TURNING POINTS IN MIDDLE EASTERN HISTORY This re

TURNING POINTS IN MIDDLE EASTERN HISTORY

This research paper examines the proposition that the first decades of the 16th century and the First World War might be considered turning points that defined the course of modern Middle Eastern history. Although another 200 years would pass before the decline of the Ottoman Empire would become apparent, Ottoman power clearly peaked in the first half of the 16th century; thereafter the power of Western economies, political ideas and technology would clearly be dominant, a state of affairs with which the Middle East is still coping. The First World War effectively destroyed the Ottoman Empire and weakened the power of the European colonial powers, thus setting the stage for the emergence during the interwar period and after World War II of new nations and constellations of forces in the Middle East.

After taking Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Turks expanded their control of Western Asia to include Southern Anatolia, Syria, Egypt (1517) and Mesopotamia and North Africa as far west as Algiers. Under Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent (1520-1560), they conquered the Balkans and Hungary and stood at the gates of Vienna. They wrested control from the Venetians of most of the Eastern Mediterranean. According to Cleveland, "it was not only the leading Islamic state of the sixteenth century, it was a world empire of vast influence and territorial extent" (43).

By the first half of the 16th century, Western Euro

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pation in a religiously defined community" (270). The wealth and power of the Ottoman Empire also had a slowly corrupting effect. After 1600, most sultans were less active in affairs of state; key elements of the military such as the Janissaries engaged in business and interfered in politics; and military officials and other notables in faroff provinces increasingly acted somewhat autonomously from Istanbul. As the Ottoman Empire turned into the Sick Man Europe in the 19th Century, European powers quarreled over its possessions and over who would succeed it in modern times. World War I as a Turning Point The Ottomans under the Young Turks elected to become allied with the Central Powers whose defeat in World War I led to the collapse in 1918 of the Ottoman Empire. Pan-Arabic and other forms of nationalism had developed in the late 19th century in response to the growing influence of the European powers in the Middle East, especially their economic influence and in some areas, such as Egypt and the Persian Gulf coast, their direct political control. The power of Arab and Islamic nationalism was reinforced by the War itself. The Arabs of the Arabian peninsula under Sharif Feysal became allied with the British against the Turks. Un

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