Middle East - Anthony Ham [452]
The Coming of the Turks: Seljuks & Ottomans
The Byzantine Empire began to decline from 1071, when the Seljuk Turks defeated its forces at Manzikert, north of Lake Van. The Seljuks overran most of Anatolia, establishing a provincial capital at Konya. Their domains stretched across the Middle East and their distinctive, conical-roofed tombs still dot Turkey.
The Byzantines endeavoured to protect Constantinople and reclaim Anatolia, but during the Fourth Crusade (1202–04), which was supposedly instigated to save Eastern Christendom from the Muslims, an unruly Crusader force sacked Constantinople.
The Seljuks, meanwhile, were defeated by the Mongols at Köse Dağ in 1243. The region fractured into a mosaic of Turkish beyliks (principalities) and Mongol fiefdoms, but by 1300, a single Turkish bey, Osman, established the Ottoman dynasty.
Having captured Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Empire reached its zenith a century later under Süleyman the Magnificent. It expanded deep into Europe, Asia and North Africa, but when its march westward stalled at Vienna in 1683, the rot set in. By the 19th century, European powers had begun to covet the Ottomans’ domains.
Nationalism swept Europe after the French Revolution, and Greece, Romania, Montenegro, Serbia and Bosnia all won independence from the Ottomans. The First Balkan War removed Bulgaria and Macedonia from the Ottoman map, while Bulgarian, Greek and Serbian troops advanced on İstanbul. The empire was now known as the ‘sick man of Europe’.
The Republic
WWI stripped the Turks of Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Arabia, and the victorious Europeans intended to share most of Anatolia among themselves, leaving the Turks virtually nothing.
Enter Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the father of modern Turkey. Atatürk made his name by repelling the British and Anzac forces in their attempt to capture Gallipoli. Rallying the tattered Turkish army, he outmanoeuvred the Allied forces in the War of Independence and, in 1923, pushed the invading Greeks into the sea at Smyrna (İzmir).
After renegotiation of the WWI treaties, a new Turkish Republic, reduced to Anatolia and part of Thrace, was born. Atatürk embarked on a modernisation program, introducing a secular democracy, the Latin script, European dress and equal rights for women (at least in theory). The capital shifted from İstanbul to Ankara. Many of the sweeping changes did not come easily and their reverberations can still be felt today. In population exchanges with Greece, more than a million Greeks left Turkey and nearly half a million Turks moved in; deserted ‘ghost villages’ can still be seen.
Since Atatürk’s death in 1938, Turkey has experienced three military coups and, during the 1980s and ’90s, had conflict with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which aimed to create a Kurdish state in Turkey’s southeast corner.
Turkey Today
In the dramatic 2002 elections, the year-old Justice & Development Party (AKP) triumphed and its charismatic leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, became prime minister. Intent on gaining EU entry for Turkey, the AKP has scrapped the death penalty, granted greater rights to the Kurds and cracked down on human rights violations.
By 2005 the economy was considered robust enough to introduce the new Turkish lira (YTL; Yeni Türk Lirası). The EU started accession talks with Turkey that October, but they have come to naught and the initial ardour for membership has cooled. In 2009 the new Turkish lira was renamed Turkish lira (TL; Türk Lirası).
Following the AKP’s reelection in mid-2007, the tussle between ‘secularists’ and ‘Islamists’ intensified. A legal case to close the AKP for pursuing an antisecular agenda brought tensions to boiling point. In mid-2008, police arrested scores of people associated with the Ergenekon movement, alleging they were fomenting a coup against the government, and terrorist bombs exploded in İstanbul. Political