History of Turkey

History of Turkey

Seljuq dynasty 1071–1325 • Great Seljuq Empire 1071–1194 • Sultanate of Rûm 1075–1307 • under the Seljuks after 1071     Anatolian Beyliks    • Chaka of Smyrna 1081–1098    • Ahlatshahs 1085–1207    • Danishmend 1071–1178    • Mengücek 1072–1277    • Saltuklu 1072-1202 under the Ilkhanate 1243–1335 Anatolian Beyliks • Karamanoglu 1250–1487 • Ottomans 1302–1922 • Aydınoğlu 1300–1425 • Beylik of Teke 1321–1425 • Candaroğlu 1291–1461 • Dulkadir 1348–1507 • Germiyan 1300–1429 • Eşrefoğlu 1285-1326 • Eretna 1335–1390 • Hamidoğlu 1300-1391 • Kadi Burhan al-Din 1381–1398 • Karesi 1296–1357 • Beylik of Lâdik 1262–1391 • Pervâneoğlu 1262–1391 • Menteşe 1261–1424 • Ramazanoğlu 1352–1608 • Saruhan 1300–1410 • Sâhipataoğlu 1275–1341 Ottoman Dynasty 1302–1922 Occupation 1918–1923 Republic of Turkey from 1923 Related topics Republic of Hatay 1938-1939 Turkish Republic of  Northern Cyprus from 1983 List of sultans of the Ottoman Empire List of Presidents of Turkey Economic history of Turkey Constitutional history of Turkey Military history of Turkey

The history of Turkey refers to the history of the country now called Turkey. Although the lands have an ancient history, Turkic migration to the country is relatively new. The Turks, a society whose language belongs to the Turkic language family started moving from their original homelands to the modern Turkey in the 11th century. After the Turkic Seljuq Empire defeated forces of the Byzantine Empire at the Battle of Manzikert, the process was accelerated and the country was referred to as 'Turchia' in the Europe as early as the 12th century.^[1] The Selquk dynasty controlled Turkey until the country was invaded by the Mongols following the Battle of Kosedag. During the years when the country was under Mongol rule, some small Turkish states were born. One of these states was the Ottoman beylik which quickly controlled Western Anatolia and conquered much of Rumelia. After finally conquering Istanbul, the Ottoman state would become a large empire, called the Turkish Empire in Europe. Next, the Empire expanded to Eastern Anatolia, the Caucasus, the Middle East, the Central Europe and the North Africa. Although the Ottoman Empire's power and prestige peaked in the 16th century; it did not fully reach the technological advance in military capabilities of the Western powers in the 19th century. Nevertheless, Turkey managed to maintain the independence though some of its territories were ceded to its neighbours and some small countries gained independence from it. Following the World War I in which Turkey was defeated, most of the Anatolia and Eastern Thrace was occupied by the Allied powers including the capital city Istanbul. In order to resist the occupation, a cadre of young military officers formed a government in Ankara. The elected leader of the Ankara Government, Mustafa Kemal organized a successful war of independence against the Allied powers. After the liberation of Anatolia and the Eastern Thrace, the Republic of Turkey was established in 1923 with capital city Ankara.

Antiquity

Portion of the legendary walls of Troy (VII), identified as the site of the Trojan War (ca. 1200 BCE)

The Anatolian peninsula, comprising most of the Asian part of Turkey, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited regions in the world. The earliest Neolithic settlements such as Çatalhöyük (Pottery Neolithic), Çayönü (Pre-Pottery Neolithic A to Pottery Neolithic), Nevalı Çori (Pre-Pottery Neolithic B), Hacılar (Pottery Neolithic), Göbekli Tepe (Pre-Pottery Neolithic A) and Mersin are considered to be among the earliest human settlements in the world.^[2]

The settlement of Troy starts in the Neolithic and continued into the Iron Age. Through recorded history, Anatolians have spoken Indo-European, Semitic and Kartvelian languages, as well as many languages of uncertain affiliation. In fact, given the antiquity of the Indo-European Hittite and Luwian languages, some scholars have proposed Anatolia as the hypothetical center from which the Indo-European languages have radiated.^[3] The Hattians inhabited the southeastern part of Anatolia, noted at least as early as ca. 2300, until they were gradually absorbed ca. 2000-1700 BC by Indo-European Hittites. The Hittites founded the first major empire in the area, from the 18th through the 13th century BC.

The Celsus Library in Ephesus, dating from 135 AD.

The Assyrians colonized parts of southeastern Turkey as far back as 1950 BC until the year 612 BC, when the Assyrian Empire was conquered by the Chaldean dynasty in Babylon.^[4][5] Following the Hittie collapse, the Phrygians, an Indo-European people, achieved ascendancy until their kingdom was destroyed by the Cimmerians in the 7th century BCE.^[6] The most powerful of Phrygia's successor states were Lydia, Caria and Lycia. The Lydians and Lycians spoke languages that were fundamentally Indo-European, but both languages had acquired non-Indo-European elements prior to the Hittite and Hellenistic periods.

Starting around 1200 BC, the coast of Anatolia was heavily settled by Aeolian and Ionian Greeks. Numerous important cities were founded by these colonists, such as Miletus, Ephesus, Smyrna (modern Izmir), and Byzantium (later Constantinople and Istanbul). Anatolia was conquered by the Persian Achaemenid Empire during the 6th and 5th centuries BC and later fell to Alexander the Great in 334 BC.^[7] Anatolia was subsequently divided into a number of small Hellenistic kingdoms (including Bithynia, Cappadocia, Pergamum, and Pontus), all of which had succumbed to the Roman Republic by the mid-1st century BC.^[8]

In 324, the Roman emperor Constantine I chose Byzantium to be the new capital of the Roman Empire, renaming it New Rome (later Constantinople and Istanbul). After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, it became the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. ^[9]

Turkic migration

Before the Turkic settlement, the local population of Anatolia had reached an estimated level of 12 to 14 million people during the late Roman Period.^[10][11][12] The migration of Turks to the country of modern Turkey occurred during the main Turkic migration across most of Central Asia and into Europe and the Middle East which was between the 6th and 11th centuries. Mainly Turkic people living in the Seljuk Empire arrived Turkey in the eleventh century. The Seljuks proceeded to gradually conquer the Anatolian part of the Byzantine Empire. In the following centuries, the local population began to be assimilated into the Turkish people. More Turkic migrants began to intermingle with the local inhabitants over years, thus the Turkish-speaking population was bolstered.

Seljuq Dynasty

The House of Seljuk was a branch of the Kınık Oğuz Turks who resided on the periphery of the Muslim world, north of the Caspian and Aral Seas in the Yabghu Khaganate of the Oğuz confederacy^[13] in the 10th century. In the 11th century, the Turkic people living in the Seljuk Empire started migrating from their ancestral homelands towards the eastern regions of Anatolia, which eventually became a new homeland of Oğuz Turkic tribes following the Battle of Manzikert in 1071.

The victory of the Seljuks gave rise to the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, a separate branch of the larger Seljuk Empire ^[14] and to some Turkish principalities (beyliks), mostly situated towards the Eastern Anatolia which were vassals of or at war with Seljuk Sultanate of Rum.

Mongol Rule

A Mongol horse archer in the 13th century

In 1243, the Seljuk armies were defeated by the Mongols in the Battle of Kosedag, and the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm became a vassal of the Mongols. This caused the Seljuks to lose its power. Hulegu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan founded the Ilkhanate in the southwestern part of the Mongol Empire. The Ilkhanate State ruled Anatolia by Mongol military governors. Last Seljuk sultan died in 1308. The Mongol invasion of Transoxiana, Iran, Azerbaijan and Anatolia caused Turkomens to move to Western Anatolia. ^[15] The Turkomens founded some Anatolian principalities (beyliks) under the Mongol dominion in Turkey.^[16] The most powerful beyliks were the Karamanoğlu (or the Karamanid) and the Germiyan in the central area. Along the Aegean coast, from north to south, stretched Karesi, Saruhan, Aydınoğlu, Menteşe and Teke principalities. The Candaroğlu (also called İsfendiyaroğlu) controlled the Black Sea region round Kastamonu and Sinop.^[17] The Beylik of Ottoman Dynasty was situated in the northwest of Anatolia, around Söğüt, and it was a small and insignificant state at that time. The Ottoman beylik would, however, evolve into the Ottoman Empire over the next 200 years, expanding throughout the Balkans, Anatolia.^[18]

Ottoman Dynasty

Mehmed II enters Constantinople by Fausto Zonaro

The Ottoman beylik's first capital was located in Bursa in 1326. After expanding to Europe and Anatolia, in 1453, the Ottomans nearly completed the conquest of the Byzantine Empire by capturing its capital, Constantinople during the reign of Mehmed II. The Ottoman Empire would continue to expand into the Eastern Anatolia, Central Europe, the Caucasus, North and East Africa, the islands in the Mediterranean, Greater Syria, Mesopotamia, and the Arabian peninsula in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries.

The Ottoman Empire's power and prestige peaked in the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. The empire was often at odds with the Holy Roman Empire in its steady advance towards Central Europe through the Balkans and the southern part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.^[19] In addition, the Ottomans were often at war with Persia over territorial disputes. At sea, the empire contended with the Holy Leagues, composed of Habsburg Spain, the Republic of Venice and the Knights of St. John, for control of the Mediterranean. In the Indian Ocean, the Ottoman navy frequently confronted Portuguese fleets in order to defend its traditional monopoly over the maritime trade routes between East Asia and Western Europe; these routes faced new competition with the Portuguese discovery of the Cape of Good Hope in 1488.

The Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 marked the beginning of the Ottoman decline; some territories were lost by the treaty: Austria received all of Hungary and Transylvania except the Banat; Venice obtained most of Dalmatia along with the Morea (the Peloponnesus peninsula in southern Greece); Poland recovered Podolia.^[20] Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Ottoman Empire continued losing its territories, including Greece, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and the Balkans in the 1912–1913 Balkan Wars. Faced with territorial losses on all sides the Ottoman Empire forged an alliance with Germany who supported it with troops and equipment. The Ottoman Empire joined the World War I on the side of the Central Powers, after granting two German warships as refugees.

On October 30, 1918, the Armistice of Mudros was signed, followed by the imposition of Treaty of Sèvres on August 10, 1920 by Allied Powers, which was never ratified. The Treaty of Sèvres would break up the Ottoman Empire and force large concessions on territories of the Empire in favour of Greece, Italy, Britain and France.

Republic era

The occupation of some parts of the country by the Allies in the aftermath of World War I prompted the establishment of the Turkish national movement.^[19] Under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal, a military commander who had distinguished himself during the Battle of Gallipoli, the Turkish War of Independence was waged with the aim of revoking the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres.^[21] By September 18, 1922, the occupying armies were expelled. On November 1, the newly founded parliament formally abolished the Sultanate, thus ending 623 years of Ottoman rule. The Treaty of Lausanne of July 24, 1923, led to the international recognition of the sovereignty of the newly formed "Republic of Turkey" as the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, and the republic was officially proclaimed on October 29, 1923, in the new capital of Ankara.^[19] Mustafa Kemal became the republic's first President of Turkey and subsequently introduced many radical reforms with the aim of founding a new secular republic from the remnants of its Ottoman past.^[19] According to the Law on Family Names, the Turkish parliament presented Mustafa Kemal with the honorific surname "Atatürk" (Father of the Turks) in 1934.^[21]

Ankara, the capital of Turkey today

Turkey remained neutral during most of World War II but entered on the side of the Allies on February 23, 1945, as a ceremonial gesture and in 1945 became a charter member of the United Nations.^[22] Difficulties faced by Greece after the war in quelling a communist rebellion, along with demands by the Soviet Union for military bases in the Turkish Straits, prompted the United States to declare the Truman Doctrine in 1947. The doctrine enunciated American intentions to guarantee the security of Turkey and Greece, and resulted in large-scale U.S. military and economic support.^[23]

After participating with the United Nations forces in the Korean conflict, Turkey joined NATO in 1952, becoming a bulwark against Soviet expansion into the Mediterranean. Following a decade of intercommunal violence on the island of Cyprus and the Greek military coup of July 1974, overthrowing President Makarios and installing Nikos Sampson as a dictator, Turkey invaded the Republic of Cyprus in 1974. Nine years later the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) was established. Turkey is the only country that recognises the TRNC ^[24]

The single-party period was preceded by the multiparty democracy after 1945. The Turkish democracy was interrupted by military coups d'états in 1960, 1971, 1980 and 1997.^[25] In 1984, the PKK began an insurgency against the Turkish government; the conflict, which has claimed over 40,000 lives, continues today.^[26] Since the liberalization of the Turkish economy during the 1980s, the country has enjoyed stronger economic growth and greater political stability.^[27]

References