Turkey History

Filled with unforgettable stories of emperors, generals, and religious patriarchs, as well as fascinating glimpses into the life of the ordinary citizen, Lost to the West reveals how much we owe to the Byzantine Empire that was the equal of any in its achievements, appetites, and enduring legacy. For more than a millennium, Byzantium reigned as the glittering seat of Christian civilization.

In this sweeping history of the ancient Near East, Amanda Podany takes listeners on a gripping journey from the creation of the world's first cities to the conquests of Alexander the Great. The book is built around the life stories of many ancient men and women, from kings, priestesses, and merchants to brickmakers, musicians, and weavers. Their habits of daily life, beliefs, triumphs, and crises, and the changes that people faced over time are explored through their own written words and the buildings, cities, and empires in which they lived.

Byzantium. The name evokes grandeur and exoticism—gold, cunning, and complexity. In this unique book, Judith Herrin unveils the riches of a quite different civilization. Avoiding a standard chronological account of the Byzantine Empire's millennium-long history, she identifies the fundamental questions about Byzantium—what it was, and what special significance it holds for us today.

An astonishing retelling of 20th-century history from the Ottoman perspective, delivering profound new insights into World War I and the contemporary Middle East. Between 1911 and 1922, a series of wars would engulf the Ottoman Empire and its successor states, in which the central conflict, of course, was World War I - a story we think we know well. As Sean McMeekin shows us in this revelatory new history of what he calls the "wars of the Ottoman succession", we know far less than we think.

In 1921 a small group of self-appointed patriots set out to avenge the deaths of almost one million victims of the Armenian Genocide. They named their operation Nemesis after the Greek goddess of retribution. Over several years the men tracked down and assassinated former Turkish leaders. The story of this secret operation has never been fully told until now.

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.

Long neglected in world history, the Ottoman Empire was a hub of intellectual fervor, geopolitical power, and enlightened pluralistic rule. Yet, despite its towering influence and centrality to the rise of our modern world, the Ottoman Empire's history has for centuries been distorted, misrepresented, and even suppressed in the West. Now Alan Mikhail presents a vitally needed recasting of Ottoman history, retelling the story of the Ottoman conquest of the world through the dramatic biography of Sultan Selim I (1470-1520).

Everyone has heard of Erdogan: Turkey’s bullish, mercurial president is the original postmodern populist. Around the world, other strongmen are now following the path that he has blazed. For the first time, Erdogan Rising tells the inside story of how a democracy on the fringe of Europe has succumbed to dictatorship. Hannah Lucinda Smith, Turkey correspondent with The Times of London, has witnessed all that has befallen Turkey and the wider region since the onset of the Arab Spring.

In the wake of the September 11 attacks and the US-led invasion of Iraq, Suzy Hansen, who grew up in an insular conservative town in New Jersey, was enjoying early success as a journalist for a high-profile New York newspaper. Increasingly, though, the disconnect between the chaos of world events and the response at home took on pressing urgency for her. Seeking to understand the Muslim world that had been reduced to scaremongering headlines, she moved to Istanbul.

The year was 1922: World War I had just come to a close, the Ottoman Empire was in decline, and Asa Jennings, a YMCA worker from upstate New York, had just arrived in the quiet coastal city of Smyrna to teach sports to boys. Several hundred miles to the east in Turkey's interior, tensions between Greeks and Turks had boiled over into deadly violence. Mustapha Kemal, now known as Ataturk, and his Muslim army soon advanced into Smyrna, a Christian city, where a half a million terrified Greek and Armenian refugees had fled in a desperate attempt to escape his troops.

Why do Muslim-majority countries exhibit high levels of authoritarianism and low levels of socioeconomic development in comparison to world averages? Ahmet T. Kuru criticizes explanations that point to Islam as the cause of this disparity, because Muslims were philosophically and socioeconomically more developed than Western Europeans between the 9th and 12th centuries. Nor was Western colonialism the cause: Muslims had already suffered political and socioeconomic problems when colonization began.

Lawrence Durrell's evocative memoir of living in Cyprus, just before the Greek/Turkish partition. This is a touching and atmospheric account of a place, now changed, where the two races lived side by side.

Starting in early 1915, the Ottoman Turks began deporting and killing hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the first major genocide of the 20th century. By the end of the First World War, the number of Armenians in what would become Turkey had been reduced by 90 percent - more than 1,000,000 people. A century later, the Armenian genocide remains controversial but relatively unknown, overshadowed by later slaughters and the chasm separating Turkish and Armenian versions of events.

Anadolu'da Medeniyetin Hikayesi serisinin yeni bölümlerinden bildirim yoluyla haberdar olmak için seriyi takip etmeyi lütfen unutmayın. İslâm tasavvufu çerçevesinde, Anadolu’da en yaygın ve en çok müridi bulunan tarikatlar, 12’nci yüzyıl sonunda Irak’ta kurulup Hindistan, Türkistan, Çin, Magrib’e kadar yayılmış bulunan Kadiriye, 13’üncü yüzyıl Anadolu’sunda merkezileşmiş Mevleviye, 14’üncü yüzyılda Yeseviye’nin bir kolu olarak kurulup Arnavutluk’ta da yayılmış bulunan Bektaşiye ve bir Türkistan tarikatı olmakla birlikte Hindistan, Türkistan, Çin, Malezya’ya kadar uzanan Nakşibendiye'dir.

Anadolu'da Medeniyetin Hikayesi serisinin yeni bölümlerinden bildirim yoluyla haberdar olmak için seriyi takip etmeyi lütfen unutmayın. Osmanlı'da etkileyici bir törenin ihtişamı, nasıl ki devlet adamlarının değerli kumaşlardan yapılmış göz alıcı tören giysileri içinde tahtın iki yanına dizilmeleriyle; tüm görevlilerin adeta bir sahne düzenlemesini bütünleyecek şekilde yer almaları gibi kestirme ve elverişli yoldan çözülmüşse, bahçeler yaratılırken de kolay yollar aranmış, bahçelerin düzenlendiği yerlerdeki doğal koşullara uyan tasarımlara gidilmiştir.

Anadolu'da Medeniyetin Hikayesi serisinin yeni bölümlerinden bildirim yoluyla haberdar olmak için seriyi takip etmeyi lütfen unutmayın. Osmanlı Devleti tarihi 14'üncü yüzyıldan beri dünya tarihini yakından ilgilendiren konulardan biridir. Nicolae Lorga (Jorga), Johann Wilhelm Zinkeisen, Joseph von Hammer gibi Batılı Osmanlı tarihçilerinin yanı sıra, Türkiye’de genel Osmanlı tarihi üzerinde son zamanlarda İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı ve Enver Ziya Karal'ın eserleri kayda değer.

Anadolu'da Medeniyetin Hikayesi serisinin yeni bölümlerinden bildirim yoluyla haberdar olmak için seriyi takip etmeyi lütfen unutmayın. Osmanlı Devleti koyu merkeziyetçi bir devletti ve bütün işler İstanbul'dan görülürdü. Padişahın atadığı en yetkili kişi, padişahın mührünü taşıyan ve padişaha vekâlet eden veziriazamdı. Osmanlı Devleti’nde toprak padişahın, dolayısıyla Allah’ın malıydı. Fethedilen topraklar sipahi'lere timar olarak verilirdi. Devlet, timarın gelirine göre sipahi'lerden orduya asker göndermelerini ister.

Anadolu'da Medeniyetin Hikayesi serisinin yeni bölümlerinden bildirim yoluyla haberdar olmak için seriyi takip etmeyi lütfen unutmayın. Osmanlı Devleti tarihi 14'üncü yüzyıldan beri dünya tarihini yakından ilgilendiren konulardan biridir. Nicolae Lorga (Jorga), Johann Wilhelm Zinkeisen, Joseph von Hammer gibi Batılı Osmanlı tarihçilerinin yanı sıra, Türkiye’de genel Osmanlı tarihi üzerinde son zamanlarda İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı ve Enver Ziya Karal'ın eserleri kayda değer.

Anadolu'da Medeniyetin Hikayesi serisinin yeni bölümlerinden bildirim yoluyla haberdar olmak için seriyi takip etmeyi lütfen unutmayın. Osmanlı Devleti tarihi 14'üncü yüzyıldan beri dünya tarihini yakından ilgilendiren konulardan biridir. Nicolae Lorga (Jorga), Johann Wilhelm Zinkeisen, Joseph von Hammer gibi Batılı Osmanlı tarihçilerinin yanı sıra, Türkiye’de genel Osmanlı tarihi üzerinde son zamanlarda İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı ve Enver Ziya Karal'ın eserleri kayda değer.

The Ottoman Empire has long exerted a strong pull on Western minds and hearts. For over 600 years the empire swelled and declined, rising from a dusty fiefdom in the foothills of Anatolia to a power which ruled over the Danube and the Euphrates with the richest court in Europe. But its decline was prodigious, protracted and total.