Toward the Late Ottoman Era

1683 Four centuries of Ottoman expansion come to an end as the siege of Vienna fails.
1703–89 Westernizing “Tulip Age” under Sultan Ahmed III (r. 1703–30); turbulent aftermath with wars against Russia and Austria. Ahmed III is dethroned by revolting Janissaries (traditional elite troops of the Ottoman Empire). Russia expands against the Ottomans, conquers Crimea, and becomes the leading naval power in the Black Sea (1774 Küçük Kaynarca Treaty).
The existential internal and external crises of the Ottoman Empire in the late eighteenth century usher in the “late Ottoman” era, characterized by continuous efforts at reform, reorganization, and a more modern imperial order. Reform centers on a renewed army. Internationally, it is marked by the emergence of the Eastern Question, the most enduring issue of modern Western diplomacy.

Late Ottoman Era

1793–1807 The New Order—1808–39 Mahmud II’s reign—1839–76 Tanzimat—1876–1908 Abdülhamid II’s reign—1908–18 Young Turk era—1918–23 End of the Empire—1923 Lausanne Conference, beginning of post-Ottoman era.

1793–1807 The New Order

1793 The New Order (Nizam-ı Cedid) and the New Order Army under Sultan Selim III (1789–1808).
1798 Egypt occupied by Napoleon’s troops, reconquered by Ottoman general and governor Muhammed Ali who destroys the Mamluk elites and establishes his dynastic rule in Egypt. His self-proclaimed khedivate (vice-kingdom) is still Ottoman but defies the Sultan. It lasts until 1953.
1807–8 Selim III is deposed by conservative rebels under orders from his cousin Sultan Mustafa IV who replaces him to become Sultan. A Provincial notable, Alemdar Mustafa Pasha, marches on Istanbul to reinstate Selim III to the throne, but Selim is murdered.

1808–39 Reign of Mahmud II

1808 Mustafa IV is murdered and succeeded by his half-brother Sultan Mahmud II (1808–39). Alemdar Mustafa Pasha becomes the Grand Vizier.
1808 The signing of the “Deed of Agreement” (Sened-i Ittifak) by major provincial notables in an attempt to regulate their power and relations with the central Ottoman government.
1804–17 Successful Serbian struggle for de facto independence.
1821–9 Successful Greek struggle for full independence.
1826 Mahmud II abolishes the Janissaries by massacre (a destruction known as the “Auspicious Event,” Vak’a-i Hayriyye) and creates a new army. Start of reforms. The redif local militia and reserve organization is established in 1834. Military conscription is introduced in 1843.
1830 Beginning of the long French conquest of Algeria, an autonomous regency claiming allegiance to the Ottoman Sultan.
1834–51 A policy of centralization subdues the Kurdish emirates in the Ottoman East.
1835 The chief rabbi (hahambaşı) is appointed by the government in Istanbul, officially becoming both head and representative of all Jewish communities throughout the empire: an early step toward the centralization of Ottoman Jewry, characteristic of the Tanzimat era.
1838 The Baltalimanı Trade Convention opens the monopolistic Ottoman market to Western products.

1839–76 Tanzimat

1820–85 Ottoman-Egyptian rule over Sudan, known as “al-Turkiyya.”
1839 Ottoman defeat against Mohammad Ali’s advancing Egyptian army at Nizip. European intervention saves Ottoman rule and triggers the Gülhane reform edict. Egyptian-Ottoman War 1831–41. Egyptian occupation of Greater Syria and Hejaz and the eventual retrocession to the Ottoman Sultan.
1839–61 Sultan Abdülmecid’s reign is marked by the Tanzimat (1839–76), Europe’s Crimean War (1853–56), increased foreign, especially British, influence, and Western missionary penetration throughout the Ottoman Empire.
1856 Abdülmecid’s Reform Edict (Islâhat Hatt-ı Hümâyûnu) is the Tanzimat’s central document, issued at the end of the Crimean War at the eve of the Paris Treaty. It states liberal and egalitarian principles and institutionalizes the autonomy of the millets (autonomous Christian and Jewish communities). However, the spirit of the time is not democratic in the aftermath of Europe’s failed 1848 “Spring of Peoples” and during violent Russian expansion in the Caucasus. Centralization and the destruction of the traditional modus vivendi by the politics of Tanzimat leads to anarchy in parts of the largely Kurdish- and Armenian-populated eastern provinces.
1858 Ottoman Land Code requires land owners to register ownership.
1860 Civil War on Mount Lebanon; the Druze massacre of the Maronites; Christian massacres in Damascus.
1860 The new Armenian millet constitution is submitted to the Sultan (ratified 1863). Modeled on the 1854 constitution (nizamname) of the new Protestant millet, it institutionalizes an elected representative assembly for the mainly “Gregorian” (Apostolic) Armenians.
1861 Adoption of a “Reglement Organique” and the creation of the Mutasarrifate of Mount Lebanon governed by an Ottoman-Catholic official. This special status ended in 1915.
1861–76 Sultan Abdülaziz. His reign is marked by Muslim pessimism towards the Tanzimat, the rise of the Young Ottoman opposition, and the near-collapse of the state at the end, although the Tanzimat results in the first Ottoman constitution and parliament in 1876.
1863 Robert College in Istanbul (now Bosporus University) founded by former ABCFM missionary Cyrus Hamlin and philanthropist Christopher R. Robert.
1864 Russian penetration of the Caucasus entails ethnic cleansing of Circassians and forces their mass migration to the Ottoman lands.
1865 The General Regulations of the Rabbinate (Hahamhane Nizamnamesi), the organic law for the Jewish millet, is promulgated.
1866 Syrian Protestant College founded in Beirut.
1869 The Suez Canal opens.

1876–1908 Reign of Sultan-Caliph Abdülhamid II

1876 The short-lived Sultan Murad V is deposed for “mental problems.” His successor, Abdülhamid II, faces revolts in the Balkans, wars with Serbia and Russia, and financial near-collapse of the state. His declaration of the first, sultan-centered constitution and the election of a parliament—suspended in 1878—cannot prevent military defeat and important territorial losses in the Balkans and the Caucasus (Treaty of San Stefano).
1878 The Berlin Congress attenuates regulations of the Russo-Ottoman San Stefano Treaty. It nevertheless initiates the construction of post-Ottoman ethno-national states in the Balkans and emphasizes the categories of race, ethnicity, and religion as defining post-imperial futures. Abdülhamid II’s imperial policy of Islamic unity and empowerment (“pan-Islamism”) responds to this development, and especially to the protection and equality of the Ottoman Armenians and Christians provided for in Articles 61–62 of the Berlin Treaty.
1880 Revolt of Kurdish Sheikh Ubeydullah of Nehri with nationalist overtones.
1881 Ottoman bankruptcy and the establishment of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration with Régie des Tabacs (Ottoman Tobacco Company, 1883) under European control.
1881 France occupies Tunisia; in 1882, Britain occupies Egypt (which formally remains Ottoman until 1914).The establishment of the Third Republic after the lost Franco-Prussian War does not fundamentally change French colonialism. The Berlin Conference of 1884–5 regulates the colonial division of Africa.
1861 Creation of the mutasarrifate of Mount Lebanon, which ended in 1918.
1872 Creation of the mutasarrifate of Jerusalem, until British occupation/mandate in 1917.
1882–1903 First Aliyah: first phase of organized Jewish immigration into Ottoman Palestine.
1883 German military mission under Colmar von der Goltz arrives in Istanbul: The beginning of a seminal German-Ottoman rapprochement in politics, military, and economy. Its most ambitious project is the Berlin–Baghdad railway.
1887 The Armenian revolutionary party Hunchak is founded in Geneva. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation/ARF, also known as the Dashnaktsutyun, is formed in Tbilisi in 1890.
1889 Students of the Imperial Military Medical Academy in Istanbul found the Committee for Ottoman Unity, which eventually becomes the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), a patriotic underground opposition which eventually organizes the Young Turk Revolution of 1908.
1890 Abdülhamid II creates the mainly Kurdish Hamidiye Light Cavalry Regiments. 1894 The Sasun massacre of Armenians, leading to European investigative commission.
1895 A public demonstration by the Hunchakian Party (September 30) demands the implementation of Armenian reforms according to Article 61 of the Berlin Treaty. Abdülhamid ratifies a reform plan for the eastern provinces under international pressure. Large-scale massacres of Armenians in response to this reform plan and public Armenian demands for them. The mass violence serves Abdülhamid’s policy of Islamizing Anatolia.
1896 ARF members occupy the head office of the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul; second massacre of Armenians in the streets of the Ottoman capital.
1897 Victorious war against Greece, but Crete becomes autonomous.
1898 First Kurdish newspaper Kurdistan begins to be published.
1902 Congress of anti-Hamidian parties in exile in Paris.
1904 Entente cordiale between Britain and France, responding to the 1882 Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, Italy, and the German-Ottoman rapprochement of the 1890s.
1904–14 Second Aliyah to Ottoman Palestine.
1905 Russia’s defeat at the hands of Japan sparks the first Russian Revolution and fuels anti-Russian Ottoman patriotism.
1907 Second opposition congress in Paris, resulting in a CUP-ARF alliance which lasts until 1912, and to a limited extent until summer 1914.

1908–18 Young Turk Era (era of the “Second Constitution”)

1908 Young Turk revolution (July), constitution reinstated, parliament elected (October–December). A great moment of democratic hope and open self-articulation and self-organisation, especially for non-Muslims, Alevis, and Kurds. In the aftermath of the Young Turk revolution, Kurds found first nationalist associations in Istanbul.
1908 Bulgaria declares its independence.
1908 Austria-Hungary annexes Bosnia and Herzegovina. 1908 The island of Crete declares its union with Greece.
1909 Counterrevolution and massacres of Armenians in Adana (April). Abdülhamid II dethroned. First CUP ministers, including Minister of the Interior Mehmed Talaat. Inclusion of non-Muslims in the conscript army.
1909 Young Arab Society (Al-Fatat) founded (December), a nationalist secret society, adversary of the CUP but close to Prince Sabahaddin’s liberal League for Private Initiative and Decentralization.
1910 Rebellion in Albania and Yemen.
1911–22 End of Empire in War: Libyan War, Balkan Wars, First World War, Anatolian Wars
1911 Italy declares war on the Ottoman Empire, invades Libyan provinces.
1911 (October) Treaty of Da’an in the Yemen vilayet with the Zaydi Imam Yahya, granting autonomy in parts of the province.
1912 Second Ottoman Parliament elections (spring). Liberal-conservative coup overthrows CUP government (July). ARF breaks off relations with the CUP (August). Start of the First Balkan War between the Balkan allies and the Ottoman Empire (October); Ottoman defeat, territorial losses, and hundreds of thousands of muhacirs seek refuge in the Ottoman Empire.
1913–18 Dictatorial CUP Rule, Turkish-Muslim Imperial Ultranationalism
1913 A violent coup, planned by CUP leaders Talaat and Enver, brings the CUP back to power, and makes Enver Pasha war minister in place of the assassinated Nazım Pasha (January). The CUP cannot change the outcome of the First Balkan War, which it had fueled. However, it benefits from the Second Balkan War between Bulgaria and its former allies (June–August) to recapture Edirne.
1913 (June) Arab Congress in Paris, initiated by Al-Fatat, critical of Zionism and CUP policies
of centralization. Grand-Vizier Mahmud Şevket Pasha assassinated.
1913 (December) The German Military Mission under General Liman Von Sanders arrives in Istanbul.
1914 International Reform Agreement for the eastern provinces (“Armenian Reform Plan,” February 1914). To avenge Ottoman defeat and resettle the muhacir, the CUP party regime prepares war against Greece and uses its newly established Special Organization (Teşkilat-i Mahsusa) to oust the Rûm in Macedonia and on the Aegean coast (winter and spring).
1914 (July) Seeing a general war as an opportunity, CUP radicals, including Talaat and Enver, push for an alliance with Germany during the July crisis in Europe.
1914 (August–September) Germany and the Ottoman Empire sign a secret alliance treaty (August 2) and begin unprecedented military mobilization (seferberlik) and confiscation in the Empire. Under pressure from the Germans, the Special Organization launches a guerilla war at the Caucasian front, using jihad propaganda. The CUP government suspends the Reform Agreement and cancels the Capitulations. It begins a country-wide surveillance of the Armenians.
First World War
1914 (fall) By attacking Russian ports in the Black Sea, the Ottoman Empire officially enters the war on the side of the Central Powers and declares jihad (November 14). War minister and factual commander-in-chief Enver Pasha launches a major winter offensive against Russian forces in the Caucasus that fails catastrophically.
1915 (winter–spring) Cemal Pasha’s Suez campaign to reconquer Egypt also fails. Disarming of Ottoman Armenian soldiers begins. The Entente powers launch an attack at the Gallipoli Peninsula (February–December). A naval breakthrough fails on March 18, as does the whole campaign. This first Ottoman victory coincides with the beginnings of the Armenian Genocide orchestrated by Interior Minister Talaat. Arrest of the Armenian elite in the capital on the night of April 24–25 when the Entente troops land at Gallipoli.
1915 (summer–fall–winter) Preceded by local arrests and deportations of Armenians, the Deportation Law of May 27, 1915 authorizes the army to deport and resettle people. It thus “legalizes” the nationwide extermination of Armenians who are sent to concentration camps in Syria, if they are not massacred or starved first. A regulation on the administration of properties of Armenians “to be sent elsewhere” serves the mass transfer of property to the state and Muslim individuals (June 10). It is supplemented by additional regulations in the fall (and, in February 1916, also targets Rûm properties). In parts of the eastern provinces, governors and officers also carried out exterminatory measures against Ottoman Assyrians.
1915 (September) Quadruple Alliance: Bulgaria added to the alliance of Germany, Austria, and Turkey.
1916 British defeat at Kut in Iraq (April). British-supported Arab revolt begins in Hijaz (June). Kurds relocated from eastern provinces, resulting in mass deaths. Massacre of the surviving Armenians at Ras al-Ayn and Der Zor (mostly spring–summer). Expansion of treaties with Germany and Austria (1915–17).
1916 The Sykes-Picot agreement outlines the division of Arab lands into distinct zones of influence, to be administered by France or Britain. Mark Sykes and Georges Picot draft a report, which is subsequently ratified by French, British, and Russian diplomats in London in May 1916.
1917 Talaat made grand vizier (February). Overthrow of czar after liberal February Revolution. British capture Baghdad (March). Chaos in Russia results in the Bolshevik October Revolution and military collapse in the Caucasus.
1917 Expansive pan-Turkist projects of the beginning of the First World War revived in the circles of Ziya Gökalp, the main ideologue of the CUP. Balfour Declaration and British capture of Jerusalem (November–December). The promises of the Entente and President Wilson’s 14 Points (of January 1918) raise the expectations of the non-Turkish peoples of the Ottoman Empire of protected self-determination after the end of the First World War.
1918 The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk allows the Ottomans to recover the provinces of Kars, Batumi, and Ardahan (March). Advancing Ottoman forces threaten the newly proclaimed Republic of Armenia (May). During his visit to Berlin (September) Talaat realizes that the imperial war is lost. CUP prepares to continue guerrilla warfare in Anatolia.
1918 Mudros armistice (October 30). Under its terms, Ottoman garrisons have to surrender in all Arab provinces; last CUP congress and flight of the top leaders to Germany (November). Allied occupation of Istanbul. May 1915 deportation law annulled, return of properties initiated (November–December).

1918–20 Arab Kingdom of Syria, led by Faysal b. Hussein.
1919 (January) Beginning of the Paris conferences on the post-First World War order, based on the will of the victorious Western national empires and the new League of Nations in Geneva (established in 1920). For the Ottoman Empire, the conference takes place in Paris-Sèvres, where Arab, Armenian, Kurdish, and Assyrian delegations lobby for independent post-Ottoman states.
1919 (April) The draft covenant of the League of Nations is adopted at the Paris Peace Conference.
1919 Greek occupation of Izmir (May) spurs Turkish-Muslim resistance against the Peace Conference. Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) begins to organize the armed Muslim struggle against plans in Paris and demands of native non-Muslims in Anatolia.
1919 The 9th ARF World Congress, held in Armenia, decides to assassinate leading perpetrators of the Armenian massacres. The list of Ottoman Turkish and CUP leaders killed between 1920 and 1922 during the clandestine campaign named Operation Nemesis includes Talaat Pasha, Sait Halim Pasha, Cemal Pasha, Cemal Azmi, and Bahaeddin Shakir.
1920 (spring) Grand National Assembly inaugurated in Ankara rivals the existing government in Istanbul (April). Largely composed of former CUP cadres, it also welcomes Sunni and Bektashi religious leaders. San Remo Conference allocates former Arab Ottoman provinces as mandates to France and Britain under the League of Nations (April). US reject a mandate over Armenia (June).
1920 (July) Battle of Maysalun between the Arab and the French armies, resulting in a defeat for the Arab army.
1920 (summer) The Treaty of Paris-Sèvres (August) completes the “Paris-Geneva peace,” promises Armenian and (possible) Kurdish independence in formerly Ottoman regions but is not ratified. Bolshevik Congress of the Peoples of the East in Baku (August–September). Bolsheviks, Islamists, and Turkish nationalists agree on anti-Western struggle.
1921 Division of the Southwest Caucasus and Moscow Treaty between Bolsheviks and Ankara government (March). Greek offensive towards Ankara, setback at Sakarya (July–September). French-Turkish accord of Ankara (October). Italy and France tacitly abandon the Sèvres Treaty and the cause of native non-Turks in Anatolia. Exodus and mass death of the returned Cilician Armenians, extermination of Pontus Rûm.
1921 At the Cairo Conference in April, British experts discuss the future of British control in Iraq and Transjordan under the leadership of the two sons of the Sharif Hussein of Mekka, ‘Abdallah, and Faysal. In Transjordan, Winston Churchill supports the establishment of a temporary administration, leading to the creation of the Emirate of Transjordan. ‘Abdallah is ultimately crowned King of Jordan in 1946. In Iraq, Faysal is crowned king. The Hashemite monarchical regime ended in Iraq in 1958 during the revolution.
1922 Ankara’s final offensive against Greek forces, conquest of Izmir, massacre of Christians (August–September). Ankara revokes the regulation of the Istanbul government regarding the return of properties confiscated under Talaat (September). Armistice of Mudros between Ankara and the Entente powers (October). Ankara abolishes the sultanate (November).
1922 (November) Beginning of the Lausanne Near East Peace Conference between the Ankara government, representing Turkey, and the victors of the First World War. The Assyrian, Syrian, Palestinian, Egyptian, Hashemite, and Persian delegations that come to Lausanne remain unrecognized and excluded from the negotiating table.
1923 (January) Convention concerning the exchange of Greek and Turkish populations. The Lausanne Conference abandons the project of an Anatolian “Armenian home” for genocide survivors. Henceforth, the Armenian past and cause are considered non-issues in post-Ottoman Western diplomacy.
1923 (spring) During the Lausanne Conference interval, Mustafa Kemal and his loyalists dissolve the restive National Assembly and prepare Turkey’s first general election of June in a climate of repression.
1923 Lausanne Treaty signed (July). A great success for Ankara: the treaty recognizes all of Anatolia as unified Turkey, with only weak provisions for the rights of indigenous non-Turks. Also a relative success for Britain and France with reaffirmed mandatory powers in Iraq and Syria; Turkey reintegrated into West-dominated diplomacy. A Turkish-American treaty is also signed in Lausanne (August), but never ratified in Washington. However, bilateral US-Turkish agreements equal the stipulations of Lausanne by 1934. The Lausanne Treaty Marks the Beginning of a Post-Ottoman Era

Early Post-Ottoman Decades (with special focus on Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire)

1923 Republic of Turkey declared (October).
1924 (March) Caliphate and ministries for religious affairs and pious foundations abolished in Turkey. All religious and communitarian institutions, including those of Sunni Islam, submitted to state control and administered by the new Directorate of Religious Affairs. The Law on the Unification of Education completes state control of all aspects of education.
1925 The religious-conservative and Kurdish nationalist Sheikh Said Rebellion shakes the foundations of early republican Turkey.
1925 The Lebanese Republic establishes the category of Lebanese citizenship, including for all newly arrived Armenian refugees. Construction of Armenian Apostolic Churches in Lebanon and other post-Ottoman states (Cairo 1927; Beirut 1931, 1938; Antelias 1939).
1925 (September) Under pressure, the Jewish community renounces the privileges in Lausanne Treaty Article 42 on civil law autonomy; followed by the Rûm and Armenian communities.
1925 (December) Decision by the League of Nations’ Council on the Mosul Dispute between Turkey and Great Britain allocating Mosul to the British mandate Iraq.
1925–7 Great Syrian revolt against French occupation.
1926 Ankara adopts the sharia-abolishing Swiss Civil Code. The establishment of a dictatorial party-state goes hand in hand with a growing public cult of the leader Gazi Kemal (Atatürk).
1927 Republic of Mount Ararat declared, based on a treaty of cooperation between the Kurdish Xoybûn League and the ARF. The unrecognized republic is crushed after redrawing of the border between Turkey and Persia in 1932.
1928 Lamenting the abolition of the Caliphate, Hasan al-Banna founds the Muslim Brotherhood.
1930 The Turkish History Thesis is made public at the First Turkish Historical Congress in Ankara.
1932 Turkey becomes a member of the League of Nations (Iraq the same year).
1933 Expulsion of Edgar J. Fisher marks the end of liberal internationalism in teaching and the
beginning of the Turkification of Robert College in Istanbul.
1937–8 Dersim Campaign (1937); mass killing of Kurdish, including a few Armenian, civilians by the Turkish Army; relocation of the remaining population of central Dersim (1938).
 1938 Turkey expands its borders with the incorporation of Iskenderun and Antakya (northwestern Syria), approved by mandatory France and the League of Nations.
 1947–9 UN Partition of Palestine (1947). Proclamation of the state of Israel (1948). First Arab-Israeli war. Unsuccessful Lausanne Peace Conference between Israel, Arab neighbor states, the (Palestinian) Arab Higher Committee, and refugee representatives (1949).
 1948 UN adopts the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
 1955 A state-sponsored pogrom against the Rûm in Istanbul leads to the exodus of this group exempted from the 1923 population exchange (September 6–7).
 1971 The Turkish Constitutional Court rules that only the state possesses the right to open and maintain institutions of higher learning, forcing private colleges to close. Robert College is reconstituted as Boğaziçi University, run by the Turkish government.
 1976 Turkish invasion of Cyprus (renounced in Lausanne 1923); establishment of a state in Northern Cyprus dependent on Ankara.
2002 The AKP (Justice and Development Party) wins the elections and comes to power in Turkey. Initially focusing on a Muslim democratic path and seeking accession to the European Union, it becomes increasingly authoritarian, pursuing “neo-Ottoman” ideas and taking Sultan Abdülhamid II as its leading Islamist icon.