European Turkey

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

European Turkey or Turkey in Europe was the term used for the European territories of the Ottoman Empire, which was also alternatively called Turkey or the Turkish Empire by its contemporaries. European Turkey comprised the area between the Turkish Straits and the Sea of Marmara in the southeast to the Ottoman border in the northwest which extended to the eastern provinces of present-day Austria (until the outskirts of Vienna) and the western provinces of present-day Slovakia (such as Považie and its surrounding region) in the second half of the 17th century; the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to the north; and the Russian Empire to the northeast. The Ottoman territories in Europe included most of the Kingdom of Hungary (between 1526 and 1699) and almost all of the Balkan peninsula (between the late 14th and the early 20th centuries) and the Black Sea coastlines of present-day Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Russia and Georgia. Other coastlines of European Turkey included the Ottoman territories bordering the Mediterranean, Aegean, Ionian and Adriatic seas.