A Brief History The modern Republic of Turkey dates only from 1923, but the history of the land within its borders stretches back to the dawn of humanity. Widespread finds of Stone Age implements in cave excavations show that Anatolia was already inhabited during the Middle of the Palaeolithic period (about 200,000 to 40,000 years ago). By Neolithic times, organized communities had arisen, such as the one at Çatalhöyük, near Konya, Turkey’s most important prehistoric site. This town, which flourished between 6500 and 5500 b.c. , had flat-roofed houses of mud and timber decorated with wall-paintings, some of which show patterns that still appear on Anatolian kilims. The advent of the Bronze Age (about 3200 b.c. ), and the spread of city-states ruled by kings, is marked by the appearance of royal tombs containing bronze objects in such places as Troy in the west, and Alacahöyük near Ankara. Around this time the Sumerian civilization living in Mesopotamia (the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in present-day Iraq) founded and developed the cuneiform script, the world’s oldest form of writing on record. The technique was introduced by Assyrian traders 1,000 years later in­to Anatolia, where it was qui­ck­ly adopted by the indigenous Hatti people, who, at this point, had already reached an ad­­vanced state of civilization. The Hittites The capital of the Hatti was Kanesh (modern Kültepe, near Kayseri). Cuneiform tablets found here record the arrival in Anatolia of warlike invaders around the second mill­ennium b.c. Their origins remain a my­s­tery (their written language was finally deciphered in 1915), but they came from the direction of the Caucasus moun­tains, spreading destruction and disorder throughout Anatolia. It was two hundred years before they were firmly entrenched in their newly conquered empire. The newcomers were the Hittites, and their domination of Anatolia can be divided into three distinct periods: the Old Kingdom (c. 1600–1450 b.c. ), then the New or Empire Period (c. 1450–1200 b.c. ), and the Late Hittite Period (c. 1200–700 b.c. ). Their first capital city was Hattusa (now Bo‘azköy, near Ankara), which dates from the 13th century b.c. and has tombs, fortifications, enclosed temples, and a citadel containing an impressive library of more than 3,300 cuneiform tablets. During the Empire Period, an ambitious Hittite king, Mutawallis, defeated the forces of the Egyptian pharaoh, Ramses II, at Kadesh (Syria) in 1285 b.c. Ramses was too proud to accept defeat, commissioning obelisks that celebrated his “victory. ” But he was sufficiently wary of the formidable strength of the Hittite Empire to make peace with the next king, Hattusili III. The Treaty of Kadesh, recorded on clay tablets on display in the Museum of the Ancient Orient in Istanbul (see page 39), is the oldest known example of an international treaty. The Hittite Empire eventually collapsed following invasion from the west by the Achaeans, the Phrygians, and a mysterious force known only as the “Sea People. ” The Hittites were forced to flee south into the mountains, where they remained until they were absorbed by the Assyrians. Troy and the Greeks While the Hittite Empire declined, other momentous events were taking place on the shores of the Aegean. The ancient Greeks traditionally took the fall of Troy, as recounted by Homer, as the starting point of their history. Much academic debate surrounds the exact date of the Trojan War, if indeed it ever took place. Modern archaeologists studying the ruins of Troy have discovered nine superimposed cities, ranging from Troy I (3000–2500 b.c. ) to Troy IX (350 b.c. –a.d. 400); the city of King Priam, described in the Iliad and the Odyssey, is thought to be either Troy VI, which was destroyed by an earthquake in 1275 b.c. , or its successor Troy VIIa. Some say the Trojan War never took place at all, and that the decline of Troy was due to the mysterious “Sea People” mentioned earlier. Whatever really happened, the Mycenaean Greeks who were supposed to have conquered King Priam’s city soon found their own civilization in decline. A race known as the Dorians came to power in south­­ern Greece, forcing many mainland Greeks to leave their homeland and cross the Aegean to settle on the coast of Anatolia. Their colonization of the coast took place in successive waves of immigration. First came the Aeolians, who settled the region to the north of Smyrna (now Izmir), then the Ionians, who settled the coast south of Smyrna as far as the River Maeander. The Dorians followed, installing themselves south of the Maeander, in the region known as Caria. Around 1000 b.c. mainland Greece entered a “dark age” of limited achievements, but not so the Ionians, who developed an outstanding civilization. By the eighth century b.c. the 12 main city-states of Ionia, including Ephesus, Priene, and Miletus, had formed what was known as the Pan-Ionic League. Science, philosophy, and the arts flourished, and the Ionians founded further colonies. Lydians and Persians Inland from Ionia lived the wealthy and powerful Lydians, with their capital at Sardis. They reached their peak during the reign of Croesus (560–546 b.c. ), who owed his fortune to gold panned from the River Pactolus. His lasting legacy was the invention of coinage, which led to the beginnings of our money-based economy. His expansionism brought the bulk of Ionia under Lydian rule, but also resulted in conflict with the advancing Persians in the east, where he was roundly defeated. Driven back to Sardis, he witnessed the sacking of his city by the army of Cyrus the Great, in 546 b.c. With Lydia defeated, the Greek coastal cities lay open to the Persians, who swiftly incorporated them into their empire. Ionia’s revolt around 499 b.c. , supported by Athens, was easily subdued. However, Athenian involvement provoked the Persian king Darius to invade the Greek mainland. He was defeated at the famous Battle of Marathon in 490 b.c. , and ten years later his son Xerxes lost the Persian fleet at the Battle of Salamis. Xerxes suffered a further humiliating defeat in 479 b.c. , when his army was beaten at Plataea on the same day that his fleet lost to the Greeks at Mycale. As a result of the Persian Wars, the Greek cities of Anatolia were encouraged to join the Delian Confederacy, paying tribute to Athens in return for protection against the Persians. Athens became so attached to this source of easy money that dissent soon grew among the member cities, and Sparta led the confederacy from Athens after the Peloponnesian War (413– 404 b.c. ). The Persians, sensing weakness in the ranks, launched another offensive, resulting in the Ae­gean coast cities coming under Persian control in 387 b.c. Alexander the Great Meanwhile, King Philip II of Macedon dreamed of driving out the Persians from northern Greece and unifying the entire Greek world. His dreams were fulfilled, and even surpassed, by his son Alexander the Great, in a brief but action-filled lifetime of only 33 years (356–323 b.c. ). In 334 b.c. , aged only 22, he led his army across the Hellespont (now the Dardanelles), and paused at Troy to make a sacrifice at the temple of Athena and pay homage to his hero Achilles, before going on to defeat the Persians at the Battle of Granicus and liberating the Ionian cities. After conquering the entire Aegean and Mediterranean coasts of Anatolia, and subduing Syria and Egypt, he took the great prize of Persepolis, the Persian capital, before advancing farther still into India. During his 12-year campaign Alexander established some 70 cities, and built the greatest empire the world had yet seen. After Alexander the Great’s death, the conquered territory was divided among his generals, whose mutual antagonism and expansionist ambitions led to weaknesses that exposed western Anatolia to the increasing might of Rome. Enter the Romans One of the most prosperous city-states of the Aegean coast was Pergamum, ruled since 264 b.c. by the Attalid dynasty. The last of the Attalid kings, Attalus III, is remembered as something of an eccentric — one of his hobbies was devising new poisons and testing their efficacy on his reluctant slaves. When he died (of natural causes) in 133 b.c. , his subjects were dismayed to learn that he had bequeathed his entire kingdom to the Romans. Thus Pergamum became the capital of the new Roman province of Asia. Mithridates VI, King of Pontus (on the Black Sea), resisted Roman occupation, temporarily occupied Pergamum, and ordered the massacre of all Romans. But eventually Rome’s power prevailed in this territory. In 27 b.c. Julius Caesar’s nephew Octavian took the name Augustus; Rome ceased to be a republic, and became an empire. There followed a long period of peace and prosperity known as the Pax Romana. All of Asia Minor (the Roman name for Anatolia) was incorporated in­to the Ro­man Empire. Greek cities were embellished with Roman buildings. Soon, news of a new religion that was beginning to cause trouble for the Roman authorities spread through the empire. Christianity threatened the establishment because it rejected the old gods and denied the divinity of the emperor. Paul the Apostle carried the word. His voyages (a.d. 40–56) led to the founding of many churches, notably the Seven Churches of Asia addressed in the Revelation of St. John — Pergamum, Smyrna, Ephesus, Thyatira, Laodicea, Sardis, and Phil­­adelphia. Byzantium Legend claims that the city of Byzantium was founded around 660 b.c. by a Greek named Byzas, after the Delphic Oracle had bidden him to build his city “opposite the Land of the Blind. ” When he saw that earlier settlers had built a town on the eastern shore of the Bosphorus, he decided they must have been blind themselves to overlook the advantages of an easily defensible point across the water, and founded Byzantium there, on the site now occupied by Topkapı Palace. In the succeeding centuries Byzantium, like the cities of the Aegean, fell under the sway of Athens, Sparta, Persia, Alexander, and Rome. It tried to regain its independence from Rome, but proved too small and weak, and was conquered by Emperor Septimius Severus in a.d. 196. He had the city razed to the ground, but soon saw the advantages of its strategic location, and began a programme of enlarging and strengthening the old defensive walls. A succession of weak and decadent emperors saw the Roman Empire fall gradually into decline and anarchy. In a.d. 286 Diocletian sought to reverse the decline by splitting the administration of the empire in two — he would govern the east, based in Nicodemia, while his friend Maximian ruled the west from Milan — and later to split it further into four parts. His policy succeeded for a time, but following his abdication in a.d. 305, the empire continued to weaken, harassed by invaders and troubled by internal strife. Constantine the Great (who was a convert to Christianity) and Licinius ruled east and west respectively, until in 324 Constantine overthrew his pagan ally and reunited the empire. He chose Byzantium as his new capital to emphasize the break with heathen Rome. The city was inaugurated with great ceremony in 330 and, in honour of the emperor, was renamed Constantinople. Con­stantine added new city walls, following a plan he claimed to have been given by Christ in a vision, and commissioned a grand central forum decorated with a triumphal column as well as several other monuments. The “New Rome” soon achieved a preeminence in the Christian world that it would retain for 1,000 years. In 392 the Emperor Theodosius proclaimed Christianity to be the official religion of the Roman Empire, and on his death in 395 the empire was split once more, between his two sons, and was never again to be reunited. The Western Empire, ruled from Rome, fell to the Ostrogoths in 476, while its neighbour, the Eastern, or By­zantine Empire, became one of the longest-lived empires the world has ever known, dating from 395 to 1453. The greatest of the Byzantine emperors was Justinian the Great (ruler from 527 to 565), who introduced an equitable legal system, and also extended the boundaries of the empire into Spain, Italy, and Africa. He greatly encouraged the arts, and commissioned the building of the magnificent basilica, the Haghia Sophia. Following the death of the Prophet Mohammed in 632, Arab armies, united under Islam, poured out of their homeland, and soon took Egypt, Syria, and Palestine from the Byzantines; Constantinople was besieged from 674 to 678, but survived because of its defences. The empire was further diminished by the loss of North Africa and Italy, and was brought to the brink of civil war by the Iconoclastic Crisis, before enjoying another brief golden age under Basil II (976–1025). But the empire’s troubles increased as invaders made further incursions into Byzantine territory. Most worrying were the Seljuk Turks, who came out of the east in the 11th century to wrest large parts of Asia Minor from Constantinople’s control. Converted to Islam in the tenth century, and fired by religious zeal, the Seljuks overran Anatolia, menacing Christian holy places and attacking the pilgrims bound for Jerusalem. Reluctantly, the Emperor Alexius I sought outside help from the Christian West. The First Crusade was organized to help the Byzantines recapture the Holy Land from the “infidel” Muslims, and resulted in victory for the Crusaders. The Second and Third Crusades, however, were a disaster for the Christians. The Fourth Crusade, launched in 1202 and partly inspired by Venetian jealousy of Byzantium’s trading power, became an excuse to plunder Constantinople itself. Thus, the city that had held out against so many attacks by the infidel, became subjected to mindless pillaging by fellow Christians. The Crusaders ruled the city from 1204 to 1261, calling their new state Romania, also known as the Latin Empire. A remnant of the Byzantine Empire survived in Nicaea (now Iznik), and recaptured Constantinople in 1261, but the city had been shattered and its great monuments were strip­ped of gold, silver, and precious works of art. The place was never the same again. The Ottomans During the 14th century the Turks in Anatolia rallied under the banner of one Osman Gazi, who had won a great victory over the Byzantines in 1301. Osman Gazi’s son, Orhan, captured Bursa in 1326, and set up his capital there, then moved it to Adrianople (Edirne), which he took in 1361. By the 15th century, the whole of Anatolia and Thrace, except for Constantinople, was under the control of these Osmanli (or Ottoman) Turks. The Byzantine Emperor at the time, Manuel II (1391–1425), tried to appease his enemies by allowing a Turkish district, mos­que, and tribunal within his city, and by courting Turkish goodwill with gifts of gold, but to no avail. The young Ottoman Sultan, Mehmet II, who reign­ed from 1451 to 1481, set about cutting off Constantinople’s supply lines. The huge fortress of Rumeli Hisarı on the Bosphorus was built in just four months in 1452. He then withdrew to his capital in Adrian­ople to await the spring. The Byzantines tried to protect the Golden Horn from enemy ships by stretching a huge chain across its mouth. They repaired and strengthened the city walls that had saved them so many times in the past, and waited fearfully for the inevitable onslaught. In April 1453 the Sultan’s armies massed outside the city walls, outnumbering the Byzantines ten to one. The siege and bombardment lasted seven weeks. The Ottoman admiral bypassed the defensive chain by having his ships dragged overland under cover of darkness, opening a second attack. The final ass ault came on 29 May 1453, when the Ottoman army surged through a breach in the walls. The last emperor, Constantine XI, fell in the fighting, and by noon that day Mehmet and his men had taken control of the sought-after city. His first act was to ride to Haghia Sophia and order that it be converted into a mosque; on the following Friday, he attended the first Muslim prayers in what came to be called Ayasofya Camii (Mosque of Haghia Sophia). After allowing his soldiers three days of pillaging, he restored order, acting with considerable leniency and good sense. Henceforth he became known as “Fatih” (Conqueror), and his newly won capital city was renamed Istanbul. Fatih Sultan Mehmet laid claim to all the territories previously held by the Byzantines, so that his empire incorporated most of Greece and the Balkans, as well as Anatolia. Expansion continued under his succes­­sors, but it was during the reign of his great grandson, Süleyman, that the Ottoman Empire reached its greatest and most celebrated heights. Süleyman the Magnificent, aged 25, ascended the throne and ruled for 46 years (1520–1566), the longest and most glorious reign in the history of the Ottomans. Süleyman’s army captured Belgrade in 1521. Rhodes capitulated in 1523. Six years later he besieged Vienna for 24 days (unsuccessfully) before going on to take most of Hungary. Turkish corsairs, notably the infamous Barbarossa, helped to conquer Algiers and Tunis. By the mid-17th century the Ottoman Empire had reached its greatest extent, stretching from Batumi at the eastern end of the Black Sea to Algeria, taking in Mesopotamia, Palestine, the shores of the Red Sea (including Mecca and Medina), Egypt, Anatolia, Greece, the Balkans, Hungary, Moldavia, the North African coast, the Crimea, and southern Ukraine. With such far-flung territories, dissolution was inevitable, and began immediately. Nor­­thern conquests, including Hungary, had been lost by the close of the 17th century. The decline of these territories was drawn out and painful, leav­ing problems in its wake that have been the source of trouble and friction in the Balkans and the Middle East ever since. Decline and Fall The year 1821 marked the beginning of the Greek War of Independence, which resulted in victory for the Greeks in 1832, and another loss of territory for the Ottomans, whose empire had shrunk significantly. A century of decadence and intermittent wars had left the Ottoman sultanate in serious, irreversible decline. Attempts at reform came too late; by 1876 the government was bankrupt. Sul­­tan Abdül Hamid II (1876–1909) tried to apply absolute rule to an empire staggering under a crushing foreign debt, with a fragmented population of hostile people, and succeeded only in creating ill will and dissatisfaction amongst the younger generation of educated Turks. Young army officers and the professional classes were becoming increasingly interested in West­ern ways of government and social organization. European literature was widely studied. Robert College, an American school, and the Gal­a­tasaray Lycée, the French Aca­demy in the city, were turning out young men imbued with dreams of democracy. These intellectuals form­ed an underground group known as the “Young Turks,” centred on Salonica, where revolt broke out. In 1909 Abdül Hamid was deposed and replaced by his brother, Mehmet V. There followed the Balkan Wars, in which Turkey lost western Thrace and Macedonia, then World War I, into which Turkey entered on Germany’s side. In the notorious Gallipoli campaign of 1915, the Turks, under the leadership of General Mustafa Kemal, defeated the Allied attack on the Dardanelles. At the end of the war, the Treaty of Sèvres formally ended the existence of the Ottoman Empire. Greece was given large concessions, Armenia was to become an independent state in the east, and the Middle East was to be divided among the Arab leaders who had fought with Colonel Lawrence (under British and French “spheres of influence”). The subsequent period of internal strife between the Turks and the Greeks and Armenians was dominated by Mustafa Kemal, who had risen from the status of war hero to become the lead­­er of the Turkish nationalist movement. In 1920, with army support, he was elected president of the Grand National Assembly in Ankara in defiance of the Sultan’s government in Constantinople. From 1919 to 1922 he waged war with the Greeks, who had invaded at Smyrna, and ultimately managed to defeat them and force their withdrawal from Asia Minor. He was then faced with the delicate task of abolishing the sultanate without antagonizing the religious elements within his party. This meant deposing Sultan Mehmet VI, who as caliph (leader of the Islamic world) and sultan stood for the old tradition of combined secular and religious power. Kemal handled the problem with his usual vigour and eloquence in a speech to the Assembly, by linking the power of the caliphate with that of the Assembly: “… It was by force that the sons of Osman seized the sovereignty and Sultanate of the Turkish nation… Now the Turkish nation has rebelled and has put a stop to these usurpers, and has effectively taken sovereignty and the Sultanate into its own hands. This is an accomplished fact. ” In the early morning of 10 November 1922, Mehmet VI slipped quietly away to a waiting British warship, to end his life in exile. He was replaced as caliph by his cousin, whose powers were strictly limited by secular laws, until that position, too, was abolished in 1924. The Republic of Turkey In 1923 the Treaty of Lausanne defined the present borders of the Turkish Republic. An exchange between Greece and Turkey of expatriate populations resulted in the movement of thousands of people, and the wholesale desertion of Greek villages and districts. From 1925 to 1935 several wide-ranging reforms were introduced by President Ke­mal. He secularized institutions, reformed the calendar, adapted the Latin alphabet for the Turkish language, emancipated women, and improved agriculture and industry. He introduced the Western idea of surnames (until then Turks had a single name) and made everyone choose a family name, which they had to hand down to their children. For himself he chose Atatürk, or Father of the Turks. His proved an appropriate choice, as he almost single-handedly created the mod­ern Turkish state. He was enormously popular with the common Turkish people, and when he died in 1938 thousands of mourners lined the railway track to salute the white presidential train as it carried him from Istanbul for burial in Ankara, the new capital. Turkey remained neutral during World War II until 1945, when it entered the war on the side of the Allies. It joined NATO in 1952. The Democratic Party was elected in 1950, and remained in control until 1960, when, faced with increasing social and economic difficulties, it was overthrown by a military coup. A new constitution consolidating liberal reforms was drawn up, and approved by a referendum held in 1961. However, further unrest led to more coups in 1971 and 1980, after which yet another, more restrictive, constitution was prepared. Turgut Özal, leader of the Motherland Party and former world banker and economist, was elected as prime minister in 1983, and served until his death in 1993. Under his leadership Turkey adopted a Western-style economy and in 1987 applied for membership of the European Community (now Union). He was succeeded by Tan­­su Çiller, Turkey’s first woman leader. She inherited the country’s rampant inflation and the conflict between Kurdish separatists and the security forces in the southeast. These political and economic difficulties helped the fundamentalist Refah party later win the largest share of the vote in 1995. The Refah party was officially outlawed in 1998, though it continues to be widely supported. Despite these political tensions, Turkey is becoming an increasingly popular tourist destination, offering all the trappings of a Mediterranean paradise and a wealth of fascinating history.