On 20 May 1897, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Greece reached an armistice after a month-long war. The war was one of several conflicts between the Ottomans and an irredentist Greece. The Kingdom of Greece for its part had been established in 1832 when Russia, Britain, France and Bavaria brought the young […]
More than 800 years ago between April and May 1204, Constantinople (now Istanbul) was conquered by the ill-fated and failed Fourth Crusade. The city subsequently became the capital of a newly formed crusader state known as the Latin Empire. By 1204, the practice of crusading was over a century old. Under a Catholic Church […]
Today, 93 years ago on 3 March 1924, under the leadership of President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkey’s Grand National Assembly passed three bills that would change the country irreversibly. Of these, the first abolished the Ministry of Religious Law and Pious Foundations, the second established a single education system, and the third—the most revolutionary […]
Feeling the chill of the Cold War, Turkey signed the Washington Treaty and joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, commonly referred to as NATO, on 18th Feb. 1952 – exactly 65 years ago. Twelve founding members, among them the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Belgium, Iceland, France, and Italy, had originally signed the Washington or […]
In January 1877, the Constantinople ‘Tersane’ Conference, attended by the Great Powers including Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and Austria-Hungary, came to an end. The Conference had started in December 1876, and was intended to address the Ottoman Empire’s problems, commonly referred to by European politicians and diplomats as the “Eastern Question”. The year 1876 had […]
Today, 2nd Dec., marks the centenary of an historical event significant to both Britain and Turkey. On this day in 1916, the Russian Parliament publicly announced a secret agreement with Britain that would hand Istanbul to the Russians after the conclusion of the First World War. This deal is typical of wartime attitudes various European […]
Turkey has been a participant at the Olympic Games since 1908. The country won its first-ever Olympic medals at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany. The 48-strong Turkish Olympic team comprised 46 men and 2 women. They took part in 26 events encompassing 7 sports: basketball, cycling, equestrian, fencing, football, sailing, and wrestling. Turkey struck […]
One of Turkish cinema’s legendary figures, Yılmaz Güney was an award-winning film director, scenarist, novelist and actor. Of Kurdish origin, he made his mark championing Turkey’s most marginal citizens on and off the screen. During his career, he directed 25 films, wrote 61 scripts, and appeared in 116 movies. He became the first filmmaker from Turkey to win […]
Forty years ago today the war in Cyprus ended, but not before the gruesome discovery of a variety of mass graves containing the bodies of Turkish Cypriots. One of the worst was the Tochni Massacre: 85 inhabitants from Taşkent (also known as Tochni), a mainly Turkish village located in the Larnaca District of Cyprus, about halfway between Larnaca and Limassol, were […]
Mimar Sinan, born 15 April 1489 Considered to be one of the greatest architects of all time, Mimar Sinan served several sultans during the classical Ottoman period: Süleyman the Magnificent, Selim II and Murad III. The son of a stonemason, Sinan grew up in Kayseri where he received a technical education. He became a military engineer, rising […]
