Turkey History

The beginning of modern Europe was a time of confusion, excitement, suspicion, hope, despair, and ideas. It was a time of a lot of change spread out over just a few hundred years, but the end result was a completely different world than the one that had come before it. This audiobook includes details of the transition from the Middle Ages to the early modern era, where Europe saw significant shifts across the continent in phases.

From the taking of the holy city of Jerusalem in the 7th century AD by Caliph Umar, to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following the end of World War I, Christian popes, emperors and kings, and Muslim caliphs and sultans were locked in a 1300-year battle for political, military, ideological, economic and religious supremacy. The House of War offers a wide, sweeping narrative, encompassing the broad historical and religious context of this period, while focussing on some of the key, pivotal sieges and battles, and on the protagonists, political and military.

During his reign, Suleiman the Magnificent guided the Ottoman Empire through its golden age of trade and expansion. His reign changed the face of the world and the lives of millions of people, and his name echoes down to us in the present day. Suleiman the Magnificent was unlike any other sultan before or after him, and this audiobook explains why.

Cumhuriyet, Türkiye Üçlemesinin üçüncü kitabıdır (birincisi Diriliş, ikincisi Şu Çılgın Türkler). Objektif bilim insanları Milli Mücadele ile başlayıp Cumhuriyet'le süren bu dönemi Türk Mucizesi diye adlandırıyorlar. Kitapta, Büyük Zafer'den Türkiye Cumhuriyeti'nin kuruluşuna kadarki olaylar yer alıyor. Bir yanda cumhuriyetçiler var, öte yanda bu daha iyi, daha insanca, daha onurlu düzeni istemeyenler. Ders ve ibret verici, uyarıcı bir dönem.

Bu roman, kendilerini, varlığının her zerresi ile Devleti Ebed Müddet'e adamış Osmanlılar'ın, serhadherdeki hikayesini anlatır. Şahısların hemen hepsi birer adsız kahramandır. İmparatorluğa sadakat ve nefsini pervasızca feda edişlerdeki şaşırtıcı büyüklükler, mübalağa gibi görünebilir. Fakat, Avrupa'daki Türk ihtişam ve gücünü başka türlü izah etmek de mümkün değildir. Osmanlı, "Büyük Dava"sını ancak böylesine sarsılmaz bir iman, zeka ve hareket seli içinde hakim kılabilirdi. Romanın kuruluşu, olayların sıralanışı ustaca ve çarpıcıdır.

Balıkçı'nın kitaplaşmamış yazılarından derlenen bu yapıt, bir yandan yurdumuzun tarih, sanat ve uygarlığını sergilerken, öte yandan Anadolu birikiminin nesnel temellerine ışık tutuyor. Halikarnas Balıkçısı'nın birbirinden ilginç düşünce yazılarını bir araya getiren Merhaba Anadolu'dan tadımlık: “Anadolu'da açılan özel bankaların garip gelenekleri vardı. Bankalar şairlere bankalarıyla ilgili şiirler sipariş ederlerdi. Bu şiirler bankaların kapılarına asılırdı. Bu yolla bankaların sanatçılara da yardımları dokunurdu. Şimdi de bankaların sanatçılara yardımları olmuyor değil…”

Elvan Pektaş Deniz’in, Mustafa Kemal’in kaleminden yazılmış mektuplar şeklinde, onun sözlerine sadık kalarak aktardığı bir kitap Yarın Cumhuriyeti İlan Ediyoruz! Her yaştan okuru, İzmir’in kurtuluş heyecanından Cumhuriyetin kuruluşuna kadar olan sürece tanık olmaya çağırıyoruz.

Atatürk'ü en doğru ve en yalın biçimde herkese anlatabilecek tek kitap: Dersimiz: Atatürk. Tarih, savaşlarda düşmana galip gelen büyük komutanlarla dolu. Tarihte milletlerini daha ileriye götürmek için çalışan birçok önemli önder var. Ama hiçbiri Atatürk gibi anılmıyor, özlenmiyor. Tarih sayfalarında uyuyorlar. Çünkü aralarında Atatürk gibi hem vatanını düşmanlardan temizleyip yeni bir devlet kuran, hem milletini sömürüden, hurafelerden, ortaçağlılıktan kurtarıp çağdaş uygarlığa kavuşturan biri yok.

Attilâ, Peyami Safa'nın yegâne tarihî romanıdır. Peyami Safa bu romanıyla, Attilâ gibi büyük bir Türk cihangirinin devrine ve kişiliğine ilk defa bir Türk gözüyle bakmış, Batı dünyasının “geçtiği yerde ot bitmez” diye karaladığı bir devlet adamı ve kumandanını Türk gözüyle tasvir etmiştir. Peyami Safa, Attilâ'yı yazarken yabancı kaynaklardan ve özellikle Bizans tarihçilerinin verdiği bilgilerden oldukça istifade etmiştir. Çelik iradeli, demir disiplinli bu Türk hakanının yalnızca bir devlet adamı ve kumandan olarak değil, şahsî ilişkilerde yumuşak huylu.

Among all the early Iron Age people from the Near East who inherited the geopolitical vacuum of power left by the Sea Peoples invasions, the Phrygians are perhaps one of the most misunderstood. They built a powerful and wealthy kingdom, but were overshadowed by their more powerful and wealthier neighbors, the Lydians.

In the last year, Egypt has undergone a revolution that expelled its authoritarian leader of nearly 30 years, and implemented elections that have pitted the Egyptian military in a power struggle with the Muslim Brotherhood, the long-time Islamic opposition group with ties to Hamas and elements of al-Qaeda. Making everything that much more surreal, the events have played out before well placed television cameras with continuous "real time" coverage of the revolution, and ongoing turmoil, and foreign nations around the world eagerly await or dread the end result.

"Local color" author Frances Gilchrist Wood wrote this powerful tale of a young wife who proves better able to succeed on the homestead frontier than does her husband.

Among those who were responsible for the projection of Ottoman power, few deserve as much credit as the Sipahi. Civilizations across the steppes and the Middle East relied heavily on cavalry, and the Sipahi were elite cavalry units during medieval times for a couple of powers. That said, they were a massive contributor to the success of Ottoman warfare, and during good times for the empire, the Sipahi were rewarded, to the extent that they became their own social class, much like the Janissaries.

In 2019, Turkey’s incursion into northeastern Syria and acceptance of components for a Russian S-400 surface-to-air defense system brought bilateral tensions to crisis levels and contributed to the possibility of sanctions or other actions from Congress. Events in Syria and a 2016 coup attempt in Turkey appear to have led Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to act more independently from the United States and cultivate closer ties with Russia and its President Vladimir Putin.

A history of Armenian masonry that goes back to the legendary origins of Noah to the operative stone masons to the speculative masons to the lodges of the 1800s, their destruction during the genocide, and their revival in 1991.

This book tells the stories of the Muslims, Christians, Jews and others who made a courageous stand against the mass slaughter of Ottoman Armenians in 1915, the first modern genocide. Foreigners and Ottomans alike ran considerable risks to bear witness and rescue victims, sometimes sacrificing their lives. Diplomats, humanitarians, missionaries, lawyers and other visitors to the Empire stood up, including Tolstoy's daughter, Alexandra; Raphael Lemkin, the jurist who first established genocide as an international crime; and the polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen.

Vom demokratischen Aufbruch zur Autokratie – über einen beunruhigenden Wandel. Seit seiner Machtübernahme 2002 hat Recep Tayyip Erdoğan einen radikalen Wandel in der Türkei eingeleitet. Das Land, das einst eine Säule des westlichen Bündnisses war, betreibt eine militaristische Außenpolitik, die sich von Bergkarabach bis Libyen in regionale Krisenherde einmischt. Sein früheres demokratisches Streben, u. a. um eine EU-Mitgliedschaft, ist einer gefährlichen Ein-Mann-Herrschaft gewichen.

In terms of geopolitics, perhaps the most seminal event of the Middle Ages was the successful Ottoman siege of Constantinople in 1453. The city had been an imperial capital as far back as the fourth century, when Constantine the Great shifted the power center of the Roman Empire there, effectively establishing two almost equally powerful halves of antiquity’s greatest empire. Constantinople would continue to serve as the capital of the Byzantine Empire even after the Western half of the Roman Empire collapsed in the late fifth century.

The town of Caldiran (Chaldiran) in Turkey is home to about 60,000 people. In the early 16th century, it was the site of different kinds of faultlines, serving as a battleground between the region’s two greatest powers as they clashed over politics and religion. On August 23, 1514 two sides clashed at Chaldiran in a contest for hegemony over the Middle East. The course of the conflict can be reconstructed from the politics of the time, knowledge of the characters involved, the contemporary records are available, and what followed the battle.

As this all suggests, the story of the Young Turks and the last years of the Ottoman Sultanate is a complex and interesting one. It is the history of a state struggling to survive against seemingly impossible odds, featuring a long battle for the minds and souls of the inhabitants of a declining empire. An empire caught between nationalism and liberal imperialism.