MLS 610B-81
Spring 2003

WEEK 3: Monday, February 3.
The Ottoman Empire
Umayyad dynasty (661-750) & Abbasid dynasty (750-1258):
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Sufism:
 
 
 

The Turks:
 
 
 
 
 

The rise of the Ottomans:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Ghaza:
 
 
 
 

Sultan Mehmet II captured Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, in 1453.  Henceforth known as Istanbul, the city became the seat of the Ottoman Empire, which boasted by far the most formidable military force (combined navy and army) in the world in the 16th and 17th centuries, due largely to their development and extensive use of cannon and gunpowder.

Janizaries:
 
 
 
 

The Ottoman’s conquest of Egypt and Syria (1516-17) brought the heartland of Islam under their control, giving them the vitally important duties of maintaining the holy cities, Mecca and Medina, and securing the safety of the pilgrimage.  The conquest of these territories led to an integration of Arab and Ottoman Turk Islamic practices and traditions.

Suliman the Magnificent (r. 1520-66):
 
 

The Ottoman Empire reached its height at the end of the 17th century.

Key Features of the Ottoman Empire:
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The Decline of the Ottoman Empire:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The history of 20th century Turkey was shaped by Kemal Attaturk, the “father of the Turks.”  He felt that the Ottoman Empire was too religious and that Islam hindered the country’s modernization.  Thus, after establishing the Republic of Turkey out of what remained of the Ottoman Empire in 1923, he instituted a number of major reforms:
 
 
 
 

Turkey faced a major communist insurgency during and after WWII, and the government’s victory in the ensuing civil war was achieved in part due to major assistance from the US.  Turkey entered NATO in 1952 and was a staunch anti-communist ally for the US throughout the Cold War. 

Beginning in the 1970s the Turkish government faced a major armed rebellion and separatist movement among its Kurdish minority in the mountainous terrain of the Southeastern part of the country.  Faced with fighting for over twenty years, the Turkish government defeated the rebellion through armed force and brutal repression in 1999.

The end of the Cold War and the 1990s has brought somewhat of a fundamentalist Islamic backlash to the fore in Turkey.  In 1996 the Islamist Virtue Party won the majority in a coalition government, and only military intervention kept them from gaining greater power in 1999, when the party was banned.  Elections in the fall of 2002, however, once again showed the strength of Turkey’s Islamicist movement, when the former Islamist Virtue Party, now renamed the Justice and Development Party, fared very well and won a massive overall majority of seats within the Turkish Parliament.