania, and Croatia were
formally relinquished to Austria. Poland recovered Podolia, and Dalmatia and the
Morea were ceded to Venice. In a separate peace the next year, Russia received
the Azov region (see fig. 6).
The last of the Köprülü rulers fell from power
when Mustafa II (r. 1695-1703) was forced by rebellious janissaries to abdicate.
Under Ahmet III (r. 1703-30), effective control of the government passed to the
military leaders. Ahmet III's reign is referred to as the "tulip period" because
of the popularity of tulip cultivation in Istanbul during those years. At this
time, Peter the Great of Russia moved to eliminate the Ottoman presence on the
north shore of the Black Sea. Russia's main objective in the region subsequently
was to win access to warm-water ports on the Black Sea and then to obtain an
opening to the Mediterranean through the Ottoman-controlled Bosporus and
Dardanelles straits. Despite territorial gains at Ottoman expense, however,
Russia was unable to achieve these goals, and the Black Sea remained for the
time an "Ottoman lake" on which Russian warships were prohibited.
Top
External Threats and
Internal Transformations
During the eighteenth century, the Ottoman
Empire was almost continuously at war with one or more of its enemies--Persia,
Poland, Austria, and Russia. Under the humiliating terms of the Treaty of
Kuchuk-Kaynarja that ended the Russo-Ottoman War of 1768-74, the Porte abandoned
the Tartar khanate in the Crimea, granted autonomy to the Trans-Danubian
provinces, allowed Russian ships free access to Ottoman waters, and agreed to
pay a large war indemnity.
The implications of the decline of Ottoman
power, the vulnerability and attractiveness of the empire's vast holdings, the
stirrings of nationalism among its subject peoples, and the periodic crises
resulting from these and other factors became collectively known to European
diplomats in the nineteenth century as "the Eastern Question." In 1853 Tsar
Nicholas I of Russia described the Ottoman Empire as "the sick man of Europe."
The problem from the viewpoint of European diplomacy was how to dispose of the
empire in such a manner that no one power would gain an advantage at the expense
of the others and upset the political balance of Europe.
The first nineteenth-century crisis to bring
about European intervention was the Greek War of Independence (1821-32). In 1827
an Anglo-French fleet destroyed the Ottoman and Egyptian fleets at the Battle of
Navarino, while the Russian army advanced as far as Edirne before a cease-fire
was called in 1829. The European powers forced the Porte to recognize Greek
independence under the London Convention of 1832.
Muhammad Ali, an Ottoman officer who had been
designated pasha of Egypt by the sultan in 1805, had given substantial aid to
the Ottoman cause in the Greek war. When he was not rewarded as promised for his
assistance, he invaded Syria in 1831 and pursued the retreating Ottoman army
deep into Anatolia. In desperation, the Porte appealed to Russia for support.
Britain then intervened, constraining Muhammad Ali to withdraw from Anatolia to
Syria. The price the sultan paid Russia for its assistance was the Treaty of
Hünkar Iskelesi of 1833. Under this treaty, the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits
were to be closed on Russian demand to naval vessels of other powers.
War with Muhammad Ali resumed in 1839, and
Ottoman forces were again defeated. Russia waived its rights under the 1833
treaty and aligned itself with British efforts to support the Ottoman Empire
militarily and diplomatically. Under the London Convention of 1840, Muhammad Ali
was forced to abandon his claim to Syria, but he was recognized as hereditary
ruler of Egypt under nominal Ottoman suzerainty. Under an additional protocol,
in 1841 the Porte undertook to close the straits to warships of all powers.
The Ottoman Empire fought two more wars with
Russia in the nineteenth century. The Crimean War (1854-56) pitted France,
Britain, and the Ottoman Empire against Russia. Under the Treaty of Paris, which
ended the war, Russia abandoned its claim to protect Orthodox Christians in the
Ottoman Empire and renounced the right to intervene in the Balkans. War resumed
between Russia and the Ottoman Empire in 1877. Russia opened hostilities in
response to Ottoman suppression of uprisings in Bulgaria and to the threat posed
to Serbia by Ottoman forces. The Russian army had driven through Bulgaria and
reached as far as Edirne when the Porte acceded to the terms imposed by a new
agreement, the Treaty of San Stefano. The treaty reduced Ottoman holdings in
Europe to eastern Thrace and created a large, independent Bulgarian state under
Russian protection.
Refusing to accept the dominant position of
Russia in the Balkans, the other European powers called the Congress of Berlin
in 1878. At this conclave, the Europeans agreed to a much smaller autonomous
Bulgarian state under nominal Ottoman suzerainty. Serbia and Romania were
recognized as fully independent states, and the Ottoman provinces of Bosnia and
Herzegovina were placed under Austrian administration. Cyprus, although
remaining technically part of the Ottoman Empire, became a British protectorate.
For all its wartime exertions, Russia received only minor territorial
concessions in Bessarabia and the Caucasus. In the course of the nineteenth
century, France seized Algeria and Tunisia, while Britain began its occupation
of Egypt in 1882. In all these cases, the occupied territories formerly had
belonged to the Ottoman Empire.
The Ottoman Empire had a dual economy in the
nineteenth century consisting of a large subsistence sector and a small
colonial-style commercial sector linked to European markets and controlled by
foreign interests. The empire's first railroads, for example, were built by
foreign investors to bring the cash crops of Anatolia's coastal
valleys--tobacco, grapes, and other fruit--to Smyrna (Izmir) for processing and
export. The cost of maintaining a modern army without a thorough reform of
economic institutions caused expenditures to be made in excess of tax revenues.
Heavy borrowing from foreign banks in the 1870s to reinforce the treasury and
the undertaking of new loans to pay the interest on older ones created a
financial crisis that in 1881 obliged the Porte to surrender administration of
the Ottoman debt to a commission representing foreign investors. The debt
commission collected public revenues and transferred the receipts directly to
creditors in Europe.
The 1860s and early 1870s saw the emergence of
the Young Ottoman movement among Western-oriented intellectuals who wanted to
see the empire accepted as an equal by the European powers. They sought to adopt
Western political institutions, including an efficient centralized government,
an elected parliament, and a written constitution. The "Ottomanism" they
advocated also called for an integrated dynastic state that would subordinate
Islam to secular interests and allow non-Muslim subjects to participate in
representative parliamentary institutions.
In 1876 the hapless sultan was deposed by a
fetva (legal opinion) obtained by Midhat Pasha, a reformist minister
sympathetic to the aims of the Young Ottomans. His successor, Abdül Hamid II (r.
1876-1909), came to the throne with the approval of Midhat and other reformers.
In December of that year, on the eve of the war with Russia, the new sultan
promulgated a constitution, based on European models, that had been drafted by
senior political, military, and religious officials under Midhat's direction.
Embodying the substance of the Young Ottoman program, this document created a
representative parliament, guaranteed religious liberty, and provided for
enlarged freedom of expression. Abdül Hamid II's acceptance of constitutionalism
was a temporary tactical expedient to gain the throne, however. Midhat was
dismissed in February 1877 and was later murdered. The sultan called the
empire's first parliament but dissolved it within a year.
Unrest in Eastern Rumelia led the European
powers to insist on the union of that province with Bulgaria in 1885. Meanwhile,
Greek and Bulgarian partisans were carrying on a running battle with Ottoman
forces in Macedonia. In addition, the repression of revolutionary activities in
Armenia during 1894-96 cost about 300,000 lives and aroused European public
opinion against the Ottoman regime. Outside support for a rebellion on Crete
also caused the Porte to declare war on Greece in 1897. Although the Ottoman
army defeated the Greeks decisively in Thrace, the European powers forced a
compromise peace that kept Crete under Ottoman suzerainty while installing the
son of the Greek king as its governor.
More isolated from Europe than it had been for
half a century, the Ottoman regime could count on support only from Germany,
whose friendship offered Abdül Hamid II a congenial alternative to British and
French intervention. In 1902 Germany was granted a ninety-nine-year concession
to build and operate a Berlin-to-Baghdad rail connection. Germany continued to
invest in the Ottoman economy, and German officers held training and command
posts in the Ottoman army.
Opposition to the sultan's regime continued to
assert itself among Westernized intellectuals and liberal members of the ruling
class. Some continued to advocate "Ottomanism," whereas others argued for pan-Turanism,
the union of Turkic-speaking peoples inside and outside the Ottoman Empire. The
Turkish nationalist ideologist of the period was the writer Ziya Gökalp, who
defined Turkish nationalism within the context of the Ottoman Empire. Gökalp
went much farther than his contemporaries, however, by calling for the adoption
of the vernacular in place of Ottoman Turkish. Gökalp's advocacy of a national
Turkish state in which folk culture and Western values would play equally
important revitalizing roles foreshadowed events a quarter-century in the
future. Top
The Young Turks
The repressive policies of Abdül Hamid II
fostered disaffection, especially among those educated in Europe or in
Westernized schools. Young officers and students who conspired against the
sultan's regime coalesced into small groups, largely outside Istanbul. One young
officer, Mustafa Kemal (later known as Atatürk), organized a secret society
among fellow officers in Damascus and, later, in Thessaloniki (Salonika) in
present-day Greece. Atatürk's group merged with other nationalist reform
organizations in 1907 to form the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). Also
known as the Young Turks, this group sought to restore the 1876 constitution and
unify the diverse elements of the empire into a homogeneous nation through
greater government centralization under a parliamentary regime.
In July 1908, army units in Macedonia revolted
and demanded a return to constitutional government. Appearing to yield, Abdül
Hamid II approved parliamentary elections in November in which the CUP won all
but one of the Turkish seats under a system that allowed proportional
representation of all millets . The Young Turk government was weakened
by splits between nationalist and liberal reformers, however, and was threatened
by traditionalist Muslims and by demands from non-Turkish communities for
greater autonomy. Abdül Hamid II was forced to abdicate and was succeeded by his
brother, Mehmet V, in 1909. Foreign powers took advantage of the political
instability in Istanbul to seize portions of the empire. Austria annexed Bosnia
and Herzegovina immediately after the 1908 revolution, and Bulgaria proclaimed
its complete independence. Italy declared war in 1911 and seized Libya. Having
earlier formed a secret alliance, Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria
invaded Ottoman-held Macedonia and Thrace in October 1912. Ottoman forces were
defeated, and the empire lost all of its European holdings except part of
eastern Thrace.
The disasters befalling the empire led to
internal political change. The liberal government in power since July 1912 was
overthrown in January 1913 in a coup engineered by Enver Pasha, and the most
authoritarian elements of the Young Turk movement gained full control. A second
Balkan war broke out in June 1913, when the Balkan allies began fighting among
themselves over the division of the spoils from the first war. Taking advantage
of the situation, Ottoman forces turned on Bulgaria, regaining Edirne and
establishing the western boundary of the empire at the Maritsa River.
After a brief period of constitutional rule,
the leadership of the CUP emerged as a military dictatorship with power
concentrated in the hands of a triumvirate consisting of Mehmet Talat Pasha,
Ahmet Cemal Pasha, and Enver, who, as minister of war, was its acknowledged
leader in the war. Top
World War I
As the two European alliance systems drew
closer to war in 1914, Enver's pronounced pro-German sympathies, shared by many
in the military and bureaucracy, prevailed over the pragmatic neutrality
proposed by Talat and Cemal. Germany had been pro-Ottoman during the Balkan
wars, but the Porte had no outstanding differences with either Britain or France
in the summer of 1914. In guiding his government toward alignment with Germany,
Enver was able to play on fear of the traditional Ottoman enemy, Russia, the
ally of Britain and France in the war.
On August 2, 1914, Enver concluded a secret
treaty of alliance with Germany. General mobilization was ordered the next day,
and in the following weeks concessions granted to foreign powers under the
capitulations were canceled. It remained for Germany, however, to provide the
casus belli. Two German military vessels--the battleship Göben and the
heavy cruiser Breslau --that had been caught in a neutral Ottoman port
when war broke out in Europe were turned over to the Ottoman navy. In October
they put to sea with German officers and crews and shelled Odessa and other
Russian ports while flying the Ottoman flag. Russia declared war on the Ottoman
Empire on November 5, followed the next day by Britain and France. Within six
months, the Ottoman army of about 800,000 men was engaged in a four-front war
that became part of the greater conflict of World War I.
Enver launched an ill-prepared offensive in the
winter of 1914-15 against the Russians in the Caucasus, vainly hoping that an
impressive demonstration of Ottoman strength there would incite an insurrection
among the tsar's Turkish-speaking subjects. Instead, a Russian counteroffensive
inflicted staggering losses on Ottoman forces, driving them back to Lake Van.
During the campaign in eastern Anatolia, assistance was given to the Russians by
Armenians, who saw them as liberators rather than invaders. Armenian units were
also part of the Russian army. Enver claimed that an Armenian conspiracy existed
and that a generalized revolt by the Armenians was imminent. During the winter
months of 1915, as the shattered Ottoman army retreated toward Lake Van, a
massive deportation of many Armenians was undertaken in the war zone to other
Ottoman Provinces such as Lebanon, Syria, etc. It shortly degenerated into a
mutual massacre among the local peoples. The most conservative estimates put the
number of dead at 350,000, but other sources cite other figures.The situation of
those Armenians who survived the march out of Anatolia was scarcely improved
under the military government in Syria. Others managed to escape behind Russian
lines. The episode occasioned a revulsion in Western Europe that had its effect
in the harsh terms meted out by the Allies in the postwar settlement.
In the spring of 1915, the Allies undertook
naval and land operations in the Dardanelles that were intended to knock the
Ottoman Empire out of the war with one blow and to open the straits for the
passage of supplies to Russia. Amphibious landings were carried out at
Gallipoli, but British forces, vigorously opposed by forces commanded by Atatürk,
were unable to expand their beachheads. The last units of the expeditionary
force were evacuated by February 1916.
In Mesopotamia the Ottoman army defeated a
British expeditionary force that had marched on Baghdad from a base established
at Basra in 1915. The British mounted a new offensive in 1917, taking Baghdad
and driving Ottoman forces out of Mesopotamia. In eastern Anatolia, Russian
armies won a series of battles that carried their control west to Erzincan by
July 1916, although Atatürk, who was then given command of the eastern front,
led a counteroffensive that checked the Russian advance. Russia left the war
after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. The new Russian government concluded the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers in March 1918, under which the
Ottoman Empire regained its eastern provinces.
Sharif Husayn ibn Ali, the sultan's regent in
Mecca and the Hijaz region of western Arabia, launched the Arab Revolt in 1916.
The British provided advisers, of whom T.E. Lawrence was to become the best
known, as well as supplies. In October 1917, British forces in Egypt opened an
offensive into Palestine; they took Jerusalem by December. After hard fighting,
British and Arab forces entered Damascus in October 1918. Late in the campaign,
Atatürk succeeded to command of Turkish forces in Syria and withdrew many units
intact into Anatolia.
Ottoman resistance was exhausted. Early in
October, the war government resigned, and the Young Turk triumvirate--Enver,
Talat, and Cemal--fled to exile in Germany. Mehmet VI (r. 1918-22), who had
succeeded to the rule upon his brother's death in July, sued for peace through a
government headed by liberal ministers that signed an armistice at Mudros on
October 30, 1918, that had been dictated by the Allies. Allied warships steamed
through the Dardanelles and anchored off Istanbul on November 12, the day after
the end of the war in Europe. In four years of war, the Ottoman Empire had
mobilized about 2.8 million men, of whom about 325,000 were killed in battle. In
addition, many civilians, including both Turks and Armenians, are believed to
have died of war-related causes. Talat and Cemal, who were held responsible for
the deportation of Armenians and the mistreatment of refugees, were assassinated
by Armenian nationalists in 1921. The following year, Enver was killed while
fighting the Bolsheviks in Central Asia. Top
Republic of
Turkey................................1922-
Atatürk and the Turkish Nation
Atatürk returned to Istanbul at the end of the
war, his military reputation untarnished by the defeat of the empire that he had
served. Revered by his troops as well as the Turkish masses, Atatürk soon
emerged as the standard-bearer of the Turkish nationalist movement.
Born in Thessaloniki in 1881, Atatürk was the
son of a minor government official in a city where Turks outnumbered Greeks. His
ardent Turkish nationalism dated from his early days as a cadet in the military
school at Monastir (in the present-day Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia)
during a time of constant conflict between Ottoman troops and Macedonian
guerrillas, who attacked the Turkish population in the region. Following
graduation from the military academy in Istanbul, Atatürk held various staff
positions and served in garrisons at Damascus and Thessaloniki, where he became
involved in nationalist activities. He took part in the coup that forced Abdül
Hamid II's abdication in 1909. Atatürk organized irregular forces in Libya
during the war with Italy in 1911 and subsequently held field commands in the
two Balkan wars (1912-13). Assigned to a post in the Ministry of War after the
armistice, Atatürk quickly recognized the extent of Allied intentions toward the
Ottoman Empire. Top
Plans for Partitioning
Turkey
Allied troops--British, French, and Italian, as
well as a contingent of Greeks--occupied Istanbul and were permitted under the
conditions of the armistice to intervene in areas where they considered their
interests to be imperiled. During the war, the Allies had negotiated a series of
agreements that outlined not only the definitive dismantling of the Ottoman
Empire but also the partitioning among them of what Turkish nationalists had
come to regard as the Turkish homeland. According to these agreements, Russia
was at last to be rewarded with possession of Istanbul and the straits, as well
as eastern Anatolia as far south as Bitlis below Lake Van. France and Italy were
conceded portions of Anatolia, and Britain had promised Izmir to
Greece--although it had also been promised to Italy--to encourage Greek entry
into the war in 1917.
The Bolshevik government had renounced tsarist
claims when it made its separate peace at Brest-Litovsk, but Britain, France,
Italy, and Greece all pressed their respective claims at the Paris peace talks
in 1919. All agreed with the provisions of President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen
Points calling for an independent Armenia and an autonomous Kurdistan. How the
Allies would implement the clause providing that the Turkish-speaking nation
"should be assured of a secure sovereignty" was not clear.
The terms of a peace treaty with the Ottoman
Empire were presented by the Allies in April 1920 at San Remo, Italy, and were
embodied in the Treaty of Sèvres, which was concluded the following August. The
treaty was shaped by the wartime agreements made by the Allies. In addition,
France received a mandate over Lebanon and Syria (including what is now Hatay
Province in Turkey), and Britain's mandate covered Iraq, Jordan, and Palestine.
Eastern Thrace up to a line from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara as well as
Izmir and its hinterland were to be occupied by Greece, with the final
disposition of the territory to be decided in a plebiscite. The Treaty of Sèvres
was never enforced as such, as events in Turkey soon rendered it irrelevant.
Top
Nationalist Movement
The sultan was kept in the custody of the
Allies to ensure the cooperation of an Ottoman administration, which had
effective jurisdiction only in Istanbul and part of northern Anatolia, while
they disposed of the rest of his empire. At the same time, a Turkish nationalist
movement was organized under Atatürk's leadership to resist the dismemberment of
Turkish-speaking areas. Atatürk had been sent to eastern Anatolia as inspector
general, ostensibly to supervise the demobilization of Ottoman forces and the
disposition of supplies, but more particularly to remove him from the capital
after he had expressed opposition to the Allied occupation there. Upon his
arrival at Samsun in May 1919, Atatürk proceeded to rally support for the
nationalist cause and to recruit a nationalist army. Guerrilla warfare against
the government gradually grew to full-fledged campaigns against the Greek army
that threatened to involve the other Allied occupation forces.
In July 1919, a nationalist congress met at
Erzurum with Atatürk presiding to endorse a protocol calling for an independent
Turkish state. In September the congress reconvened at Sivas. Although the
delegates voiced their loyalty to the sultan-caliph, they also pledged to
maintain the integrity of the Turkish nation. The congress adopted the National
Pact, which defined objectives of the nationalist movement that were not open to
compromise. Among its provisions were the renunciation of claims to the Arab
provinces, the principle of the absolute integrity of all remaining Ottoman
territory inhabited by a Turkish Muslim majority, a guarantee of minority
rights, the retention of Istanbul and the straits, and rejection of any
restriction on the political, judicial, and financial rights of the nation.
Negotiations continued between the nationalist
congress and the Ottoman government, but to no avail. Atatürk resigned from the
army when relieved of his duties. The naming of a chief minister in Istanbul
considered sympathetic to the nationalist cause brought a brief improvement in
relations, however, and the Ottoman parliament, which met in January 1920,
approved the National Pact. In reaction to these developments, Allied occupation
forces seized public buildings and reinforced their positions in the capital,
arrested and deported numerous nationalist leaders, and had parliament
dismissed.
Allied actions brought a quick response from
the nationalists. In April they convened the Grand National Assembly in Ankara,
in defiance of the Ottoman regime, and elected Atatürk its president. The Law of
Fundamental Organization (also known as the Organic Law) was adopted in January
1921. With this legislation, the nationalists proclaimed that sovereignty
belonged to the nation and was exercised on its behalf by the Grand National
Assembly. Top
War of Independence
During the summer and fall of 1919, with
authorization from the Supreme Allied War Council, the Greeks occupied Edirne,
Bursa, and Izmir. A landing was effected at the latter port under the protection
of an Allied flotilla that included United States warships. The Greeks soon
moved as far as Usak, 175 kilometers inland from Izmir. Military action between
Turks and Greeks in Anatolia in 1920 was inconclusive, but the nationalist cause
was strengthened the next year by a series of important victories. In January
and again in April, Ismet Pasha defeated the Greek army at Inönü, blocking its
advance into the interior of Anatolia. In July, in the face of a third
offensive, the Turkish forces fell back in good order to the Sakarya River,
eighty kilometers from Ankara, where Atatürk took personal command and
decisively defeated the Greeks in a twenty-day battle.
An improvement in Turkey's diplomatic situation
accompanied its military success. Impressed by the viability of the nationalist
forces, both France and Italy withdrew from Anatolia by October 1921. Treaties
were signed that year with Soviet Russia, the first European power to recognize
the nationalists, establishing the boundary between the two countries. As early
as 1919, the Turkish nationalists had cooperated with the Bolshevik government
in attacking the newly proclaimed Armenian republic. Armenian resistance was
broken by the summer of 1921, and the Kars region was occupied by the Turks. In
1922 the nationalists recognized the Soviet absorption of what remained of the
Armenian state.
The final drive against the Greeks began in
August 1922. In September the Turks moved into Izmir, where thousands were
killed during the ensuing fighting and in the disorder that followed the city's
capture. Greek soldiers and refugees, who had crowded into Izmir, were rescued
by Allied ships.
The nationalist army then concentrated on
driving remaining Greek forces out of eastern Thrace, but the new campaign
threatened to put the Turks in direct confrontation with Allied contingents
defending access to the straits and holding Istanbul, where they were protecting
the Ottoman government. A crisis was averted when Atatürk accepted a
British-proposed truce that brought an end to the fighting and also signaled
that the Allies were unwilling to intervene on behalf of the Greeks. In
compliance with the Armistice of Mundanya, concluded in October, Greek troops
withdrew beyond the Maritsa River, allowing the Turkish nationalists to occupy
territory up to that boundary. The agreement entailed acceptance of a continued
Allied presence in the straits and in Istanbul until a comprehensive settlement
could be reached.
At the end of October 1922, the Allies invited
the nationalist and Ottoman governments to a conference at Lausanne,
Switzerland, but Atatürk was determined that the nationalist government should
be Turkey's sole representative. In November 1922, the Grand National Assembly
separated the offices of sultan and caliph and abolished the former. The
assembly further stated that the Ottoman regime had ceased to be the government
of Turkey when the Allies seized the capital in 1920, in effect abolishing the
Ottoman Empire. Mehmet VI went into exile on Malta, and his cousin, Abdülmecid,
was named caliph.
Turkey was the only power defeated in World War
I to negotiate with the Allies as an equal and to influence the provisions of
the resultant treaty. Ismet Pasha was the chief Turkish negotiator at the
Lausanne Conference, which opened in November 1922. The National Pact of 1919
was the basis of the Turkish negotiating position, and its provisions were
incorporated in the Treaty of Lausanne, concluded in July 1923. With this
treaty, the Allies recognized the present-day territory of Turkey and denied
Turkey's claim to the Mosul area in the east (in present-day Iraq) and Hatay,
which included the Mediterranean port of Alexandretta (Iskenderun). The boundary
with the newly created state of Iraq was settled by a League of Nations
initiative in 1926, and Iskenderun was ceded in 1939 by France during its rule
as mandatory power for Syria.
Detailed provisions of the treaty regulated use
of the straits. General supervisory powers were given to a straits commission
under the League of Nations, and the straits area was to be demilitarized after
completion of the Allied withdrawal. Turkey was to hold the presidency of the
commission, which included the Soviet Union among its members. The capitulations
and foreign administration of the Ottoman public debt, which infringed on the
sovereignty of Turkey, were abolished. Turkey, however, assumed 40 percent of
the Ottoman debt, the remainder being apportioned among other former Ottoman
territories. Turkey was also required to maintain low tariffs on imports from
signatory powers until 1929. The Treaty of Lausanne reaffirmed the equality of
Muslim and non-Muslim Turkish nationals. Turkey and Greece arranged a mandatory
exchange of their respective ethnic Greek and Turkish minorities, with the
exception of some Greeks in Istanbul and Turks in western Thrace and the
Dodecanese Islands.
On October 29, 1923, the Grand National
Assembly proclaimed the Republic of Turkey. Atatürk was named its president and
Ankara its capital, and the modern state of Turkey was born.Top
Atatürk's Reforms
On assuming office, Atatürk initiated a series
of radical reforms of the country's political, social, and economic life that
were aimed at rapidly transforming Turkey into a modern state (see table A). A
secular legal code, modeled along European lines, was introduced that completely
altered laws affecting women, marriage, and family relations.
Atatürk also urged his fellow citizens to look
and act like Europeans. Turks were encouraged to wear European-style clothing.
Surnames were adopted: Mustafa Kemal, for example, became Kemal Atatürk, and
Ismet Pasha took Inönü as his surname to commemorate his victories there.
Likewise, Atatürk insisted on cutting links with the past that he considered
anachronistic. Titles of honor were abolished. The wearing of the fez, which had
been introduced a century earlier as a modernizing reform to replace the turban,
was outlawed because it had become for the nationalists a symbol of the
reactionary Ottoman regime.
The ideological foundation of Atatürk's reform
program became known as Kemalism. Its main points were enumerated in the "Six
Arrows" of Kemalism: republicanism, nationalism, populism, reformism, etatism (statism),
and secularism. These were regarded as "fundamental and unchanging principles"
guiding the republic, and were written into its constitution. The principle of
republicanism was contained in the constitutional declaration that "sovereignty
is vested in the nation" and not in a single ruler. Displaying considerable
ingenuity, Atatürk set about reinventing the Turkish language and recasting
Turkish history in a nationalist mold. The president himself went out into the
park in Ankara on Sunday, the newly established day of rest, to teach the Latin
alphabet adapted to Turkish as part of the language reform. Populism encompassed
not only the notion that all Turkish citizens were equal but that all of them
were Turks. What remained of the millet system that had provided
communal autonomy to other ethnic groups was abolished. Reformism legitimized
the radical means by which changes in Turkish political and social life were
implemented. Etatism emphasized the central role reserved to the state in
directing the nation's economic activities. This concept was cited particularly
to justify state planning of Turkey's mixed economy and large-scale investment
in state-owned enterprises. An important aim of Atatürk's economic policies was
to prevent foreign interests from exercising undue influence on the Turkish
economy.
Of all the Kemalist reforms, the exclusion of
Islam from an official role in the life of the nation shocked Atatürk's
contemporaries most profoundly. The abolition of the caliphate ended any
connection between the state and religion. The Islamic religious orders were
suppressed, religious schools were closed, public education was secularized, and
the seriat was revoked. These changes required readjustment of the
entire social framework of the Turkish people. Despite subsequent protests,
Atatürk conceded nothing to the traditionalists.
In 1924 the Grand National Assembly adopted a
new constitution to replace the 1876 document that had continued to serve as the
legal framework of the republican government. The 1924 constitution vested
sovereign power in the Grand National Assembly as representative of the people,
to whom it also guaranteed basic civil rights. Under the new document, the
assembly would be a unicameral body elected to a four-year term by universal
suffrage. Its legislative authority would include responsibility for approving
the budget, ratifying treaties, and declaring war. The president of the republic
would be elected to a four-year term by the assembly, and he in turn would
appoint the prime minister, who was expected to enjoy the confidence of the
assembly (see table 3, Appendix A).
Throughout his presidency, repeatedly extended
by the assembly, Atatürk governed Turkey essentially by personal rule in a
one-party state. He founded the Republican People's Party (Cumhuriyet Halk
Partisi--CHP) in 1923 to represent the nationalist movement in elections and to
serve as a vanguard party in support of the Kemalist reform program. Atatürk's
Six Arrows were an integral part of the CHP's political platform. By controlling
the CHP, Atatürk also controlled the assembly and assured support there for the
government he had appointed. Atatürk regarded a stage of personal authoritarian
rule as necessary to secure his reforms before he entrusted the government of
the country to the democratic process.Top
Foreign Policy
Atatürk's foreign policy, which had as its main
object the preservation of the independence and integrity of the new republic,
was careful, conservative, and successful. The president enunciated the
principle of "peace at home and peace abroad." This guideline, whose observance
was necessary to the task of internal nation building, became the cornerstone of
Turkey's foreign relations.
By the end of 1925, friendship treaties had
been negotiated with fifteen states. These included a twenty-year treaty of
friendship and neutrality signed that year with the Soviet Union that remained
in effect until unilaterally abrogated by the Soviet Union in 1945. Turkey
subsequently joined Greece, Romania, and Yugoslavia in the Balkan Pact to
counter the increasingly aggressive foreign policy of fascist Italy and the
effect of a potential Bulgarian alignment with Nazi Germany. Turkey also entered
into a nonaggression treaty with Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran in 1937.
Atatürk attained his greatest diplomatic
success in 1936, when Turkey persuaded the signatory powers of the Treaty of
Lausanne to allow Turkish control and remilitarization of the straits as part of
the Montreux Convention. Under its terms, merchant vessels were to continue to
have freedom of navigation of the straits, but Turkey took over the functions of
the international commission for registry, sanitary inspection, and the levying
of tolls. Turkey was permitted to refortify the straits area and, if at war or
under imminent threat of war, to close them to warships.Top
Table A. Chronology of Major
Kemalist Reforms
Year |
Reform |
1922 |
Sultanate abolished (November 1). |
1923 |
Treaty of Lausanne secured (July 24).
Republic of Turkey with capital at Ankara proclaimed (October 29). |
1924 |
Caliphate abolished (March 3). Traditional religious schools closed,
seriat abolished.
Constitution adopted (April 20). |
1925 |
Dervish brotherhoods abolished.
Fez outlawed by the Hat Law (November 25). Veiling of women discouraged;
Western clothing for men and women encouraged. Western (Gregorian) calendar adopted. |
1926 |
New civil, commercial, and penal codes
based on European models adopted. New civil code ended Islamic polygamy and
divorce by renunciation and introduced civil marriage. Millet system ended. |
1927 |
First systematic census. |
1928 |
New Turkish alphabet (modified Latin form)
adopted. State declared secular (April 10); constitutional provision
establishing Islam as official religion deleted. |
1933 |
Islamic call to worship and public
readings of the Kuran (Quran) required to be in Turkish rather than Arabic. |
1934 |
Women given the vote and the right to hold
office. Law of Surnames adopted--Mustafa Kemal given the name Kemal Atatürk (Father
Turk) by the Grand National Assembly; Ismet Pasha took surname of Inönü. |
1935 |
Sunday adopted as legal weekly holiday.
State role in managing economy written into the constitution.
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