How Successful Was The Ottoman Empire

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The Ottoman Empire was one of the largest and most powerful empires during the 16th and 17th century. The Ottoman Empire began out of small Turkish states that emerged in Asia during the collapse of the Seljuk Empire. The first phase of the Ottoman expansion took place under Sultan Osman I. He was a ruler of one of the smaller principalities and Osman and his warriors had achieved many military successes against the Byzantine Empire. His successor, Orhan helped expand their territories in northwestern Anatolia and in 1326 he captured the city of Bursa from the Byzantine Empire and made it the capital.
Over the next couple of centuries all of southeastern Europe had become under Ottoman control. With three successful military victories the Ottomans was transformed into a world power. The first of their military victories was the Siege of Constantinople. After the long siege in May of 1453, Mehmet II captured the capital of the Byzantine Empire and brought the end of Constantinople as a center of Christianity. Constantinople would then become the capital of the Ottoman Empire and with the help of Mehmet’s …show more content…

Gallipoli forms the northern bank of the Dardanelles that provides a sea route to Russia. Britain and France launched a naval attack followed by an amphibious landing on the peninsula with the aim of capturing the Ottoman capital of Istanbul and cutting off the Ottomans from Germany. The Ottomans would win and both sides would lose over 200,000 soldiers. Because the Ottoman Empire had vast borders it was very vulnerable for attacks on any front of their border. In the winter of 1914-1915 Enver Pasha led the Ottomans to some early victories but those victories would not come without heavy loses and in the spring when the Russians countered attacked, his army was in no position to hold them off. Eventually the Russians pushed the Ottoman army east from Erzurum and Enver retired to

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