The collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire: the causes of the collapse and the formation of the Turkish Republic. Decomposition of the military fief system of land tenure

UDC 956.91

DECAY OF THE RUSSIAN AND OTTOMAN EMPIRES: UNITY AND OPPOSITES

Ranchinskiy V.P.

Revolutions of the early twentieth century. and the First World War led to the collapse of the four empires. The article attempts to analyze the collapse of the Russian and Ottoman empires, to identify the general and specific anatomy of the destruction of the two states.

Key words: Russian Empire, Ottoman Empire, collapse of empires, Young Turks, nationalism.

DISINTEGRATION OF THE RUSSIAN AND OTTOMAN EMPIRES: SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS

Ranchinskiy V.P.

Revolutions of the beginning of the XX century and World War I led to disintegration of four empires. In the article there was made an attempt to analyze the disintegration of the Russian and Ottoman Empires, to find out the general and particular in the anatomy of disintegrating two states. key words. Russian Empire, Ottoman Empire, disintegration of empires, Young Turks, nationalism.

2017 marks one hundred years since two Russian revolutions - February and October. They occurred during the period of the First World War, when the balance of power began to change in favor of the Entente and it became clear that the fate of the German bloc was a foregone conclusion. The main result of the revolutions in Russia was the fall of the Romanov monarchy and the collapse of the Russian Empire. However, as it turned out, these processes took place in the context of a global megatrend - the collapse of three great empires: the Russian, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and the state of Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom the English historian Jason Goodwin called "an emperor without an empire" . The unity of the historical destinies of the collapsed empires provides a basis for a comparative analysis of the process of their collapse. In our opinion, it is quite appropriate to compare the anatomy of the collapse of the Russian and Ottoman empires, despite the fact that the Romanov empire collapsed in fact during one year 1917, and the destruction of the Ottoman house lasted for ten years and lasted from 1908 to November 1918, when Turkey capitulated to the Entente. The choice of these two states for comparative analysis is due to the fact that Russia and Turkey, to a greater extent than with the other two empires, were united by signs of imperialism.

Both the Russian and Ottoman empires included parts of

Europe and Asia. True, by the beginning of the twentieth century. The Ottoman Empire lost most of its European territories, and according to a number of historians, it was Russia that defeated the Turks in the war of 1877-1878. and liberated Bulgaria from the Turkish yoke, launched a spasmodic process of disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. During the Balkan wars of 1912-1913. her European possessions were reduced to a miserable remnant. The Russian Empire came to disintegration without tangible territorial losses, with the exception of southern Sakhalin up to the 50th parallel, Port Arthur and Far in China and the railway to them, as well as concessions in Manchuria, which were purely colonial acquisitions. Russia ceded all these possessions to Japan in the Peace of Portsmouth.

The multi-ethnic composition of the population, which characterized both states, both in one and in the other had a state-forming ethnic group: in Russia they were Russians, and in Turkey they were Turks by blood. In Tsarist Russia, the civilization of the Russian ethnic group determined the identity of the Russian, while in Turkey the situation was different. The Ottoman Turks, who created the state, after the conquest of the Abbasid Caliphate in 1517 and the inclusion of the Arabs in their state, underwent a powerful process of cultivating the classical Arab-Islamic culture, which was formed

in the IX - XII centuries, long before the creation of the powerful state of the Ottomans. The Arabic language became dominant among the educated part of Turkish society, it was not only the language of Islam, but also the language of high culture. The last Arab caliph Al-Mutawakkil girded the conquering sultan Selim I with the sword of the Prophet, and his banner and cloak were transported to Istanbul from Cairo, which symbolized the transfer of the sacred power of the caliph to the sultan. However, in the public consciousness of the Arab tribal aristocracy, the Turkish sultans were not legitimate caliphs, and the Turks were not the original Muslims, since Allah conveyed the divine truth set forth in the Koran not to the Turk, but to the Arab Prophet Muhammad. Therefore, from the point of view of an educated orthodox Arab, the foundation of the Muslim state had to be based on the Arabs. It is on this basis at the turn of the XIX - XX centuries. Arab nationalism began to emerge. Despite these features, the Ottoman Empire was essentially a Turkish state, loyal to the Turkic family dynasty.

Some scholars of empires believe that one of their hallmarks is the tendency to expand their borders. However, both in Tsarist Russia and in the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. this sign is not fixed, on the contrary, the Ottoman state was rapidly losing its territories not only in Europe, but also in North Africa, as well as in Arabia. The Romanov state retreated in the Far East before the onslaught of Japan and waged diplomatic wars with Great Britain for influence in Persia, Afghanistan and Tibet. Problems were already growing in the Kingdom of Poland due to the support of the Allies of Russia in the Entente aspirations of the Polish gentry for independence. US President Woodrow Wilson, in his well-known peace program, which he will bring to the Paris Peace Conference, included the demand for independence for Poland as the thirteenth point.

The monarchical nature of power on the eve of the collapse of empires both in Russia and Turkey was supplemented by its alienation from the people, which is considered to be the most important sign of imperialism. However, in Russia after the revolution of 1905, a number of manifestos of the tsar from 1905 and 1906.

in fact, a constitutional monarchy was formalized and the equality of all subjects before the law, regardless of class affiliation, was introduced, which met with the approval of a significant part of Russian society. In Turkey, the restoration of the constitution adopted in 1876, forty-two years before the adoption of the first constitution in Russia in 1918, did not lead to noticeable changes in society. Its supporters probably came from the best awakenings, but they ran into the complete indifference of society, because the concept of the equality of all people before the law, regardless of religion, did not make sense in the traditional Islamic picture of the world and only brought it down. At the same time, both in Russia and in Turkey, on the eve of the collapse of the empires, the monarchies fell. In Turkey, it formally existed for almost four years after the collapse of the empire, until the adoption by the National Assembly in 1922 of two laws: on the separation of the sultanate from the caliphate and on the liquidation of the sultanate. The last sultan of Vahi ad - Din managed to secretly, in a hospital carriage, escape from the palace to an English ship that brought him to London, otherwise a sad fate awaited him. However, in fact, the power of the sultans in Turkey ended after the palace coup of 1909, after which the sultanate was already an obsolete decoration, which Mustafa Kemal dismantled without any resistance in 1922.

One of the signs of imperialism is considered to be the presence of a centralized bureaucratic apparatus of government, which is alienated from national minorities and alien to their aspirations and needs. However, this sign is extremely vulnerable from the point of view of its verification by the reality of both the Russian and Ottoman empires. In the multinational and polyconfessional states that both empires were, we do not find indisputable evidence of obstacles to the development of national outlying areas on the part of the central authorities. In our opinion, in the localities, the central administrative apparatus was supplemented by a wide variety of forms of participation of the natives in self-government. So, for example, in the Caucasian and Central Asian possessions of the Russian Empire, in fact, the English system was introduced

indirect control, which was widely used by the British in India. Like the British in India, the Russians settled in the national outskirts in separate settlements, without interfering with the local population and without violating its traditional way of life. The central government gave the local

self-management of great powers. In Central Asia, the "Charter on the Siberian Kirghiz" of 1822 was in force, according to which the natives elected to local authorities were equated according to the "Table of Ranks" with the civil and military ranks of Russia, and three-time election to one of the highest positions made it possible to apply for nobility. The official Islamic clergy received a monthly allowance from the Russian state. In the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the twentieth century. almost all non-Muslim confessions had the legal status of a millet (religious community - V.R.), or, according to the English journalist D. Jackson, "... were organized into independent states - churches", and foreigners living in the empire were subordinate the jurisdiction of their consuls. Under the last great Sultan Abdul-Hamid II (1876-1909), the nobility of national minorities, in particular Arabs, Kurds and the so-called Circassians - immigrants from the Muslim enclaves of Russia and the Balkans, was involved in power and accused the Ottoman Turks of not allowed ethnic minorities to govern, in our opinion, incorrectly, at least since the end of the nineteenth century. In all echelons of power of the Ottoman state, almost all the peoples that inhabited the empire were represented. Representatives of Christians and Jews, falling into power, as a rule, converted to Islam and became donme. The people called them "inverted", feigned

Muslims, since in the home circle many of them remained committed to the "faith of the fathers", but this was not an obstacle to holding public office.

The foregoing allows us to conclude that the presence in multinational states of a centralized state administrative apparatus is by no means an indisputable sign of the imperialism of this state. He

may reflect in its essential features the desire of the authorities to find the most effective forms of implementation of state power in certain conditions. Both in the Russian and Ottoman empires, within the framework of relations between the titular ethnos and confession, on the one hand, and ethno-confessional minorities, on the other, Pax Russia and Pax Ottomanica extended, the principles of their structure reveal similarities in tolerance towards others. And here and there, until the collapse of empires, we do not find that atomic and group genocide of aborigines - autochthons, which accompanied the settlement of new lands by the Spaniards, Portuguese, English or Germans in southwestern Africa. The genocide of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire goes beyond Pax Ottoman and was generated by the frantic attempts of Abdul Hamid II and the Young Turks to save the crumbling Ottoman house.

The unity of the process of the collapse of the two empires, in our opinion, is also traced by the attitude towards them of the main actors of world politics at the beginning of the 20th century. At the beginning of the century, the big capital of Western Europe actively penetrated into both empires, capturing various industries and infrastructure projects in the form of concessions. As you know, during the First World War, the Russian economy was leased in concession to England, France, the United States and its other creditors. In the Ottoman Empire on the eve of the war, the main concessionaires were France, Germany and England. The entry of the empire into the war on the side of the German bloc paralyzed the activities of competitors of German companies. In response, England and France, in alliance with Russia, began to develop projects for the dismemberment of the Asian possessions of the Ottoman Empire. The intentions and demands of Russia in relation to Turkey were presented to England and France in a memorandum by Sazonov, SD, Minister of Foreign Affairs (1910-1916). They caused a categorical rejection of Russia's allies in the Entente, in particular, its desire to bring the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, as well as Palestine, under its control. England already in 1915 was looking for ways to stop Russia in its Middle Eastern claims, as evidenced by the diary entries of the British ambassador in Paris.

Russia's claims to Palestine as part of Greater Syria contradicted France's plans, and a desperate bargaining began between the Entente allies, which ended in March-April 1915 with the signing of a protocol of intent - the Constantinople Agreement on the transfer of the straits and Istanbul to Russia after defeating the enemy.

The Constantinople agreement was a forced concession to the diplomacy of England and France, and neither power was going to fulfill it. However, in February 1916, the Russian army occupied Erzurum and Bitlis and ended up on the near approaches to Iraq and Syria. Russia's allies had to reckon with its claims to territorial acquisitions in the Ottoman Empire, and the French consul in Beirut, Georges-Picot, and Mark Sykes, an expert on the Middle East of the English Ministry of Foreign Affairs, urgently went to St. Petersburg. As a result of the negotiations, Russia agreed to compensation for its claims under the Constantinople Agreement: it was promised to transfer Turkish Armenia, the Hakkari region (south of Lake Van - V.R.) and part of the southern coast of the Black Sea. The Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire were divided between England and France. This is how the well-known Sykes-Picot agreement was born, signed in deep secrecy in London in the form of an exchange of notes on May 16, 1916 between England and France.

Entering the war, the Russian and Ottoman empires, each in its bloc, were its weakest link. They lagged behind in their development from their allies. So, for example, in Russia, by the beginning of the war, according to the most optimistic estimates, no more than 50% of the country's population was literate. In Turkey, this indicator was up to 10% by optimists, and it is no coincidence that the English historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote that from the point of view of European liberals, the Ottoman Empire "was the most obvious evolutionary fossil" [Cit. according to: 7, p. 669]. While public life was already beginning to develop along the European path, state institutions were committed to the old order, which retained a dilapidated scenery that the authorities did not want to remove.

By the whim of history, on the eve of their collapse, at the head of Russia and Turkey, on the eve of their collapse, were statesmen who received from their

contemporaries equally unflattering characteristics. In Russia, Tsar Nicholas II was called the "Tsar-Hangman", and Sultan Abdul Hamid II was called the "Great Killer", while both of them were God-fearing, in all matters they relied on the will of God. At the same time, in our opinion, in state affairs they were directly opposite personalities. According to the testimony of Colonel Zuev of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, by the time Nicholas II was abdicated from the throne, his authority had already been destroyed. His inner circle characterizes him as a weak-willed person, deprived of simple worldly

prudence, which allowed him to take the throne of the emperor from him without resistance. Absolutely different was Abdul Hamid II, whom historians characterize as a formidable ruler, highly revered by his subjects, "a skilled diplomat with amazing worldly discretion." In the struggle to preserve the House of the Ottomans, he did not stop at massive violence, fought desperately for the throne, doing, in our opinion, everything that any other person in his place could do. However, his fate was not much different from the fate of Nicholas II. As you know, the Russian tsar was shot along with his family, and the Turkish sultan was helped to die in exile.

Both in Russia and in Turkey, the struggle against the autocracy was led by the internal opposition, represented for the most part by foreigners, members of the Masonic lodges. In Russia, members of the Fourth State Duma, encouraged by the ambassadors of foreign states and, above all, England, on March 2, 1917, achieved the abdication of Nicholas II from the throne in favor of his brother Mikhail Alexandrovich, who never ascended the throne. In the Ottoman Empire, the role of the battering ram that crushed the monarchy was assumed by the military organization "Committee of Unity and Progress", consisting mainly of officers of the Third Army stationed in the Balkans. In July 1908, members of this organization forced Sultan Abdul Hamid II to agree to the restoration of the constitution of 1876, which he had previously suspended, and on April 27, 1909, they deposed him, forcing him to transfer the throne of the Sultan and Caliph to his weak-willed brother Mehmed V, who became a puppet in the hands of the conspirators . The transfer of the throne was accompanied by the signing of the corrected version by the new sultan

constitution, under which, as in Great Britain, the sultan reigned but did not rule. The coup d'état in two steps was supported by England and the United States, Jewish banking houses, as well as the donme.

In Russia, the role of the Trojan horse was played by General Alekseev M.V., Chief of Staff of the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander, who enjoyed the confidence of Nicholas II, who entered into an agreement with the deputies of the Duma Rodzianko, Lvov and Guchkov. In Turkey, this role was played by the chief astrologer and the grand mufti: the first convinced the superstitious Abdul Hamid II that the alignment of the stars favors the restoration of the constitution, and the second substantiated the demands of the conspirators with the Holy Law. In both the first and the second cases, the monarchs were knocked out from under their feet with one blow that pillar that had previously served as their support.

In Russia, the force that crushed the Provisional Government, created after the abdication of Nicholas II from the throne, was the sailors of the Baltic Fleet, that part of it, which was based in the ports of Finland, where German agents delivered large quantities of morphine, paid for by the German General Staff and sold to sailors for pennies, delivered into the cockpits of ships almost for free.

In Turkey, the force that forced the Sultan to abdicate the throne was the soldiers and officers of the Third Army, whom the conspirators brought from Macedonia to Istanbul, surrounded his palace and actually confronted him with a choice: abdication or physical reprisal against him and his family. The day before, "someone" had previously taken the Sultan's personal guard, consisting of Albanians, outside the walls of the palace, leaving him face to face with the conspirators.

After the war, the process of disintegration of both empires was accompanied by attempts by England, France and the United States to annex the historical lands around which they were formed. These attempts were blocked by revolutions and wars, which both in Russia and in Turkey were of a dual nature: civil and national liberation. During these wars in Russia, the working class in alliance with the peasantry was declared the hegemon of the revolutionary transformations of the post-imperial state, and the official ideology was

adapted to the realities of Russia, Marxism, which has a pronounced class character. In Turkey, due to the absence of an organized working class, the hegemon of the revolution was a part of the officer corps of the former sultan's army, which managed to lead the peasantry and mountaineers of Central Anatolia. In Turkey, class ideology could not find support due to the underdevelopment of the classes themselves and the powerful philosophical tradition of Islam, which taught the Muslim to seek explanations for all phenomena of public, economic and social life in the Holy Texts. Therefore, the Young Turks who came to power in 1908 tried to replace

the official ideology of Abdul Hamid II was Pan-Islamism, the geopolitical doctrine of Pan-Turkism, developed at the end of the 20th century. Hungarian Jew Arminius Vamberi. He appeared in Istanbul in the late 70s. XIX century., He studied Arabic, converted to Islam and under the name of Rashid began to earn a living by translating, compiling letters, business papers commissioned by private individuals. Knowing all European languages, he gained fame as a polyglot and was hired as an interpreter in the office of Mehmed Fuad Pasha, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Ottoman Empire. He quickly became indispensable for his patron, headed his office, became rich, got his own departure with security, made a hajj to Mecca and acquired the right to the honorary title of "hadji". Probably at this time he was recruited by British intelligence and became a valuable agent for her. While working in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, A. Vamberi studied the Persian and Turkic languages ​​and, unexpectedly for those around him, left the service and, under the guise of a wandering dervish, went to Turkestan, where Russia was actively penetrating. He went around all the khanates of Turkestan with trade caravans and, returning to Europe, became an indispensable expert on Turkey and Turkestan. In the book he published: "Journey through Central Asia" he substantiated the ideological concept of pan-Turkism, based on the priority of the sign of blood and the origin of the Turkic peoples. So it was found convenient by the Young Turks who came to power after the coup of 1908 and abandoned the pan-Islamism of Abdul Hamid II. However, under the Young Turks, in our opinion, she could not become

ideology of uniting the population of the decaying empire, did more harm than good, as it insulted the Arabs - the historical bearers of Islam, making them second-rate. The situation changed after the Mudros Agreement imposed by the Entente on Turkey in October 1918, and then in August 1920 the Treaty of Sevres, according to which it was divided into four zones of occupation and lost most of its territory. Pan-Turkism was used as the ideology of the national

of the liberation movement and its main propagandist was a half-Serb and half-Albanian by father, half-Macedonian and half-Albanian by mother, Mustafa Kemal.

Thus, both in Russia and in Turkey, the collapse of empires was accompanied by the borrowing of ideological theories developed by representatives of non-titular ethnic groups. Their imposition as an official ideology in Russia led to an extreme aggravation of the social conflict, and in Turkey - to national relations. In Russia, Marxism could not become a national idea, and seventy-four years later it lost the status of a state ideology, while in Turkey, pan-Turkism in various variations is periodically updated and remains the official ideology to this day.

Let's summarize. Revolutions of the first two decades of the twentieth century. and the First World War tested all the empires that existed at that time for strength, and not one of them withstood the test - they all collapsed.

The Ottoman Empire, which entered the war on the side of the German bloc, expected that after the war the Turkish-German alliance would become the dominant factor in the Middle East. However, these plans ran counter to the plans of England, France and Russia. The latter saw in the outbreak of war a chance to realize her dream, to seize the zone of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles and secure an exit from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean and the World Ocean. However, the war ruined the plans of both empires: the weak economies of Russia and Turkey could not bear the burden of military spending, and the empires began to disintegrate. In addition to the military burden, empires were crumbling from within. In the Ottoman Empire, the anti-Ottoman internal factor was particularistic nationalism, the concept of which was hostile to the principles of dynastic

multinational empire. Encouraged by the West, nationalism first became a disease of the House of the Ottomans and its apogee was the Balkan Wars and the uprising of the Hijaz Arabs under the leadership of the sheriff of Mecca, Hussein al-Hashimi. Russia at that time encouraged the nationalism of the Balkan peoples, but a few years later faced the same particular nationalism in Poland, the Baltic States, Ukraine and the Transcaucasus. From empires began to bud

mono-ethnic formations that later became independent states.

In post-imperial Turkey and Russia, the forces that came to power sought enthusiastic recognition by the population of their merits in saving the Fatherland. In Turkey, M. Kemal was raised to the pedestal of history, who received the honorary titles of "gazzi" (warrior of Islam - V.R.) and "Ata Turk" (Father of the Turks - V.R.), in Russia, the leaders of the Bolsheviks were on the pedestal. Both in Turkey and in Russia, this led to the cultivation of the cult of the leader, whose opinion was considered the only true one. Both Turkey and Russia, having disappeared as empires, withstood civil wars and foreign intervention, and were reborn as republics. They retained a certain degree

succession between republics and empires, retaining essentially Turkish and Russian states, and united the traditional cultures of East and West in their new secular identity.

Bibliography

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5. Lord Kinros. The Rise and Fall of the Ottoman Empire. M., 1998.

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Ranchinskiy Victor Pavlovich - Candidate of Historical Sciences, First Deputy Director of the Institute of Philology, History and World Politics, Bryansk State University named after Academician I.G. Petrovsky, [email protected] mail.ru

It made inevitable the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, which for centuries dominated large territories that fell victim to its insatiable military expansion. Forced to join the Central Powers, such as Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria, she, along with them, knew the bitterness of defeat, failing to assert herself as the leading world empire.

Founder of the Ottoman Empire

At the end of the 13th century, Osman I Gazi inherited from his father Bey Ertogrul the power over the countless Turkish hordes that inhabited Phrygia. Having declared the independence of this relatively small territory and taking the title of Sultan, he managed to conquer a significant part of Asia Minor and thus found a powerful empire, named after him the Ottoman Empire. She was destined to play an important role in world history.

Already in the middle, the Turkish army landed on the coast of Europe and began its centuries-old expansion, which made this state one of the greatest in the world in the 15th-16th centuries. However, the beginning of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire was already outlined in the 17th century, when the Turkish army, which had not known defeat before and was considered invincible, suffered a crushing blow near the walls of the Austrian capital.

First defeat by Europeans

In 1683, the hordes of the Ottomans approached Vienna, taking the city under siege. Its inhabitants, having heard enough about the wild and ruthless customs of these barbarians, showed miracles of heroism, protecting themselves and their relatives from certain death. As historical documents testify, the success of the defenders was greatly facilitated by the fact that among the command of the garrison there were many prominent military leaders of those years who were able to competently and promptly take all the necessary defensive measures.

When the king of Poland arrived to help the besieged, the fate of the attackers was decided. They fled, leaving rich booty to the Christians. This victory, which began the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, had for the peoples of Europe, first of all, a psychological significance. She dispelled the myth of the invincibility of the omnipotent Porte, as it was customary for Europeans to call the Ottoman Empire.

Beginning of territorial losses

This defeat, as well as a number of subsequent failures, led to the conclusion of the Peace of Karlovtsy in January 1699. According to this document, the Port lost the previously controlled territories of Hungary, Transylvania and Timisoara. Its borders have shifted to the south for a considerable distance. This was already a fairly tangible blow to its imperial integrity.

Trouble in the 18th century

If the first half of the next, XVIII century, was marked by certain military successes of the Ottoman Empire, which allowed it, although with the temporary loss of Derbent, to maintain access to the Black and Azov Seas, then the second half of the century brought a number of failures that also predetermined the future collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

The defeat in which Empress Catherine II fought with the Ottoman Sultan forced the latter to sign a peace treaty in July 1774, according to which Russia received lands stretching between the Dnieper and the Southern Bug. The next year brings a new misfortune - the Port loses Bukovina, which has ceded to Austria.

The 18th century ended in complete disaster for the Ottomans. The final defeat in the Russian-Turkish war led to the conclusion of a very disadvantageous and humiliating Iasi peace, according to which the entire Northern Black Sea region, including the Crimean peninsula, departed to Russia.

The signature on the document, certifying that from now on and forever Crimea is ours, was personally put by Prince Potemkin. In addition, the Ottoman Empire was forced to transfer the lands between the Southern Bug and the Dniester to Russia, as well as come to terms with the loss of its dominant positions in the Caucasus and the Balkans.

The beginning of a new century and new troubles

The beginning of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century was predetermined by its next defeat in the Russian-Turkish war of 1806-1812. The result of this was the signing in Bucharest of another, in fact, disastrous treaty for the Ports. On the Russian side, the chief commissioner was Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov, and on the Turkish side, Ahmed Pasha. The entire region from the Dniester to the Prut was ceded to Russia and became known first as the Bessarabian region, then as the Bessarabian province, and now it is Moldova.

The attempt made by the Turks in 1828 to take revenge from Russia for past defeats turned into a new defeat and another peace treaty signed the next year in Andreapol, depriving it of the already rather sparse territory of the Danube Delta. To top it off, Greece declared its independence at the same time.

Short-term success, again replaced by defeats

The only time fortune smiled on the Ottomans was during the years of the Crimean War of 1853-1856, ineptly lost by Nicholas I. His successor on the Russian throne, Tsar Alexander II, was forced to cede a significant part of Bessarabia to Porte, but the new war that followed in 1877-1878 returned everything to its place.

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire continued. Taking advantage of the favorable moment, in the same year, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro separated from it. All three states declared their independence. The 18th century ended for the Ottomans with the unification of the northern part of Bulgaria and the territory of their empire, which was called South Rumelia.

War with the Balkan Union

The final collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the formation of the Turkish Republic dates back to the 20th century. This was preceded by a series of events, the beginning of which was laid in 1908 by Bulgaria, which declared its independence and thus ended the five hundred year Turkish yoke. This was followed by the war of 1912-1913, declared by the Porte of the Balkan Union. It included Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia and Montenegro. The goal of these states was to seize the territories that belonged to the Ottomans at that time.

Despite the fact that the Turks fielded two powerful armies, the South and the North, the war, which ended with the victory of the Balkan Union, led to the signing of another treaty in London, which this time deprived the Ottoman Empire of almost the entire Balkan Peninsula, leaving it only Istanbul and a small part of Thrace. The main part of the occupied territories was received by Greece and Serbia, which almost doubled their area due to them. In those days, a new state was formed - Albania.

Proclamation of the Turkish Republic

One can simply imagine how the collapse of the Ottoman Empire took place in subsequent years by following the course of the First World War. Wanting to regain at least part of the territories lost over the past centuries, Porta took part in hostilities, but, unfortunately, on the side of the losing powers - Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria. It was the final blow that crushed the once mighty empire that terrified the whole world. The victory over Greece in 1922 did not save her either. The decay process was already irreversible.

The First World War for the Porte ended with the signing in 1920, according to which the victorious Allies shamelessly plundered the last territories that remained under Turkish control. All this led to its complete collapse and the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey on October 29, 1923. This act marked the end of more than six hundred years of Ottoman history.

Most researchers see the reasons for the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, first of all, in the backwardness of its economy, the extremely low level of industry, the lack of a sufficient number of highways and other means of communication. In a country that was at the level of medieval feudalism, almost the entire population remained illiterate. In many respects, the empire was much worse developed than other states of that period.

Objective evidence of the collapse of the empire

Speaking about what factors testified to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, we should first of all mention the political processes that took place in it at the beginning of the 20th century and were practically impossible in earlier periods. This is the so-called Young Turk Revolution, which took place in 1908, during which members of the Unity and Progress organization seized power in the country. They overthrew the Sultan and introduced a constitution.

The revolutionaries did not last long in power, giving way to the supporters of the deposed sultan. The subsequent period was filled with bloodshed caused by clashes between warring factions and a change of rulers. All this irrefutably testified that powerful centralized power was a thing of the past, and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire had begun.

Briefly summing up, it should be said that Turkey has completed the path prepared for all the states that have left their mark on history from time immemorial. This is the birth, rapid flourishing and finally decline, often leading to their complete disappearance. The Ottoman Empire did not leave completely without a trace, becoming today, though restless, but by no means the dominant member of the world community.

The work of a MSUL student doing an internship at RIATAZA

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in the discipline "History of the country of the region of specialization"

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire and itsinfluenceon the fate of Kurdistan"

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Makarenko Vadim Vladimirovich,

Moscow, 2017

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………….3

Chapter 1. Ottoman Empire………………………………………………………………………….5

• 1.1The policy of the Turkish feudal lords towards the oppressed peoples ...... 6
• 1.2.The collapse of the Ottoman Empire…………………………………………………………………..7

Conclusions to the first chapter……………………………………………………………………………..11

Chapter 2. The origin of the "Kurdish question". The position of the Kurds after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire…………………………………………………………………………………….13

• 2.1 Kurds of the Middle East…………………………………………………………………….14
• 19

Conclusions to the second chapter………………………………………………………………………………20

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………….22Appendix…………………………… …………………………………………………………………24

List of used literature……………………………………………………………..29

ATMANAGEMENT

This work is devoted to research in the field of the history of the Middle East, and concerns the study of the events of the end of the First World War (namely, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire) and their influence on the position of the Kurds as an ethnic group.

The Ottoman Empire is a state created in 1299 by the Ottoman Turks under the leadership of the ulubey1 Osman Gazi in the north-west of Asia Minor2.

As you know, it occupied a vast territory, constantly expanding over the centuries. By the end of the 17th century, its possessions stretched from Algeria to the Caspian Sea and from Hungary to Somalia.3 Dozens of different peoples lived on its territory, including the Kurds. Each nation had its own unique culture and traditions, however, under the influence of the colonizers, assimilation took place, and a new round of historical development began for each ethnic group.

For the Kurds, the influence of the colonialists did not go unnoticed. First, they adopted a new faith for them, Islam, abandoning their native religion, Yezidism. Only a small part remained faithful to their historical faith and went to the mountains. Secondly, the Kurds began to be regarded as a military force that can be used in conquest campaigns and battles with opponents, which the Ottoman sultans used. And thirdly, being under the yoke of the Ottomans, the Kurds had no opportunity to claim a special territory assigned to their ethnic group. This left its mark on the historical development of the Kurds and their position in the Middle East even after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

The relevance of the topic lies in the fact that the Kurdish question, which arose after the collapse of the Empire, has not yet been resolved. The study of this topic will allow a more detailed understanding of the essence of this important problem of our time.

The purpose of this work is to study the events of the end of the First World War and find the reasons why the Kurds did not receive the independent territory they claimed, even to this day.

To achieve this goal, the following tasks are used:

1. Brief study of the history of the development of the Ottoman Empire.

1. Study of the situation of the Kurds under the yoke of the Ottoman Sultanate.

1. Analysis of the events of the end of the First World War and the search for the reasons that did not allow the Kurds to become an independent people.

1. Consideration of the position of the Kurdish ethnos after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in Russia and the Middle East.

The object of research is the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the formation of new states on its ruins.

The subject of the study is the influence of the object of study on the emergence of the Kurdish question, which has not been resolved to this day.

The scientific works of well-known Russian and foreign Kurdologists served as the methodological and theoretical basis for the study.

CHAPTER 1.Osmanskand IempireI.

Historically, the development of the Ottoman Empire can be divided into three major periods:

1. Emergence and expansion of the empire

2. Heyday

3. Decline and decay.

The Ottoman Empire, as mentioned above, was created in its original form in the last decade of the XII century by Osman Gazi, the founder of the Ottoman dynasty. Osman I ruled in one of the Ottoman beyliks4, which during his reign gained independence, its borders were expanded, and government bodies were established there.

Gradually, the borders expanded through constant conquest and colonization of neighboring territories.5 Expansion occurred quickly and efficiently. Already by 1453, the Ottomans were firmly entrenched in Europe, capturing Constantinople. Byzantium, the cradle of the Orthodox world, fell, and the beylik received the status of an empire with its capital in Istanbul6. In the XV-XVI centuries, the borders continued to expand, the empire itself successfully developed under the competent political and economic rule of the sultans. The Ottoman Empire gained complete control over the land and sea routes connecting Asia and Europe. In 1514, after the Battle of Cheldran, the Iranian lands became part of it. It was there that the bulk of the Kurds lived.

In the XVI-XVII centuries, the Ottoman Empire reached the highest point of its influence. It was the heyday of the state. During this period, the Ottoman Empire was one of the most powerful countries in the world - a multinational, multilingual state, stretching from the southern borders of the Holy Roman Empire - the outskirts of Vienna, the Kingdom of Hungary and the Commonwealth in the north, to Yemen and Eritrea in the south, from Algeria in the west, to Caspian Sea in the east7. At the beginning of the 17th century, the empire consisted of 32 provinces and numerous vassal states.8

However, from the end of the 17th century, after the unsuccessful siege of Vienna in 1683, a period of decline began. After the events in Austria-Hungary, the Europeans realized that the Ottomans could be defeated. The myth of their omnipotence was dispelled. This defeat, as well as a number of subsequent failures, led to the conclusion of the Peace of Karlovtsy in January 1699. According to this document, Porta9 lost the territories of Hungary, Transylvania and Timisoara previously under its control. Its borders have shifted to the south for a considerable distance. This was already a fairly tangible blow to its imperial integrity. Then, a huge series of defeats in subsequent wars. The empire was losing its power and influence.

§ 1.1The policy of the Turkish feudal lords towards the oppressed peoples.

The Ottoman Empire was a multinational state, including Bulgarians, Serbs, Hungarians, Romanians, Moldavians, Greeks, Georgians, Armenians, Kurds and others. However, the only dominant ethnic group were the Turks. The expansion had no effect on the rapprochement between them and the subject peoples; on the contrary, the yoke imposed from outside led to the aggression of the oppressed and gave rise to conflicts. A powerful liberation movement began in the European territories, the Arabs also raised uprisings.

For the Kurds, the accession to the empire in 1514 was the first contact with the Turks, who immediately assumed a dominant position. It was the period of accession that was the only time when there were no conflicts between the two peoples. The Kurds hoped for an improvement in their situation, since before that their Sunni minority was under the rule of the Shiite Safavid dynasty. However, the Kurds were quickly disappointed in their hopes. The Ottomans pursued a policy of widespread Turkization of the Kurdish population. There were discontents, but they were not actively manifested, since there was still no unity in the Kurdish environment. During the Ottoman period, the Kurds lived in a closed space limited by the highlands of Erbil and Diyarbakir.10 Due to the special geographical conditions, the Kurds were distant from each other and therefore could not create an organized national movement for a long time.

However, the first beginnings of underground resistance were, for example, in 1898 a group of Kurdish aristocrats led by Badrkhan Beg began publishing the first magazine called "Kurdistan". The first political association of the Kurds also arose under the Ottomans. The "Party of Union and Progress" was formed in 1889, its members were supporters of Kurdish nationalism.11

§ 1.2The origin of the Eastern Question.The collapse of the Ottoman Empire

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire began in 1908, when the Young Turk Revolution took place. The political organization "Unity and Progress"12, headed by Ahmed Jemal Pasha and his supporters, set as its main goal the overthrow of Abdul-Hamid II and the restoration of the constitution. 13

On July 3-6, an uprising took place on the territory of Turkish military units in Macedonia. On July 23, rallies were held in the cities of Thessaloniki and Bitola, at which the 1876 constitution was unilaterally restored by the protesters. Abdul-Hamid accepted the demands of the protesters and convened a parliament.

At this time, Crete proclaims enosis14 with Greece, and this was the first impetus for the complete collapse of the Ottoman Empire. In 1912 Albania declared itself an independent country ruled by Serbia, Montenegro and Greece. The weakened empire tried to find support in the person of Germany, but was only involved in the First World War (1914-1918) and lost most of its possessions: Syria and Lebanon became controlled by France; Jordan, Iraq and Palestine - England; Hijaz, Najd, Asir and Yemen gained independence.15

All these events were accompanied by a massacre of Christians and Yezidi Kurds.

A particularly striking episode was the massacre of Armenians in 1915. Due to a series of defeats, the Ottoman Empire blamed the Armenian troops, which made up the majority in the lost battles with Persia and Russia. Disarmament began in 1914. Then there were the first murders on ethnic grounds. Armenians who did not want to obey the order were tortured and deprived of their lives.

On April 24, 1915, the Armenian elite was arrested and deported from Istanbul. The news of this quickly spread throughout the empire and similar actions began to be held everywhere. At the same time, the deportation of the border population took place. The authorities announced the resettlement of Armenians in safer areas, but as a result, people were thrown out in the middle of the desert, left to die of thirst, hunger and heat. Since most of the men were mobilized, only women, children and the elderly remained at the borders, who could not resist this process. The remaining men were arrested in advance. At the end of spring, these actions began to take place on the territory of Anatolia, far from the military centers. This fact did not in the least prevent the authorities from deliberately killing Armenians, without justifying their actions at all.

“On May 26, the Minister of the Interior of the Ottoman Empire, Mehmed Talaat Pasha, prepared a new law, according to which those who did not agree with government policy were to be deported. In June, he also ordered the deportation of almost all Armenians from the ten eastern provinces of the country. The next campaign was carried out according to several rules. According to the orders of the authorities, in each region the number of Armenians was to be reduced to 10% of the rest of the Muslim population. In addition, the ethnic minority was forbidden to open their own schools, and their new settlements had to be at a considerable distance from each other. In July, the expulsions swept through the western provinces and thus spread throughout the Ottoman Empire. The reason for the Armenian genocide on April 24, 1915 and the following months was the pan-Turkic policy of the authorities. However, in the capital and some large cities, deportations were not so widespread. This was due to the fact that the government was afraid of the publicity of foreign journalists who lived in Istanbul, Izmir, etc. The killings during the deportations were organized. In addition, many Armenians died from terrible conditions on the road or in concentration camps. Later, a Turkish tribunal presented evidence that the authorities carried out medical experiments on members of an ethnic minority. They, in particular, tried the vaccine against typhus. Thousands of Armenians died every day from torture and abuse by the gendarmes.”16

The role of the Kurds in these events is sad. Following the orders of the leadership, it was mainly the Kurdish units that were the active force of the Armenian genocide.

Adnan Celik, author of the book “100-year-old groan: Diyarbakir 1915 in the wake of collective memory”, said in his interview: “The Kurds took part in the extermination of Armenians primarily as Muslims, and considered their actions as a struggle against the infidels. For participation in the genocide, the Kurds were rewarded, they received Armenian houses and lands. However, soon they themselves became victims of persecution by the Turkish government... After the Armenian genocide, the Turkish authorities continued to persecute the Kurds. In the mid-20s of the last century, Kurdish uprisings began in Turkey. Then the Kurds realized that after the massacre of the Armenians, the Turks took them up. This made them look at the events of 1915 differently. The Kurds have this proverb: Armenians for breakfast, and Kurds for dinner. After the Kurdish movement began here, the issue of the Armenian genocide was in the spotlight. Today, the Kurds see a connection between the massacres of Armenians and the persecution against them, so the struggle for their own rights among the Kurds is also connected with the Armenian issue”17

Yezidis were also persecuted. During the genocide of 1915, about 400 thousand Yezidis were killed, the survivors fled to the territory of the Russian Empire in Armenia. Yezidi regiments were also formed, fighting the Turks on the side of the Armenians.

The Turkish authorities have not yet recognized the act of genocide.

The Ottoman Empire withdrew from the First World War in 1917 with the Truce of Yerznkai. Losses amounted to about 350 thousand people. In November 1918, Istanbul was occupied by British and French troops. The government of the Ottoman Empire signed the Truce of Mudros, according to which the Ottoman Empire ceased to exist, transferring most of the lands under the control of the victorious countries, losing control over the Black Sea straits and completely disarming its army.

This was followed by the Treaty of Sevres in 1920, recognizing the rights of the newly created League of Nations in the Middle East, the independence of Yemen, as well as British sovereignty over Cyprus.

Legally, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the consolidation of Turkish territory within its main borders were formalized in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which replaced the Treaty of Sevres. Under this treaty, Turkey retained only Eastern Thrace, Smyrna and other territories that had been torn away from it under the Sevres Peace Treaty of 1920. On October 29, 1923, the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed.

Conclusions to the first chapter.

Based on the studied material on the history of the Ottoman Empire, as well as additional materials on the situation of the Kurds living on its territory, the following was established:

1. The Ottoman Empire is a great state that subjugated vast territories and was one of the strongest states in the world during its heyday.
2. The oppressed peoples raised uprisings, which the sultans managed to suppress until the middle of the 17th century.
3. From the end of the 17th century, the empire began to lose its power. Borders narrowed, peoples got out of obedience, influence on the international arena decreased.
4. At the beginning of the 20th century, the weakened Ottoman Empire, seeing support in Germany, was involved in the First World War, as a result of which the empire collapsed.
5. The Kurds living on the territory of colonized Iran were used by the Turks as a military force. During the Armenian Genocide of 1915, it was the Kurds who carried out the orders of Istanbul.
6. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire led to the formation of new states controlled by large European countries.

CHAPTER 2THE ORIGIN OF THE "KURDISH QUESTION". THE SITUATION OF THE KURDS AFTER THE COLLAPSE OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE.

The growth of the national movement of the Kurds back in the days of the Ottoman Empire led to the realization that such a large ethnic group, which has retained its culture, traditions and identity, needs its own state.

The collapse of the empire was the perfect moment to claim its own territory. The Treaty of Sevres provided for the creation of Kurdistan19 as a separate state. However, as revised by the Treaty of Lausanne, this provision was repealed.

In 1923, the southern part of the alleged Kurdistan (Mosul vilayet20) became under the control of British-mandated Iraq. The southwest was now ruled by Syria under French control, while the rest of the territory went to Turkey21. Thus was born the "Kurdish question", which has remained unresolved for over a century.

Kemal Ataturk, who led Turkey after the overthrow of the monarchy, was the initiator of the denunciation22 of the Treaty of Sevres. He refused to grant autonomy to the Kurds and declared them "mountain Turks". Laws were passed prohibiting the use of the Kurdish language, national dress, and the term "Kurd" itself.

Part of the Kurds fled to Russia, where they were allocated territories for living.

Kurds are still fighting for the right to own their historical territories and gain independence.

• 2.1 Kurds of the Middle East

After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Kurds began to actively fight for their independence. The provision of the Treaty of Sevres on the creation of Kurdistan continues to support the Kurdish people in their struggle today.

As mentioned earlier, the situation in the Middle East in the twenties of the twentieth century was not in favor of the Kurds. The long-awaited independence, already enshrined in an international treaty in the twentieth year, was lost.

In 1922, there was an uprising of the Turks under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal, the future Ataturk23. The purpose of the uprising was to overthrow the monarchy and establish a republic. Kemal offered the Kurds to fulfill all their demands in exchange for help in overthrowing the Ottomans. With the help of Kurdish detachments, he managed to defeat the British, Arabs and Greeks and achieve the overthrow of the dynasty.

However, events began to develop in direct opposition to Ataturk's promises. After Kemal gained power, all important government posts were occupied by his associates. Following the Treaty of Lausanne adopted in 1923, the new government recognized the rights of only religious minorities. Since the majority of Kurds professed Islam, the Turks refused to recognize them as a separate people claiming their own state. Refusing to recognize their rights, the republican government has imposed a ban on any display of Kurdish identity, including the use of language and national dress. Kurdish public organizations24, formed in the twenties and fighting for national freedom, were crushed and outlawed.

Such a sharp turn towards Atatürk, as expected, led to a series of uprisings from the Kurds.

On February 25, a massive national uprising began under the leadership of Sheikh Said Pirani, but by mid-April it was crushed. Pirani and his associates were executed, massacres and deportations began, about 206 Kurdish villages were destroyed and more than 15 thousand people were killed. Kemal introduced the "Courts of Independence", punishing anyone who showed sympathy for the Kurds. The ban on the use of the Kurdish language and the wearing of national dress has been tightened. Any books in Kurdish were confiscated and destroyed. The word "Kurd", as well as derivatives from it, were removed from textbooks. The Kurds were declared "mountain Turks" who had forgotten their national identity. Since 1934, the Turkish government has adopted a law25 according to which it is possible to resettle peoples without declaring reasons, so that it would be easier and more efficient for them to assimilate. The Kurds were sent to the west of Turkey.

However, such harsh measures against the Kurdish people, which aimed to subdue the Kurds, led to the growth of the national movement. A number of major uprisings followed,26 but they were all brutally suppressed. It is known that between 1937 and 1938 between 50,000 and 70,000 Kurds were killed27.

Below are the stages of the Kurdish struggle for independence in Turkey.

The Kurds of Iraq began to fight for their rights and autonomy later than the Kurds of Turkey. Only when Iraq was occupied by the Soviet Union and Britain in 1941-1945, and the monarchy was overthrown, did the uprisings begin under the leadership of Barzani28, and in 1946 the Democratic Party of Kurdistan appeared. As a result of the struggle, the Mahabad Republic appeared, which lasted only from January 22 to December 16, 1946, but was of great importance for the Kurds. It was the first autonomous entity.

In 1958, the Iraqi monarchy was overthrown and a new government came to power. It was led by the leader of the Free Officers organization, General Abdel Kerim Qasem. After the overthrow of Faisal, the Kurds gained equality and hoped to gain national freedom, but the new government began to support Arab chauvinism29, which caused the September uprising of 1961-1970 led by Barzani. Under the slogan "Democracy for Iraq - autonomy for Kurdistan!", Barzani took control of the mountainous part of Iraqi Kurdistan and called it "Free Kurdistan".

This was followed by a difficult period of relations between the Kurds and Saddam Hussein. The most striking episodes can be considered the gas bombardment of Halabadzha in 1988 and the Anfal operation of 1987-1989, which meant the “cleansing” of the Kurdish population. About 182 thousand people were taken to the desert and destroyed, more than 700 thousand were deported to special camps, about 90% of Kurdish villages in Iraq were razed to the ground.

Many attempts were made to gain independence, which, in the end, were crowned with success.

It was not until October 2005 that Iraqi Kurdistan was formally established in a referendum on the adoption of the Iraqi constitution on the basis of broad autonomy. Today, Kurdistan has its own parliament, government, security service and armed groups30

In Iran, the Kurds are not concentrated in a specific area. Kurdish settlements are scattered throughout Iran. North Khorasan, Ilam and Kermanshah31 can be singled out from large areas of compact residence of Kurds.

As for the situation of the Kurds in Iran, Olga Zhigalina described it in an accessible way: “The integration processes that took place in monarchical Iran itself were also reflected in the nature of interethnic relations in Iranian Kurdistan. Before the overthrow of the Shah's regime,32 a certain rapprochement of the nationalities inhabiting the country was guaranteed by the policy of Iranian nationalism. It was aimed at the destruction of traditional forms of social relations, at the formation of a social structure and economy characteristic of a capitalist society, the spread of pan-Iranian forms of culture, the introduction of the Persian language into all spheres of life, etc. At the same time, the national and cultural needs of the non-Persian peoples of the country were ignored. The socio-political and economic dissatisfaction of the Iranian Kurds, the infringement of their national-state status and other reasons gave rise to claims against the authorities, representatives of the dominant ethnic group (Persian-speaking Iranians), with whom the ethno-cultural consequences of integration processes were associated. Meanwhile, the use of military and repressive institutions allowed the Shah's regime as a whole to maintain a certain balance of interethnic relations"33

In Syria, the national movement began in the 30s in the province of Al Jazeera. The leaders were Hadjo Aga, Kaddour Bey and Khalil Bey Ibrahim Pasha. Their main goal was to achieve autonomy rights, but the French authorities denied them.

In 1957, the Democratic Party of Syrian Kurdistan was founded, the goals of which were proclaimed to protect the cultural traditions of the Kurds, the struggle for economic progress and democratic change in Syria. The party leaders were Osman Sabri and Daham Miro. The DPSK has never been recognized by the Syrian authorities and remains an underground organization. After the failure of an attempt to create a political union between Syria and Egypt in 1961, Syria was declared an Arab republic and the provisional constitution of the country came into force. In 1960, several DPSK leaders were arrested on charges of separatism and imprisoned. In the 1961 parliamentary elections, the DPSK did not win a single seat in parliament.

After the 1962 census, about 120 thousand Kurds were deprived of Syrian citizenship. This made them absolutely powerless, they could not officially find a job, get an education, own property and marry. Stateless Kurds were expelled from their lands and Arabs came in their place.

In 1986, during the Novruz holiday, Damascus policemen opened fire on the crowd under the pretext that wearing national Kurdish clothing was prohibited. Many people were injured, one person was killed. The same situation happened in Afrin. Three people died there.

However, both sides of the conflict over the next twenty years gradually began to make attempts to find compromises. The position of the Kurds has improved. In 2006, the National Assembly of Syrian Kurdistan of Syria was founded with the aim of developing democracy, granting rights to national minorities and creating a federal state.

In 2016, the Kurds received autonomy from three cantons (Jazira, Kobani, Afrin). The second name of Syrian Kurdistan is the Rojava region, although the official authorities are against this territorial entity. Even now, Kurds in Syria are not allowed to officially use the Kurdish language, children are not allowed to give Kurdish names, companies that do not have Arabic names are not allowed to register, private Kurdish schools are not allowed to be built, and publication of books and other materials in Kurdish is prohibited.

• 2.2 Kurds of Russia

Kurds began to migrate to Russia at the end of the 19th century from Turkey and Iran to the Transcaucasus due to crop failure and famine.

After the revolution of 1917, the "Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia" was adopted, which secured the right to self-determination, the possibility of realizing their national aspirations, as well as the widespread elimination of illiteracy. Subsequent legal acts secured the inviolability of beliefs and customs and the right to arrange a free national life35. In the early twenties of the twentieth century, the territories where the Kurds lived became part of the USSR (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia) and all the adopted laws now applied to the Kurdish population.

For the Soviet Union, one of the main issues was the integration of various peoples into one Soviet society. The Kurds, who fell under the definition of a national minority, were equated with other peoples in rights, but no separate land was allocated for them on the territory of the USSR.

Below is a table with the most important congresses for resolving the Kurdish issue:

According to various sources, 150-500 thousand Kurds lived in Russia in the 20th century.

In 1937, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin decided to deport the Kurds from the regions bordering Turkey to Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Armenia. The deportation took place only partially, and by 1944 it was already completed.

In the nineties, Kurds migrated from Central Asia to certain areas of the Krasnodar and Stavropol Territories, the Rostov Region, and Adygea. According to the 2010 census, about 23.2 thousand Kurds and 40.6 thousand Yezidis live in Russia, counted separately.

Conclusions to the second chapter.

Based on the studied material, as well as the analysis of the facts, the following was established:

1. After the end of the First World War, the Treaty of Sevres was concluded in 1920 between the victorious countries and Turkey. According to the provisions of this agreement, the Kurds received independence and a separate territory, called Kurdistan.
2. However, after the Turkish Republican rule came to power, the provisions of the Treaty of Sevres were revised and in 1923 the Treaty of Lausanne was concluded, which formalized the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and denied the right of the Kurds to create a separate state.
3. The Kurds of the Middle East were divided between Turkey, Syria, Iraq and, later, Iran.
4. Throughout the twentieth century, the Kurdish ethnic group was subjected to discrimination, significant restrictions on their rights, Kurdish settlements were destroyed, and mass executions took place. Most Kurds were forbidden to use their native language, wear national clothes, and distinguish themselves as a separate people.
5. However, there was a strong national movement. Throughout the twentieth century, there were mass protests, uprisings, wars were unleashed with the government for the sake of gaining independence.

6. The Kurds of Syria and Iraq have managed to achieve autonomy for their territories, while this has not yet been achieved in Iran and Turkey.

1. In Russia, the Kurds were not persecuted, the Soviet authorities in the first years of their rule tried in every possible way to improve the situation of the oppressed national minorities and improve their living conditions.
2. Mass deportations during the Stalin period were not accompanied by bloody massacres, as in the Middle East.
3. And now the Kurds live in Russia, they are equal in rights with other peoples, but no separate land has been allocated for them.

CONCLUSION

In this course work, the process of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, a great state that existed for more than six centuries and occupied vast territories, and the impact of this process on the fate of the Kurds was considered.

Indeed, the collapse of the empire significantly affected the development of the Kurdish national movement and the existence of the Kurds in general, since the Kurdish people were never allowed to create their own state formation.

The reasons that influenced this process were found. Firstly, this is the collapse of the Ottoman Empire itself and the provisions of the treaties that fixed this process. Secondly, this is a change of ruling regimes in the states where the Kurds lived. The new governments pursued an anti-Kurdish policy, toughening their attitude towards the national minority and restricting their rights, trying with all their might to prevent the Kurds from uniting into a powerful force capable of defending their interests. Thirdly, this is the unchanging status of the oppressed people, which has not changed after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire to this day.

Years of struggle bore fruit, and autonomous regions called Kurdistan were formed in Iraq and Syria. These are Iraqi Kurdistan and Rojava.

In this work, the following tasks were performed:

1. The history of the development of the Ottoman Empire from its creation to its collapse was studied.
2. The situation of the Kurds under the rule of the Ottoman sultans was considered. At that time, the Kurdish ethnos was considered as a vassal military power, with the help of which the expansion of territories and the conduct of an aggressive domestic policy towards the colonized ethnic groups took place.
3. An analysis was made of the events of the early twentieth century and a number of reasons were deduced that did not allow the Kurds to gain independence.
4. The position of the Kurds after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, both in the Middle East and in Russia, was considered.

To this day, the Kurdish question is a hot topic of discussion at the international level. Involved in military conflicts in the Middle East, the Kurds are a powerful force defending their interests. Despite large-scale discrimination over the centuries, they have not lost hope of creating a united Kurdistan and are fighting for their rights.

APPENDIX

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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1. Klyuchnikov Yu.V., Sabanin A.V. International politics of modern times in treaties, notes and declarations. M., 1926. Part 2.

1. Lazarev M.S. Kurdistan and the Kurdish problem. M., 1964.

1. Lazarev M.S. The Kurdish problem in the European dimension / Asia and Africa today. 1997. No. 2.

1. Lazarev M.S. Kurds are a persecuted people / Asia and Africa today. 1995. No. 3.

1. Lazarev M.S. Kurds and Kurdistan: (factors of the formation of the problem) / The national question in the liberated countries of the East. M., 1986.

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1. Encyclopedia Britannica- Ottoman Empire, empire created by Turkish tribes in Anatolia

1. David McDowall, A modern history of the Kurds

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Ottoman Empire continued to be considered the "sick man" of Europe, but they fought with it, and Constantinople was then a noticeable impressive military force, and its diplomats were famous for their unusual skill, the ability to solve the most incredible political and other tasks. But few people imagined that the prophecy described in a small book under the intriguing title "A curious prediction about the fall of the Turkish kingdom of the Arabian Star-Book Musta Eddin. Printed in the printing house of S. Selivanovskiy. St. Petersburg, 1828" will come true. It is curious that this book was published quite often - in 1789, 1828 (twice this year, in both capitals), 1854 ... The dates of these publications paradoxically coincide with the dates of the Russian-Turkish wars. The fall of the Ottoman Empire was predicted in the 16th century , when it was a powerful power, possessing the absolute weapon of that time - the strongest army and navy. Only Spain and Portugal could compete with it. And, unlike most of these publications, genuine historical figures act in it - Sultans Suleiman Kanuni, Selim II and Murad III, vizier Mehmet Pasha Sokollu. So the authenticity of the historical background is beyond doubt. Russia in those days posed almost no danger to the Ottoman Empire. The only serious opponent of the Ottoman Empire was Persia, and even that was constantly tormented by internal conflicts. And here the unknown astrologer Musta Eddin says to Murad III: the days of the empire are numbered. It was more like a dream. However, this the promise was fulfilled. In the middle of the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire was at the zenith of its power, and by the end of the 19th century it had actually collapsed, and the First World War consolidated its collapse. Therefore, the publication

November 1, 1922 ended the existence of the Ottoman Empire, founded in 1299, when it gained sovereignty during the reign of the dynasty of Osman I, who was its founder. His family and descendants ruled the empire from 1299 continuously throughout the history of the empire. The Sultan was the sole and absolute regent, head of state and head of government of the empire. In addition, the Ottoman Dynasty was the embodiment of the Ottoman Caliphate, starting from the fourteenth century, from the reign of Murad I. The representative of the Ottoman dynasty held the title of Caliph and power over all Muslims at the time of Mehmed's cousin Abdülmecid II coming to power. The Ottoman Dynasty positioned itself as the political and religious successor of Muhammad and the leader of the entire Muslim community without borders in the Ottoman Empire and beyond. The title of the Ottoman Caliphate was challenged as early as 1916 by the leader of the Arab Revolt, King Hussein Ben Ali of Hejaz, who condemned Mehmet V, but his kingdom was liquidated and annexed by Ibn Saud only in 1925.

On November 11, 1922, at a conference in Lausanne, the sovereignty of the Turkish Grand National Assembly with the government in Ankara over the territory of Turkey was recognized. The last sultan, Mehmed VI, left the Ottoman capital, Istanbul, on November 17, 1922. Legal positions were consolidated after the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne on July 24, 1923. An allied invitation to a conference in Lausanne was transmitted both to the government in Constantinople and in Ankara. Mustafa Kemal, who then headed the national liberation movement in Turkey, was convinced that only the government from Ankara should take part in the conference. On November 1, 1922, the Grand National Assembly declared the government of the Sultanate in Constantinople illegal. The Grand National Assembly also decided that Constantinople ceased to be the nation's capital from the moment it was occupied by the Allies. In addition, they declared that the Sultanate had been abolished. After reading the resolution, Mehmed VI sought refuge aboard the British warship Malaya on 17 November. After Mehmed VI fled, the rest of his government's ministers accepted the new political reality. But no official document was found that announced the surrender of the Ottoman state or the Sultan. The Lausanne Conference, November 11, 1922, recognized the sovereignty of the Turkish Grand National Assembly as a replacement for the Ottoman Empire.

Our note: Official census data from the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey indicate that between 1920 and 1927 there was a sharp drop in the non-Muslim population in the main cities. Most striking are the statistics on the state of affairs in Erzurum, which at one time was the home of many Armenians. There, the proportion of non-Muslims dropped from 32 percent of the city's total population to 0.1 percent. In Sivas, this figure fell from 33 percent to 5 percent. In Trabzon, which has always had a large Greek population, the number of non-Muslims has dropped from 43 percent to 1 percent. From 1900 to 1927, the non-Muslim population of Izmir fell from 62 percent to 14 percent. There was no such drastic drop in Istanbul: the proportion of the non-Muslim population, which in 1900 was 56 percent, had dropped to 35 percent by 1927.” Mustafa recorded only Kurds as Turks. But they had no desire to be them. As a result As a result, the Turkish army has been fighting Kurdish rebels with varying degrees of success ever since.

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OTTOMAN (OTTOMAN) EMPIRE. This empire was created by the Turkic tribes in Anatolia and existed since the decline of the Byzantine Empire in the 14th century. until the formation of the Turkish Republic in 1922. Its name comes from the name of Sultan Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman dynasty. The influence of the Ottoman Empire in the region began to gradually disappear from the 17th century, it finally collapsed after the defeat in the First World War.

Rise of the Ottomans.

The modern Republic of Turkey traces its origins to one of the Ghazi beyliks. The creator of the future mighty state, Osman (1259–1324/1326), inherited from his father Ertogrul a small border inheritance (uj) of the Seljuk state on the southeastern border of Byzantium, not far from Eskisehir. Osman became the founder of a new dynasty, and the state received his name and went down in history as the Ottoman Empire.

In the last years of Ottoman power, a legend appeared that Ertogrul and his tribe arrived from Central Asia just in time to save the Seljuks in their battle with the Mongols, and their western lands were rewarded. However, modern research does not confirm this legend. Ertogrul was given his inheritance by the Seljuks, to whom he swore allegiance and paid tribute, as well as to the Mongol khans. This continued under Osman and his son until 1335. It is likely that neither Osman nor his father were ghazis until Osman came under the influence of one of the dervish orders. In the 1280s, Osman managed to capture Bilecik, İnönü and Eskisehir.

At the very beginning of the 14th century. Osman, together with his ghazis, annexed to his inheritance the lands that stretched up to the coasts of the Black and Marmara Seas, as well as most of the territory west of the Sakarya River, up to Kutahya in the south. After the death of Osman, his son Orkhan occupied the fortified Byzantine city of Brusa. Bursa, as the Ottomans called it, became the capital of the Ottoman state and remained so for more than 100 years until Constantinople was taken by them. In almost one decade, Byzantium lost almost all of Asia Minor, and such historical cities as Nicaea and Nicomedia were named Iznik and Izmit. The Ottomans subdued the beylik of Karesi in Bergama (former Pergamon), and Gazi Orhan became the ruler of the entire northwestern part of Anatolia: from the Aegean Sea and the Dardanelles to the Black Sea and the Bosporus.

conquests in Europe.

The rise of the Ottoman Empire.

In the period between the capture of Bursa and the victory in Kosovo, the organizational structures and management of the Ottoman Empire were quite effective, and already at that time many features of the future huge state loomed. Orhan and Murad were not interested in whether the new arrivals were Muslims, Christians or Jews, whether they were listed as Arabs, Greeks, Serbs, Albanians, Italians, Iranians or Tatars. The state system of government was built on a combination of Arab, Seljuk and Byzantine customs and traditions. In the occupied lands, the Ottomans tried to preserve, as far as possible, local customs, so as not to destroy the established social relations.

In all newly annexed areas, military leaders immediately allocated income from land allotments as a reward to valiant and worthy soldiers. The owners of these kind of fiefs, called timars, were obliged to manage their lands and from time to time participate in campaigns and raids on remote territories. From the feudal lords, called sipahs, who had timars, cavalry was formed. Like the ghazis, the sipahis acted as Ottoman pioneers in the newly conquered territories. Murad I distributed many such inheritances in Europe to Turkic clans from Anatolia who did not have property, resettling them in the Balkans and turning them into a feudal military aristocracy.

Another notable event of that time was the creation of a corps of Janissaries in the army, soldiers who were included in the military units close to the Sultan. These soldiers (Turkish yeniceri, lit. new army), called Janissaries by foreigners, later began to be recruited among captured boys from Christian families, in particular in the Balkans. This practice, known as the devshirme system, may have been introduced under Murad I, but did not fully take shape until the 15th century. under Murad II; it continued uninterrupted until the 16th century, with interruptions until the 17th century. Being slaves of the sultans in status, the Janissaries were a disciplined regular army, consisting of well-trained and armed foot soldiers, superior in combat capability to all similar troops in Europe until the advent of the French army of Louis XIV.

The conquests and fall of Bayezid I.

Mehmed II and the capture of Constantinople.

The young sultan received an excellent education at the palace school and as governor of Manisa under his father. He was undoubtedly more educated than all the other monarchs of the then Europe. After the murder of his minor brother, Mehmed II reorganized his court in preparation for the capture of Constantinople. Huge bronze cannons were cast and troops were gathered to storm the city. In 1452, the Ottomans built a huge fort with three majestic fortress castles in the narrow part of the Bosporus about 10 km north of the Golden Horn harbor of Constantinople. Thus, the Sultan was able to control shipping from the Black Sea and cut off Constantinople from supplies from the Italian trading posts located to the north. This fort, called Rumeli Hisary, together with another Anadolu Hisary fortress built by the great-grandfather of Mehmed II, guaranteed reliable communication between Asia and Europe. The most spectacular move of the Sultan was the ingenious crossing of part of his fleet from the Bosphorus to the Golden Horn through the hills, bypassing the chain stretched at the entrance to the bay. Thus, the cannons from the ships of the Sultan could bombard the city from the inner harbor. On May 29, 1453, a breach was made in the wall, and the Ottoman soldiers broke into Constantinople. On the third day, Mehmed II was already praying in Ayasofya and decided to make Istanbul (as the Ottomans called Constantinople) the capital of the empire.

Owning such a well-located city, Mehmed II controlled the position in the empire. In 1456, his attempt to take Belgrade ended unsuccessfully. Nevertheless, Serbia and Bosnia soon became provinces of the empire, and before his death, the Sultan managed to annex Herzegovina and Albania to his state. Mehmed II captured all of Greece, including the Peloponnese, with the exception of a few Venetian ports, and the largest islands in the Aegean. In Asia Minor, he finally managed to overcome the resistance of the rulers of Karaman, seize Cilicia, annex Trebizond (Trabzon) on the Black Sea coast to the empire and establish suzerainty over the Crimea. The Sultan recognized the authority of the Greek Orthodox Church and worked closely with the newly elected Patriarch. Previously, for two centuries, the population of Constantinople was constantly declining; Mehmed II moved many people from various parts of the country to the new capital and restored traditionally strong crafts and trade in it.

The heyday of the empire under Suleiman I.

The power of the Ottoman Empire reached its peak in the middle of the 16th century. The reign of Suleiman I the Magnificent (1520-1566) is considered the Golden Age of the Ottoman Empire. Suleiman I (previous Suleiman, son of Bayezid I, never ruled all of its territory) surrounded himself with many capable dignitaries. Most of them were recruited according to the devshirme system or captured during army campaigns and pirate raids, and by 1566, when Suleiman I died, these "new Turks", or "new Ottomans", already firmly held power over the entire empire in their hands. They formed the backbone of the administrative authorities, while the highest Muslim institutions were headed by the indigenous Turks. Theologians and jurists were recruited from among them, whose duties included interpreting laws and performing judicial functions.

Suleiman I, being the only son of a monarch, never faced any claims to the throne. He was an educated man who loved music, poetry, nature, and also philosophical discussions. And yet the military forced him to adhere to a militant policy. In 1521 the Ottoman army crossed the Danube and captured Belgrade. This victory, which Mehmed II could not achieve at one time, opened the way for the Ottomans to the plains of Hungary and to the basin of the upper Danube. In 1526 Suleiman took Budapest and occupied all of Hungary. In 1529, the sultan began the siege of Vienna, but was unable to capture the city before the onset of winter. Nevertheless, a vast territory from Istanbul to Vienna and from the Black Sea to the Adriatic Sea formed the European part of the Ottoman Empire, and Suleiman during his reign carried out seven military campaigns on the western borders of the state.

Suleiman fought in the east as well. The borders of his empire with Persia were not defined, and the vassal rulers in the border regions changed their masters, depending on which side the power was on and with whom it was more profitable to conclude an alliance. In 1534, Suleiman took Tabriz, and then Baghdad, including Iraq in the Ottoman Empire; in 1548 he regained Tabriz. The Sultan spent the entire 1549 in pursuit of the Persian Shah Tahmasp I, trying to fight him. While Suleiman was in Europe in 1553, Persian troops invaded Asia Minor and captured Erzurum. Having expelled the Persians and devoted most of 1554 to the conquest of the lands east of the Euphrates, Suleiman, according to the official peace treaty concluded with the shah, received a port in the Persian Gulf at his disposal. The squadrons of the naval forces of the Ottoman Empire operated in the waters of the Arabian Peninsula, in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez.

From the very beginning of his reign, Suleiman paid great attention to strengthening the maritime power of the state in order to maintain the superiority of the Ottomans in the Mediterranean. In 1522 his second campaign was directed against Fr. Rhodes, lying 19 km from the southwestern coast of Asia Minor. After the capture of the island and the eviction of the Joannites who owned it to Malta, the Aegean Sea and the entire coast of Asia Minor became Ottoman possessions. Soon, the French king Francis I turned to the Sultan for military assistance in the Mediterranean and with a request to oppose Hungary in order to stop the advance of the troops of Emperor Charles V, advancing on Francis in Italy. The most famous of Suleiman's naval commanders, Khairaddin Barbarossa, supreme ruler of Algeria and North Africa, devastated the coasts of Spain and Italy. Nevertheless, Suleiman's admirals failed to capture Malta in 1565.

Suleiman died in 1566 in Szigetvar during a campaign in Hungary. The body of the last of the great Ottoman sultans was transferred to Istanbul and buried in a mausoleum in the courtyard of the mosque.

Suleiman had several sons, but his beloved son died at the age of 21, two others were executed on charges of conspiracy, and the only remaining son, Selim II, turned out to be a drunkard. The conspiracy that destroyed Suleiman's family can be partly attributed to the jealousy of his wife, Roxelana, a former slave girl of either Russian or Polish origin. Another mistake of Suleiman was the elevation in 1523 of his beloved slave Ibrahim, who was appointed chief minister (grand vizier), although there were many other competent courtiers among the applicants. And although Ibrahim was a capable minister, his appointment violated the long-established system of palace relations and aroused the envy of other dignitaries.

Mid 16th century was the heyday of literature and architecture. More than a dozen mosques were erected in Istanbul under the guidance and designs of the architect Sinan, the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne, dedicated to Selim II, became a masterpiece.

Under the new Sultan Selim II, the Ottomans began to lose their positions at sea. In 1571, the united Christian fleet met the Turkish in the battle of Lepanto and defeated it. During the winter of 1571-1572, the shipyards in Gelibolu and Istanbul worked tirelessly, and by the spring of 1572, thanks to the construction of new warships, the European naval victory was nullified. In 1573, the Venetians were defeated, and the island of Cyprus was annexed to the empire. Despite this, the defeat at Lepanto was an omen of the coming decline of Ottoman power in the Mediterranean.

Decline of the empire.

After Selim II, most of the Ottoman sultans were weak rulers. Murad III, Selim's son, reigned from 1574 to 1595. His tenure was accompanied by turmoil caused by palace slaves led by Grand Vizier Mehmed Sokolki and two harem factions: one led by the Sultan's mother Nur Banu, a Jewish convert to Islam, and the other by a beloved Safi's wife. The latter was the daughter of the Venetian governor of Corfu, who was captured by pirates and presented to Suleiman, who immediately gave her to his grandson Murad. However, the empire still had enough strength to move east to the Caspian Sea, as well as to maintain its position in the Caucasus and Europe.

After the death of Murad III, 20 of his sons remained. Of these, Mehmed III ascended the throne, strangling 19 of his brothers. His son Ahmed I, who succeeded him in 1603, tried to reform the system of government and get rid of corruption. He departed from the cruel tradition and did not kill his brother Mustafa. And although this, of course, was a manifestation of humanism, but since that time all the brothers of the sultans and their closest relatives from the Ottoman dynasty began to be imprisoned in a special part of the palace, where they spent their lives until the death of the ruling monarch. Then the eldest of them was proclaimed his successor. Thus, after Ahmed I, few of those who reigned in the 17th-18th centuries. Sultans had sufficient intellectual development or political experience to manage such a vast empire. As a result, the unity of the state and the central government itself began to weaken rapidly.

Mustafa I, brother of Ahmed I, was mentally ill and ruled for only one year. Osman II, the son of Ahmed I, was proclaimed the new sultan in 1618. Being an enlightened monarch, Osman II tried to transform state structures, but was killed by his opponents in 1622. For some time, the throne again went to Mustafa I, but already in 1623 Osman's brother Murad ascended the throne IV, who ruled the country until 1640. His reign was dynamic and reminiscent of the reign of Selim I. Having reached the age of majority in 1623, Murad spent the next eight years in relentless attempts to restore and reform the Ottoman Empire. In an effort to improve state structures, he executed 10,000 officials. Murad personally led his armies during the eastern campaigns, banned the consumption of coffee, tobacco and alcoholic beverages, but he himself showed a weakness for alcohol, which led the young ruler to death at the age of only 28 years.

Murad's successor, his mentally ill brother Ibrahim, managed to largely destroy the state he inherited before he was deposed in 1648. The conspirators put Ibrahim's six-year-old son Mehmed IV on the throne and actually led the country until 1656, when the Sultan's mother achieved the appointment of Grand Vizier with unlimited powers talented Mehmed Köprülü. He held this position until 1661, when his son Fazıl Ahmed Koprulu became vizier.

The Ottoman Empire nevertheless managed to overcome the period of chaos, extortion and crisis of state power. Europe was divided by the Wars of Religion and the Thirty Years' War, while Poland and Russia were in trouble. This made it possible for both Köprül, after the purge of the administration, during which 30,000 officials were executed, to capture the island of Crete in 1669, and in 1676 Podolia and other regions of Ukraine. After the death of Ahmed Koprulu, his place was taken by a mediocre and corrupt palace favorite. In 1683, the Ottomans laid siege to Vienna, but were defeated by the Poles and their allies, led by Jan Sobieski.

Leaving the Balkans.

The defeat at Vienna was the beginning of the retreat of the Turks in the Balkans. First, Budapest fell, and after the loss of Mohacs, all of Hungary fell under the rule of Vienna. In 1688 the Ottomans had to leave Belgrade, in 1689 Vidin in Bulgaria and Nish in Serbia. Thereafter Suleiman II (r. 1687–1691) appointed Mustafa Köprülü, Ahmed's brother, as grand vizier. The Ottomans managed to retake Nis and Belgrade, but they were utterly defeated by Prince Eugene of Savoy in 1697 near Senta, in the far north of Serbia.

Mustafa II (r. 1695–1703) attempted to recapture lost ground by appointing Hussein Köprülä as grand vizier. In 1699, the Karlovitsky Peace Treaty was signed, according to which the Peloponnese and Dalmatia peninsulas retreated to Venice, Austria received Hungary and Transylvania, Poland - Podolia, and Russia retained Azov. The Treaty of Karlovtsy was the first in a series of concessions that the Ottomans were forced to make as they left Europe.

During the 18th century The Ottoman Empire lost most of its power in the Mediterranean. In the 17th century The main opponents of the Ottoman Empire were Austria and Venice, and in the 18th century. – Austria and Russia.

In 1718, Austria, according to the Pozharevatsky (Passarovitsky) treaty, received a number of territories. Nevertheless, the Ottoman Empire, despite the defeats in the wars that it waged in the 1730s, according to the treaty signed in 1739 in Belgrade, regained this city, mainly due to the weakness of the Habsburgs and the intrigues of French diplomats.

Surrenders.

As a result of behind-the-scenes maneuvers of French diplomacy in Belgrade, in 1740 an agreement was concluded between France and the Ottoman Empire. Called "Surrenders", this document was for a long time the basis for the special privileges received by all states in the territory of the empire. The formal beginning of the agreements was laid as early as 1251, when the Mamluk sultans in Cairo recognized Saint Louis IX, King of France. Mehmed II, Bayezid II and Selim I confirmed this agreement and used it as a model in relations with Venice and other Italian city-states, Hungary, Austria and most other European countries. One of the most important was the agreement of 1536 between Suleiman I and the French king Francis I. In accordance with the agreement of 1740, the French received the right to move freely and trade on the territory of the Ottoman Empire under the full protection of the Sultan, their goods were not taxed, with the exception of import and export duties, French envoys and consuls acquired judicial power over compatriots who could not be arrested in the absence of a representative of the consulate. The French were given the right to erect and freely use their churches; the same privileges were reserved within the Ottoman Empire and for other Catholics. In addition, the French could take under their protection the Portuguese, Sicilians and citizens of other states who did not have ambassadors at the Sultan's court.

Further decline and attempts at reform.

The end of the Seven Years' War in 1763 marked the beginning of new attacks against the Ottoman Empire. Despite the fact that the French king Louis XV sent Baron de Totta to Istanbul to modernize the Sultan's army, the Ottomans were defeated by Russia in the Danube provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia and were forced to sign the Kyuchuk-Kaynarji peace treaty in 1774. Crimea gained independence, and Azov went to Russia, which recognized the border with the Ottoman Empire along the Bug River. The Sultan promised to provide protection for the Christians living in his empire, and allowed the presence of a Russian ambassador in the capital, who received the right to represent the interests of his Christian subjects. Starting from 1774 and up to the First World War, the Russian tsars referred to the Kyuchuk-Kaynardzhi agreement, justifying their role in the affairs of the Ottoman Empire. In 1779, Russia received rights to the Crimea, and in 1792 the Russian border was moved to the Dniester in accordance with the Iasi peace treaty.

Time dictated change. Ahmed III (r. 1703–1730) brought in architects who built him palaces and mosques in the style of Versailles and opened a printing press in Istanbul. The closest relatives of the Sultan were no longer kept in strict imprisonment, some of them began to study the scientific and political heritage of Western Europe. However, Ahmed III was killed by the conservatives, and Mahmud I took his place, during which the Caucasus was lost, passed to Persia, and the retreat in the Balkans continued. One of the prominent sultans was Abdul-Hamid I. During his reign (1774-1789), reforms were made, French teachers and technical specialists were invited to Istanbul. France hoped to save the Ottoman Empire and keep Russia out of the Black Sea straits and the Mediterranean.

Selim III

(reigned 1789–1807). Selim III, who became sultan in 1789, formed a 12-member cabinet of ministers in the style of European governments, replenished the treasury and created a new military corps. He created new educational institutions designed to educate civil servants in the spirit of the ideas of the Enlightenment. Printed publications were again allowed, and the works of Western authors began to be translated into Turkish.

In the early years of the French Revolution, the Ottoman Empire was left alone with its problems by the European powers. Napoleon considered Selim as an ally, believing that after the defeat of the Mamluks, the sultan would be able to strengthen his power in Egypt. Nevertheless, Selim III declared war on France and sent his fleet and army to defend the province. Saved the Turks from defeat only the British fleet, located off Alexandria and off the coast of the Levant. This move by the Ottoman Empire involved it in the military and diplomatic affairs of Europe.

Meanwhile, in Egypt, after the departure of the French, Muhammad Ali, a native of the Macedonian city of Kavala, who served in the Turkish army, came to power. In 1805 he became governor of the province, which opened a new chapter in the history of Egypt.

After the conclusion of the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, relations with France were restored, and Selim III managed to maintain peace until 1806, when Russia invaded its Danubian provinces. England helped her ally Russia by sending her fleet through the Dardanelles, but Selim managed to speed up the restoration of defensive structures, and the British were forced to sail into the Aegean Sea. The French victories in Central Europe strengthened the position of the Ottoman Empire, but a rebellion began in the capital against Selim III. In 1807, during the absence of Bayraktar, the commander-in-chief of the imperial army, the sultan was deposed, and his cousin Mustafa IV took the throne. After the return of Bayraktar in 1808, Mustafa IV was executed, but before that, the rebels strangled Selim III, who was imprisoned. Mahmud II remained the only male representative of the ruling dynasty.

Mahmoud II

(reigned 1808–1839). Under him, in 1809, the Ottoman Empire and Great Britain concluded the famous Dardanelles Peace, which opened the Turkish market for British goods on the condition that Great Britain recognized the closed status of the Black Sea straits for military ships in peacetime for the Turks. Earlier, the Ottoman Empire agreed to join the continental blockade created by Napoleon, so the agreement was perceived as a violation of previous obligations. Russia began hostilities on the Danube and captured a number of cities in Bulgaria and Wallachia. Under the Treaty of Bucharest in 1812, significant territories were ceded to Russia, and she refused to support the rebels in Serbia. At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the Ottoman Empire was recognized as a European power.

National Revolutions in the Ottoman Empire.

During the French Revolution, the country faced two new problems. One of them has been ripening for a long time: as the center weakened, the separated provinces eluded the power of the sultans. In Epirus, Ali Pasha Yaninsky, who ruled the province as sovereign and maintained diplomatic relations with Napoleon and other European monarchs, revolted. Similar actions also took place in Vidin, Sidon (modern Saida, Lebanon), Baghdad and other provinces, which undermined the power of the Sultan and reduced tax revenues to the imperial treasury. The strongest of the local rulers (pashas) eventually became Muhammad Ali in Egypt.

Another intractable problem for the country was the growth of the national liberation movement, especially among the Christian population of the Balkans. At the height of the French Revolution, Selim III in 1804 faced an uprising raised by the Serbs, led by Karageorgiy (George Petrovich). The Congress of Vienna (1814–1815) recognized Serbia as a semi-autonomous province within the Ottoman Empire, led by Miloš Obrenović, a rival of Karađorđe.

Almost immediately after the defeat of the French Revolution and the fall of Napoleon, Mahmud II faced the Greek national liberation revolution. Mahmud II had a chance to win, especially after he managed to convince the nominal vassal in Egypt, Muhammad Ali, to send his army and navy to support Istanbul. However, the Pasha's armed forces were defeated after the intervention of Great Britain, France and Russia. As a result of the breakthrough of Russian troops in the Caucasus and their offensive against Istanbul, Mahmud II had to sign the Treaty of Adrianople in 1829, which recognized the independence of the Kingdom of Greece. A few years later, the army of Muhammad Ali, under the command of his son Ibrahim Pasha, captured Syria and found itself dangerously close to the Bosphorus in Asia Minor. Mahmud II was rescued only by the Russian amphibious assault, which landed on the Asian coast of the Bosphorus as a warning to Muhammad Ali. After that, Mahmud never managed to get rid of Russian influence until he signed the humiliating Unkiyar-Iskelesi Treaty in 1833, which gave the Russian Tsar the right to “protect” the Sultan, as well as to close and open the Black Sea straits at his discretion for the passage of foreign military courts.

Ottoman Empire after the Congress of Vienna.

The period after the Congress of Vienna was probably the most destructive for the Ottoman Empire. Greece seceded; Egypt under Muhammad Ali, which, moreover, by capturing Syria and South Arabia, became virtually independent; Serbia, Wallachia and Moldavia became semi-autonomous territories. During the Napoleonic Wars, Europe significantly strengthened its military and industrial power. The weakening of the Ottoman state is attributed to a certain extent to the massacre of the Janissaries organized by Mahmud II in 1826.

By signing the Treaty of Unkiyar-Isklelesiy, Mahmud II hoped to buy time to transform the empire. His reforms were so tangible that travelers visiting Turkey in the late 1830s noted that more changes had taken place in the country in the last 20 years than in the previous two centuries. Instead of the Janissaries, Mahmud created a new army, trained and equipped according to the European model. Prussian officers were hired to train officers in the new military art. Fezzes and frock coats became the official attire of civil officials. Mahmud tried to introduce the latest methods developed in the young European states into all areas of government. It was possible to reorganize the financial system, streamline the activities of the judiciary, and improve the road network. Additional educational institutions were created, in particular, military and medical colleges. Newspapers began to be published in Istanbul and Izmir.

In the last year of his life, Mahmud again entered the war with his Egyptian vassal. Mahmud's army was defeated in northern Syria, and his fleet in Alexandria went over to the side of Muhammad Ali.

Abdul Mejid

(reigned 1839–1861). The eldest son and successor of Mahmud II, Abdul-Majid, was only 16 years old. Without an army and navy, he was helpless in the face of the superior forces of Muhammad Ali. He was saved by the diplomatic and military assistance of Russia, Great Britain, Austria and Prussia. France initially supported Egypt, but the concerted action of the European powers made it possible to find a way out of the deadlock: the pasha received the hereditary right to rule Egypt under the nominal suzerainty of the Ottoman sultans. This provision was legalized by the London Treaty of 1840 and confirmed by Abdul-Mejid in 1841. In the same year, the London Convention of the European Powers was concluded, according to which military ships were not to pass through the Dardanelles and the Bosporus in peacetime for the Ottoman Empire, and the powers that signed it took to the obligation to assist the Sultan in maintaining sovereignty over the Black Sea straits.

Tanzimat.

During the struggle with his powerful vassal, Abdulmejid in 1839 promulgated the khatt-i sherif (“sacred decree”), announcing the beginning of reforms in the empire, with which the chief minister Reshid Pasha spoke to the highest state dignitaries and invited ambassadors. The document abolished the death penalty without trial, guaranteed justice for all citizens regardless of their racial or religious affiliation, established a judicial council to adopt a new penal code, abolished the farming system, changed the methods of recruiting the army and limited the length of military service.

It became apparent that the empire was no longer capable of defending itself in the event of a military attack by any of the great European powers. Reshid Pasha, who previously served as ambassador to Paris and London, understood that certain steps must be taken to show the European states that the Ottoman Empire was capable of self-reformation and manageable, i.e. deserves to be preserved as an independent state. Hatt-i sheriff seemed to be the answer to the doubts of the Europeans. However, in 1841 Reshid was removed from office. In the next few years, his reforms were suspended, and only after his return to power in 1845 did they begin to be put into practice again with the support of the British ambassador, Stratford Canning. This period in the history of the Ottoman Empire, known as the tanzimat ("ordering"), included the reorganization of the system of government and the transformation of society in accordance with the ancient Muslim and Ottoman principles of tolerance. At the same time, education developed, the network of schools expanded, sons from famous families began to study in Europe. Many Ottomans began to lead a Western way of life. The number of published newspapers, books and magazines increased, and the younger generation professed new European ideals.

At the same time, foreign trade grew rapidly, but the influx of European industrial products had a negative impact on the finances and economy of the Ottoman Empire. Imports of British factory-made textiles disrupted artisanal textile production and siphoned gold and silver out of the state. Another blow to the economy was the signing in 1838 of the Balto-Liman Trade Convention, according to which import duties on goods imported into the empire were frozen at the level of 5%. This meant that foreign merchants could operate in the empire on an equal footing with local merchants. As a result, most of the trade in the country was in the hands of foreigners, who, in accordance with the "Surrenders", were released from the control of officials.

Crimean War.

The London Convention of 1841 abolished the special privileges that the Russian Emperor Nicholas I received under the secret annex to the Unkiyar-Iskelesi Treaty of 1833. Referring to the Kyuchuk-Kainarji Treaty of 1774, Nicholas I launched an offensive in the Balkans and demanded a special status and rights for Russian monks in holy places in Jerusalem and Palestine. After the refusal of Sultan Abdulmejid to satisfy these demands, the Crimean War began. Great Britain, France and Sardinia came to the aid of the Ottoman Empire. Istanbul became a forward base for the preparation of hostilities in the Crimea, and the influx of European sailors, army officers and civil officials left an indelible mark on Ottoman society. The Paris Treaty of 1856, which ended this war, declared the Black Sea a neutral zone. The European powers again recognized Turkish sovereignty over the Black Sea Straits, and the Ottoman Empire was admitted to the "Union of European States". Romania gained independence.

Bankruptcy of the Ottoman Empire.

After the Crimean War, the sultans began to borrow money from Western bankers. Back in 1854, having practically no external debt, the Ottoman government very quickly became bankrupt, and already in 1875 Sultan Abdulaziz owed almost one billion dollars in foreign currency to European bondholders.

In 1875 the Grand Vizier declared that the country was no longer able to pay the interest on its debts. Noisy protests and pressure from the European powers forced the Ottoman authorities to raise taxes in the provinces. Unrest began in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Macedonia and Bulgaria. The government sent troops to "appease" the rebels, during which unprecedented cruelty was shown that amazed the Europeans. In response, Russia sent volunteers to help the Balkan Slavs. At this time, a secret revolutionary society of the "New Ottomans" appeared in the country, advocating constitutional reforms in their homeland.

In 1876, Abdul-Aziz, who succeeded his brother Abdul-Mejid in 1861, was deposed for incompetence by Midhat Pasha and Avni Pasha, leaders of the liberal organization of the constitutionalists. On the throne they put Murad V, the eldest son of Abdul-Mejid, who turned out to be mentally ill and was removed just a few months later, and Abdul-Hamid II, another son of Abdul-Mejid, was placed on the throne.

Abdul Hamid II

(reigned 1876–1909). Abdul-Hamid II visited Europe, and many pinned great hopes on him for a liberal constitutional regime. However, at the time of his accession to the throne, Turkish influence in the Balkans was in danger despite the fact that the Ottoman forces managed to defeat the Bosnian and Serbian rebels. This development of events forced Russia to come out with the threat of open intervention, which was sharply opposed by Austria-Hungary and Great Britain. In December 1876, a conference of ambassadors was convened in Istanbul, at which Abdul-Hamid II announced the introduction of the constitution of the Ottoman Empire, which provided for the creation of an elected parliament, a government responsible to it, and other attributes of European constitutional monarchies. However, the brutal suppression of the uprising in Bulgaria nevertheless led in 1877 to a war with Russia. In this regard, Abdul-Hamid II suspended the operation of the Constitution for the period of the war. This situation continued until the Young Turk Revolution of 1908.

Meanwhile, at the front, the military situation was developing in favor of Russia, whose troops were already encamped under the walls of Istanbul. Great Britain managed to prevent the capture of the city by sending a fleet to the Sea of ​​Marmara and presenting an ultimatum to St. Petersburg demanding to stop hostilities. Initially, Russia imposed on the sultan the extremely disadvantageous Treaty of San Stefano, according to which most of the European possessions of the Ottoman Empire became part of a new autonomous entity - Bulgaria. Austria-Hungary and Great Britain opposed the terms of the treaty. All this prompted the German Chancellor Bismarck to convene the Berlin Congress in 1878, at which the size of Bulgaria was reduced, but the complete independence of Serbia, Montenegro and Romania was recognized. Cyprus went to Great Britain, and Bosnia and Herzegovina to Austria-Hungary. Russia received the fortresses of Ardahan, Kars and Batum (Batumi) in the Caucasus; to regulate navigation on the Danube, a commission was created from representatives of the Danubian states, and the Black Sea and the Black Sea straits again received the status provided for by the Treaty of Paris of 1856. The Sultan promised to equally fairly govern all his subjects, and the European powers considered that the Berlin Congress had solved the difficult Eastern problem forever.

During the 32-year reign of Abdul-Hamid II, the Constitution actually did not come into effect. One of the most important unresolved issues was the bankruptcy of the state. In 1881, under foreign control, the Office of the Ottoman Public Debt was created, which was made responsible for the payments on European bonds. Within a few years, confidence in the financial stability of the Ottoman Empire was restored, which contributed to the participation of foreign capital in the construction of such large projects as the Anatolian Railway, which connected Istanbul with Baghdad.

Young Turk Revolution.

During these years, national uprisings took place in Crete and Macedonia. In Crete, bloody clashes took place in 1896 and 1897, which led to the empire's war with Greece in 1897. After 30 days of fighting, the European powers intervened to save Athens from capture by the Ottoman army. Public opinion in Macedonia leaned towards either independence or union with Bulgaria.

It became obvious that the future of the state was connected with the Young Turks. The ideas of national upsurge were propagated by some journalists, the most talented of whom was Namik Kemal. Abdul-Hamid tried to suppress this movement with arrests, exiles and executions. At the same time, secret Turkish societies flourished in military headquarters around the country and in places as far away as Paris, Geneva, and Cairo. The most effective organization turned out to be the secret committee "Unity and Progress", which was created by the "Young Turks".

In 1908, the troops stationed in Macedonia rebelled and demanded the implementation of the Constitution of 1876. Abdul-Hamid was forced to agree to this, unable to use force. Elections to parliament followed, and the formation of a government of ministers responsible to that legislative body. In April 1909, a counter-revolutionary rebellion broke out in Istanbul, which, however, was quickly suppressed by armed units that arrived in time from Macedonia. Abdul-Hamid was deposed and sent into exile, where he died in 1918. His brother Mehmed V was proclaimed Sultan.

Balkan wars.

The Young Turk government soon faced internal strife and new territorial losses in Europe. In 1908, as a result of the revolution that took place in the Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria proclaimed its independence, and Austria-Hungary seized Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Young Turks were powerless to prevent these events, and in 1911 they found themselves embroiled in a conflict with Italy, which had invaded the territory of modern Libya. The war ended in 1912 when the provinces of Tripoli and Cyrenaica became an Italian colony. In early 1912, Crete allied itself with Greece, and later that year, Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria launched the First Balkan War against the Ottoman Empire.

Within a few weeks, the Ottomans lost all their possessions in Europe, with the exception of Istanbul, Edirne and Ioannina in Greece and Scutari (modern Shkodra) in Albania. The great European powers, anxiously watching how the balance of power in the Balkans was being destroyed, demanded a cessation of hostilities and a conference. The Young Turks refused to surrender the cities, and in February 1913 the fighting resumed. In a few weeks, the Ottoman Empire completely lost its European possessions, with the exception of the Istanbul zone and the straits. The Young Turks were forced to agree to a truce and formally give up the already lost lands. However, the victors immediately began an internecine war. The Ottomans entered into a clash with Bulgaria in order to return Edirne and the European regions adjacent to Istanbul. The Second Balkan War ended in August 1913 with the signing of the Treaty of Bucharest, but a year later the First World War broke out.

World War I and the end of the Ottoman Empire.

Developments after 1908 weakened the Young Turk government and isolated it politically. It tried to correct this situation by offering alliances to the stronger European powers. On August 2, 1914, shortly after the start of the war in Europe, the Ottoman Empire entered into a secret alliance with Germany. On the Turkish side, the pro-German Enver Pasha, a leading member of the Young Turk triumvirate and Minister of War, participated in the negotiations. A few days later, two German cruisers "Goeben" and "Breslau" took refuge in the straits. The Ottoman Empire acquired these warships, sailed them into the Black Sea in October and fired at Russian ports, thus declaring war on the Entente.

In the winter of 1914–1915, the Ottoman army suffered huge losses when Russian troops entered Armenia. Fearing that local residents would come out on their side, the government authorized the massacre of the Armenian population in eastern Anatolia, which many researchers later called the Armenian genocide. Thousands of Armenians were deported to Syria. In 1916, the Ottoman rule in Arabia came to an end: the uprising was raised by the sheriff of Mecca, Hussein ibn Ali, supported by the Entente. As a result of these events, the Ottoman government finally collapsed, although Turkish troops, with German support, achieved a number of important victories: in 1915 they managed to repel the Entente attack on the Dardanelles, and in 1916 they captured the British corps in Iraq and stopped the advance of the Russians in the east. During the war, the Capitulation regime was canceled and customs tariffs were raised to protect domestic trade. The Turks took over the business of the evicted national minorities, which helped create the nucleus of a new Turkish commercial and industrial class. In 1918, when the Germans were withdrawn to defend the Hindenburg Line, the Ottoman Empire began to suffer defeat. On October 30, 1918, Turkish and British representatives concluded a truce, according to which the Entente received the right to "occupy any strategic points" of the empire and control the Black Sea straits.

The collapse of the empire.

The fate of most of the provinces of the Ottoman state was determined in the secret treaties of the Entente during the war. The Sultanate agreed to the separation of regions with a predominantly non-Turkish population. Istanbul was occupied by forces that had their own areas of responsibility. Russia was promised the Black Sea straits, including Istanbul, but the October Revolution led to the annulment of these agreements. In 1918, Mehmed V died, and his brother Mehmed VI took the throne, although he retained the government in Istanbul, he actually became dependent on the Allied occupying forces. Problems were growing in the interior of the country, far from the places of deployment of the Entente troops and government institutions subordinate to the Sultan. Detachments of the Ottoman army, wandering around the vast outskirts of the empire, refused to lay down their arms. British, French and Italian military contingents occupied various parts of Turkey. With the support of the Entente fleet in May 1919, Greek armed formations landed in Izmir and began to advance deep into Asia Minor in order to protect the Greeks in Western Anatolia. Finally, in August 1920, the Treaty of Sevres was signed. Not a single area of ​​the Ottoman Empire remained free from foreign supervision. An international commission was created to control the Black Sea Straits and Istanbul. After riots broke out in early 1920 as a result of the growth of national sentiment, British troops entered Istanbul.

Mustafa Kemal and the Lausanne Peace Treaty.

In the spring of 1920, Mustafa Kemal, the most successful Ottoman commander of the war period, convened a Grand National Assembly in Ankara. He arrived from Istanbul in Anatolia on May 19, 1919 (the date on which the Turkish national liberation struggle began), where he united patriotic forces around him, striving to preserve Turkish statehood and the independence of the Turkish nation. From 1920 to 1922 Kemal and his supporters defeated the enemy armies in the east, south and west and made peace with Russia, France and Italy. At the end of August 1922, the Greek army retreated in disorder to Izmir and the coastal regions. Then the detachments of Kemal went to the Black Sea Straits, where the British troops were located. After the British Parliament refused to support the proposal to start hostilities, British Prime Minister Lloyd George resigned, and the war was averted by the signing of a truce in the Turkish city of Mudanya. The British government invited the Sultan and Kemal to send their representatives to a peace conference, which opened in Lausanne (Switzerland) on November 21, 1922. However, the Grand National Assembly in Ankara abolished the Sultanate, and Mehmed VI, the last Ottoman monarch, left Istanbul on a British warship on November 17.

On July 24, 1923, the Treaty of Lausanne was signed, which recognized the complete independence of Turkey. The Office of the Ottoman Public Debt and Capitulations were abolished, and foreign control over the country was abolished. At the same time, Turkey agreed to demilitarize the Black Sea straits. The province of Mosul, with its oil fields, went to Iraq. It was planned to carry out an exchange of population with Greece, from which the Greeks living in Istanbul and the West Thracian Turks were excluded. On October 6, 1923, British troops left Istanbul, and on October 29, 1923, Turkey was proclaimed a republic, and Mustafa Kemal was elected its first president.