The Rise and Fall of the Ottoman Empire

The modern secular Turkish state was built on the remains of the Ottoman Empire and has inherited the Empire’s rich religious history. Although the Ottoman Empire had Turkic origins, the foundations of state and society were Islamic, and despite a heterogeneous population, ethnicity was less important than religious affiliation. The Ottoman political system was headed by the sultan, who was the supreme authority on all military, judicial, social, and religious matters, and, according to Sharia, the Ottoman sultan answered only to God and ruled by Islamic law. Additionally, the office of the caliphate, the supreme religio-political position, was held by Ottoman leaders beginning in 1517 until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1922. Although the Ottoman Empire served as the center of interaction between the Western and Eastern worlds for four centuries, by the start of the 18th century, the Ottoman Empire had entered a period of decline. When the Empire entered the First World War (1914-18) on the side of the Central Powers, suspicion of Armenian sympathy for Russia led to what has come to be known outside of Turkey as the Armenian Genocide (1915-17), in which over a million mostly Christian Armenians living in Ottoman territory were systematically killed. The event, and Turkey’s staunch disagreement over its labeling as a genocide, continue to be a strain on Turkey’s relations with Armenia and other members of the international community.