Ottoman Turks Quotes

Voltaire had little respect for any organized religion, but found Islam particularly barbaric and absurd. However he was also very negative about Christianity. See {621191} . The Ottoman Empire, centered in Turkey, then controlled all the Islamic countries of the Middle East. Europeans then often referred to all Muslims as “Turks.”

The Byzantine emissary had pointed out that Mehmed’s predecessors had signed a treaty agreeing to “consult” with Constantinople before building any fortified structure in the area surrounding Constantinople. Mehmed was only 19 years old at this time. His intention f building a fort was to have a platform from which to attack and capture Constantinople itself which he did 2 years later. Earlier, the Eastern Roman Empire was much stronger and the Ottoman sultans were more cautious in dealing with them. However, the various Christian factions were all feuding with each other, and Mehmed II, despite his youth, was much better organized and was a better leader than his predecessors.

The import of this quotation is to see how matter of fact, atrocities by our standards, were committed in the earlier times. “Beys” was an Ottoman term for a class of nobles.

The Ottoman Turks had already conquered the Eastern Roman empire outside of Byzantium. They had overwhelming superiority and it was just a matter of time when they would take the city. Surrender would have been the sensible course, but religious passion against surrendering the holy city capital of Christendom to the Muslims was dominant in the Emperor and some of the leadership. But the morale of most was very low—and for good reason. The Ottomans soon captured the city.

Turkey, even a century later, takes great offense at the terms “holocaust” or “genocide” to describe the death of so many Armenians. The censor newspapers and jail academics who even want to have conferences to study the question. This is in great contrast to Germany which faced its genocidal killings squarely and built a society and government structure to never forget it and always focus on preventing a reoccurrence,

By the beginning of the 16th century, the Christian Islamophobia and prejudice had spread to each country of Europe. As this quotation illustrates, it even was institutionalized to language.

Ottoman Turkish Sultan Mehmed II Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini. 6 years earlier, the Ottoman Turks, had captured Byzantium (Constantinople, later Istanbul), the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Pope had called together the rulers and leaders of Christendom to organize a common defense in this war of civilizations. This was the period where Christian Islamophobia began. The Muslims had a religious duty to convert the rest of the world to Islam and adopt Islamic law (Sharia). However, so did the Christians. Sultan Mehmed II, when he conquered Byzantium, did not require the conversion of the Christians in the great city. He took the greatest churches, but by and large left the Christians to worship in their own Churches. The Muslims at the time were far more tolerant of Christians (and Jews) than the Christians were of Muslims (and Jews). Like in the 21st century, there was much Islamic doctrine and reality to be worried about, but not all the Muslims were as rabid and extreme as Eastern paranoia suggested in the 15th century or the 21st.

The neo-conservative expectation of the American invasion of Iraq almost a century later was essentially the same, and the false expectation led to the same kind of failure as the George W. Bush debacle of the early 21st century.

Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini. 6 years earlier, the Ottoman Turks, had captured Byzantium (Constantinople, later Istanbul), the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. One o the reasons the city fell was the squabbling of the different Christian national armies about support for the city and the internal bickering of those armies and navies that were there. The Emperor, Constantine XI, the successor to Constantine the Great—the roman Emperor who Christianized the Empire, was killed. Emperor Justinian had built the Hagia Sophia—the largest church at the time and for 1000 years thereafter under a single dome, and this great house of Christianity was turned into a Mosque by the Islamic conquerors.

At the time hundreds of thousands of Armenians were being massacred by the Turks. Some atrocities were spontaneous, many were committed under orders, and many were triggered by Turkish leaders who whipped up the resentment and hate for the non-Muslim Armenians and then forced unarmed Armenians into areas where the Muslim Turks themselves were short of food and supplies. See {626835} for one of the several admissions of the intended genocide.

This newspaper was an English language organ published by General Allenby’s British and Allied forces in the Middle East. Prior to the war, the Middle East was all part of the Ottoman Empire. However, the Ottoman Turks sided with Germany in WWI and their Middle East dominions were targets for the allied military strategy.

Mehmet’s father Murat had just died. There was a custom in Islam that the new Sultan have all his brothers executed so that there would be absolute certainty who was the legitimate Sultan and that dissenting forces should not rally around another son of the old Sultan to have a regime change and/or a civil war. Stability and certainty in the line of succession was critical to the Muslims in that the Sultan was not only the civil ruler, but the highest religious authority as well. He had the power of the Christian Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor together. The struggle between the Sunnis and the Shiites which has overwhelmed Islamic unity was originally all about who the successor to Muhammad would be.

The Turkish Ottoman Empire controlled most of the Middle East and at times Arab areas and tribes would revolt. Egypt was considered the prize of the Middle East. The Ottomans not only controlled the Middle East militarily and civilly, but also religiously. The Turkish Sultan was the spiritual leader of almost all of the Middle Eastern Muslims.

At its largest, the Ottoman Turkish Empire included all of the Middle East, most of North Africa, much of Russia, and Europe right up to the walls of Vienna.

Bulgaria was under the control of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. Levski always made it clear that Muslims were welcome in the Bulgaria that would be created after the Revolution. Most Muslims did not believe him, and many could not understand the concept of a nation without the Sultan who was the political AND religious head of Islam the world over. Essentially for many Muslims there can be no such thing as separation of church and state. To two cannot be distinct.

The Armenians were victims of ethnic cleansing where some were chased out and others killed.

This is a good example of how religious zeal has sometimes caused rulers to really do stupid things. Rather than try and negotiate a deal with the Sultan and pay an annual tribute or other such diplomatic solution as was common at the time, he was convinced that God would make sure that the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire—a holy city would not fall to the infidel and allow all the holy relics to fall into the hands of the heathen. In reality he would not fight for the inhabitants; he would force the inhabitants to fight for him and his view of the will of God. The message was taken by the young Sultan to be a personal challenge to him and to his God. See {634805} for his response to Constantine.

Rome & the Roman Catholic Church Islam, led by the Ottoman Turks, were in a constant state of tension against the Christian World of Europe. However there had been a huge schism in Christianity where the Christian Roman Empire was split in two—a Western (Latin) Empire led by the Roman Catholic Church in Rome, and the Eastern (Greek) Roman Empire led by the Orthodox Church headquartered in Constantinople (Byzantium). The two churches were not only in a theological conflict but violence broke out and the armies of the two religious empires attacked each other now and then. This was a great advantage to the Muslims who were essentially unified under the Ottoman Turkish Sultan. Manuel knew that the reunification of Christianity was about the worst thing that could happen from the geopolitical view of the Ottomans and they always placed a high priority on doing whatever they could to magnify the stress between the two Christian empires. Manual and the Orthodox hierarchy were absolutely opposed to union as the schism had been precipitated by them to begin with. However, Manuel knew that the hatred of the East and the Orthodox Church was so great amongst the Latins that even if some of the Roman Catholic leadership might be interested in healing the schism and having a “unity in Christ”, the kings and nobles of the Western European nations would never accept unity and would scuttle the negotiations. This quotation is an excellent example of the kind of complex, foreign policy and political intriguing that caused our language to have an adjective—byzantine—which is in common use today.

Turkey, in a disastrous foreign policy decision unilaterally withdrew from a major treaty and joined Germany in WWI in exchange for German support of Turkey’s treaty withdrawal. It led to the dissolution of the Ottoman Turkish Empire when Germany was defeated in WWI. Historically, it shows how easy it is for a nation to abrogate a treaty which illustrates how ephemeral treaties actually are. See De Gaulle’s wonderful quotation on this point—{138034}.

There were times and places where the Ottoman Turks forced Islam upon conquered peoples. However, much of the time, they operated with a pragmatic tolerance so that they could govern smoothly. The non-Muslims were always second class citizens however. See {635095} for another example.