The History Book

261

The Ottoman Empire became known

as “the sick man of Europe” in the late

19th century, due to its inability to hold

on to its lands. A defeat in World War I

led to even more territorial losses.

See also: Stephenson’s Rocket enters service 220–25 ■ The 1848 revolutions 228–29 ■ The construction of the

Suez Canal 230–35 ■ The Expedition of the Thousand 238–41

CHANGING SOCIETIES

tensions between those who

championed Turkish Islamic values

and those liberals who believed

only Western-style reforms could

s av e Tu r ke y.

Territorial decline

In 1800, despite repeated defeats

at the hands of the Russians,

Ottoman Turkey still ruled over

a vast multinational empire that

stretched across the Balkans, the

Middle East, and North Africa.

From 1805, it lost control of

Egypt, which became effectively

independent under one of the

sultan’s generals, Muhammad Ali.

In 1830, the year that France

began its conquest of Algeria

(completed in 1857), Greece won

its independence; and by 1878,

Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria,

and Romania were similarly

independent in all but name.

In 1881, Tunisia, too, was taken

over by France.

Following the Young Turk

Revolution, the relentless decline

of Ottoman Turkey continued. In

1911, Libya was lost to Italy, while

the Balkan Wars of 1912–13 saw the

surrender of almost all of Turkey’s

remaining European territories.

A fateful alliance

Following the Balkan crisis, the

Ottomans’ military government

launched a drive to modernize

the country along Western lines.

In October 1914, Turkey entered

World War I as an ally of the

Central Powers—Germany and

Austria-Hungary—convinced that

German military aid would allow

it to reassert its potency. This

was a calamitous mistake, and

defeat in 1918 saw Turkey reduced

to its Anatolian heartlands, its

remaining Middle East territories

lost, largely carved up between

Britain and France.

The traumas of Turkey’s defeat

in World War I were underlined in

1920 by the Treaty of Sèvres, largely

a Franco-British imposition. This

confirmed the loss of Ottoman

territory and also awarded much

of western Turkey to Greece,

provoking an immediate nationalist

backlash led by Mustafa Kemal,

as well as the overthrow of the

last sultan, Mehmed VI.

The Turkey that emerged under

Kemal, subsequently styled Atatürk

(“Father of the Turks”), was exactly

the centralized Western-style and,

importantly, secular state that

nationalist reformers such as the

Young Turks had argued for. ■

Kemal Atatürk Mustafa Kemal, better known^

as Atatürk (1881–1938), the name

he assumed in 1934, was the

founder and first president of the

republic of Turkey. Born in 1881,

he took part in the Young Turk

Revolution as an army officer.

Later, he served with distinction

in the Gallipoli campaign of

1915–16, which repulsed a joint

Franco-British attempt to conquer

western Turkey.

After the Turkish defeat in

World War I, Atatürk established

a provisional government. As

leader of the Turkish Nationalists,

he played a central role in driving

the Greeks from mainland

western Turkey. With the

country’s borders confirmed

by the Treaty of Lausanne of

1923, the West effectively

agreeing to the establishment of

a new Turkish republic, Atatürk

launched a radical program of

social and political reforms

intended to transform the nation

into a modern, Westernized

republic. However painful

the process of dragging Turkey

into the modern world, under

Atatürk the country indeed

emerged as a coherent, secular

political entity.

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