THE END OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE: CONQUEROR SULTAN MEHMET

On March 0, 1432, in Edirne, which was the capital of the Ottoman Empire at that time, II. Born as Murat's son from Hüma Hatun, Fatih Sultan Mehmet was raised by taking private lessons from famous scholars of the period such as Molla Gürani. In 1443, after being appointed as a sanjak governor at a young age, Mehmet went to Manisa with his teachers and advisors, and later his father II. He was summoned to Edirne by Murat and took over the throne in August 1444, when he was only 12 years old and inexperienced.

After this event, which gave hope to the enemies of the Ottoman Empire, resulted in a Crusader army crossing the Danube River and besieging Varna, II. Murat was summoned to Edirne by Grand Vizier Çandarlı Halil Pasha.

On November 10, 1444, he defeated the Crusader army in the Battle of Varna and after the war, II. Returning to Manisa by handing it over to Mehmet II. Murat's return caused a violent conflict between the Turkish noble Çandarlı Halil Pasha and the devshirme origin Zağanos Pasha and Şihabeddin Pasha, who supported the young Mehmet. II. Due to the Janissary uprising organized by Çandarlı Halil Pasha, who wanted Murat to return to the throne, Mehmet had to leave the throne.


In May 1446, II. After Murat came to Edirne and took over the throne again, Mehmet returned to Manisa accompanied by Zağanos Pasha and Şihabeddin Pasha as the sancakbeyi and participated in the Albanian campaigns organized in 1448 and 1450. When his father died on February 18, 1451, Mehmet went to Edirne and ascended to the throne for the second time. output. The fact that Mehmet II was still young and inexperienced on his second ascension to the throne mobilized the Karamanoğulları. After Karamanoğulları captured Seydişehir and Akşehir, Byzantium also appealed to the pope and asked for a new Crusade, but did not receive a positive response.

He prevented the progress and growth of the Ottoman Empire in Rumelia, tried to disrupt the Turkish unity by provoking the Anatolian principalities, provoked the Christian world and threatened the Crusades, occupied Istanbul, and facilitated the military transition and connection between Anatolia and Rumelia, and increased economic vitality thanks to the straits. Another thought of Mehmet II, who aimed to be able to provide peace and to dominate the European side of the Silk Road, was the Hz. Muhammad's; “Istanbul will certainly be conquered. It was to be worthy of the hadith "What a beautiful commander that commander is and how beautiful those soldiers are."


In order to ensure security and stability in the Balkans, II. made a peace agreement with the Hungarians and Venetians and ensured security in Anatolia by making an agreement with the Karamanoğulları. Mehmet started preparing the ground for the conquest of Istanbul. In order to prevent aid coming to Byzantium from the Black Sea, a navy consisting of 400 pieces was built after the Rumeli Fortress, also known as Boğazkesen Fortress, was built opposite the Anadolu Fortress, which Yıldırım Bayezid had built during the siege of Istanbul.

An Ottoman fleet under the command of Turhan Bey was sent to Mora and help was prevented from coming to Istanbul. In order to open gaps in the strong walls of Istanbul, engineers of the time, Musluhiddin and Saruca Sekban, and Hungarian Master Urban were kidnapped from the Byzantine prison. The largest cannons of the time, called "Şahi", were cast in Edirne, and wheeled towers were built to enable soldiers to climb the walls.


While the siege preparations continued on the Ottoman side, the Byzantines strengthened the walls and closed the mouth of the Golden Horn with a chain to prevent the Ottoman Navy from entering the Golden Horn. In addition, the Byzantines, who developed the weapon called Greek Fire, made with gunpowder, naphtha and sulfur that could burn in water, began to store food, weapons and ammunition.

After the preparations were completed, Fatih Sultan Mehmet sent an envoy to the Byzantine Emperor and asked for the city to be delivered without bloodshed. However, upon receiving the message "We are ready for war" from Constantine, the Ottoman fleet arrived in front of the land walls of Istanbul and anchored at the entrance of the Golden Horn and in front of Sarayburnu.

II., who set out from Edirne on 23 March 1453, besieged Istanbul on 6 April 1453. During the intermittent conflicts that lasted 53 days, Mehmet assigned Zağanos Pasha to make the final attack preparations after Çandarlı Halil Pasha showed an attitude against the conquest of Istanbul.

On April 17, 1453, the Istanbul Islands were conquered. The Byzantine capital, which could not receive support from anywhere, was captured on May 29, 1453, thanks to the control of the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles to prevent the arrival of help.

II. With this historical event, Mehmet put an end to the Byzantine Empire, which lasted more than a thousand years, and received the title of "Conqueror". In 1459, Mehmet the Conqueror converted Hagia Sophia, one of the four largest basilicas in the world at the time, into a mosque and made Istanbul the capital of the Ottoman Empire.


After the conquest, in July of that year, during the siege, Fatih Sultan Mehmet executed Çandarlı Halil Pasha on the grounds that he had a pro-Byzantine attitude. Aiming to make Istanbul a capital city with a trade and cultural center where people of different religions lived together, Fatih Sultan Mehmet, Galata In addition to ensuring the return of the Greeks and Genoese who had fled from , and allowing the reopening of the Greek Patriarchate, he established an Armenian Patriarchate with a Jewish rabbinate.

While the Middle Ages were ending and the New Age was opening in the world, this event ended the Establishment Period and started the Ascension Period in the Ottoman Empire. While the prestige of the Ottoman Empire in the Islamic World increased during this period, the Fener Greek Patriarchate came under Ottoman protection from this date on.

One of the consequences of this event, which is of great importance for Turkish and world history, was that the large cannons used during the conquest could destroy even the strongest walls, causing the collapse of the feudal lordships in Europe and the strengthening of centralist kingdoms.




Shortly after the conquest of Istanbul, he organized many expeditions to Europe in order to consolidate his dominance in the west, expand the borders, spread Islam to the farthest places and destroy the Christian unity. Aiming to ensure the security of trade routes and get rid of pirates, Fatih intensified his politics on the Aegean islands and organized expeditions there. New shipyards and ships were built. After the Ottoman Empire included Southern Serbia and some important islands in the Aegean Sea in 1454 and 1455, it was abolished by the Kingdom of Serbia in 1459. Although the Rhodes expedition was launched, it was not successful.

Aiming to prevent the slave trade carried out by the Venetians and the Genoese against the Islamic world, to capture the Crimean coast, which played a major role in the transportation of commercial goods coming to Istanbul, and to dominate the entire Black Sea, Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror conquered Amasra, one of the important bases of the Genoese, in 1459. He took the first step towards implementing his plan.

In 1460, Mehmet the Conqueror captured the Peloponnese, the last lands of Byzantium, and in the same year, he put an end to the Candaroğulları Principality and captured Sinop, Trabzon, the capital of the Greek Pontus State, in 1461, and Crimea in 1475. With its capture, he successfully completed his plan, thus ending the Genoese supremacy in the Black Sea and giving full control of the Silk Road to the Ottoman Empire.

Fatih went on an expedition to Rumelia again in 1462. After annexing Wallachia to the Ottoman Empire and completely capturing Bosnia in 1463, relations with the Venetians began to deteriorate when they also captured the Lesbos Island in the Aegean Sea that same year. After this incident, Mehmet the Conqueror, who started a war that lasted until 1479, captured Thassos, Euboea, Lemnos, Samothrace, Imbros and Tenedos in the Aegean.

During the reign of Mehmet the Conqueror, who used the title of "Khan" for the first time, the lands lost during the reign of Yıldırım Bayezid were regained, new places were taken on the Rumelia and Black Sea coasts, the Anatolian unity was completed and the Turkish presence in Rumelia extended to Belgrade.

He conquered most of Herzegovina in 1465 and some castles in Albania in 1466.

After the Karamanoğulları formed an alliance with the Mamluks in Egypt and the Akkoyunlu in Eastern Anatolia in the face of the rapid development and growth of the Ottoman Empire, Fatih went on a new Anatolian expedition in 1466 and captured Konya, the capital of the Karamanoğulları at that time. passed. Later, the Karamanoğulları, who took advantage of Fatih's return to Istanbul, took back the places that had passed to the Ottomans. As the Akkoyunlus continued to support the Karamanoğulları, who were defeated once again by the Ottoman Vizier Gedik Ahmed Pasha in 1471, Fatih inflicted a heavy defeat on the Akkoyunlu ruler Uzun Hasan in the Battle of Otlukbeli on 11 August 1473, and the following In the same year, he eliminated the Karamanoğulları principality.

In 1477, Mehmet the Conqueror brought the Crimean Khanate under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire and captured new places in the Albanian campaign the following year, and ended the 16-year war with Venice by making an agreement in 1479. Venice, which left the castles in Albania to the Ottomans, received the right to benefit from some piers in the Peloponnese in return.


After reaching an agreement with Venice, Mehmet the Conqueror declared war on other important city-states of Italy and captured the port of Otranto in the south of Italy, which was of great importance on the road to Rome, in 1480, which had a great impact in Europe. At the end of the 16-year Ottoman-Venetian Naval Wars, Venice agreed to sign peace. Otranto, which was a very important center for the conquest of Rome, was lost when Mehmet the Conqueror died.

Fatih Sultan Mehmet, who set out on a new expedition towards Anatolia, but fell ill at the beginning of the road and died in his camp in Gebze on May 3, 1481, was buried in the Fatih Tomb next to the Fatih Mosque, the construction of which started in 1467 and was completed in 1470. After the death of Fatih Sultan Mehmet, who had a daughter named Gevherhan Sultan, Mustafa II. Among his four sons named Bayezid, Cem and Korkud, II. Bayezid came to the throne.

Fatih, who transformed the Ottoman Empire into a great empire with military successes, significantly reshaped the state with the laws he enacted. Fatih Sultan Mehmet, who can be defined as the administrative founder of the Ottoman state in the classical sense, declared himself "Kaiser-i Rum" after the conquest of Istanbul and put the state institutions in order.

Fatih, who made important arrangements to give a solid and permanent structure to the Ottoman Empire, put in writing the traditions called the Law of My Ancestor, called the Law of My Ancestor, called the Law of Fatih, called the Law of Fatih, and the Law of Fatih, which includes the rules he laid down in the fields of administration, finance and law. This law, which gave the sultan who ascended the throne the right to kill his brothers for the future of the state, remained valid until the Tanzimat period, like many of the basic principles of Mehmed the Conqueror's Ottoman state order.

Fatih, who left the administration of the council to the grand viziers, started to follow the affairs from behind the cage, and equipped the grand vizier, whom he called his absolute deputy, with wide powers, also defined the duties of the treasurer, the kazaskers and other high-ranking state officials. During this period, as the Janissary army was increased to 10,000 and a strong central army was formed, the importance of the margraves decreased, thus the central administration was strengthened. The most important structure built in the Ottoman Empire, where more than 500 architectural structures were built during his reign, is the Fatih Social Complex, located in the Fatih district of Istanbul, which has a mosque and sections such as a madrasah, a library, a soup kitchen, a hospital, a bathhouse and a caravanserai.


Fatih, who wrote poems under the pseudonym "Avni" and had a private library consisting of Arabic, Latin and Greek books in addition to Turkish, was also interested in science, history and philosophy as well as literature. In 1904, 14 of his ghazals were published in Berlin under the name Divân-ı Avni.

Fatih, whose poems were collected in books such as Fatih's Divanı (1944), Fatih's Poems (1946), Fatih and His Poems (1959), supported scientists and men of letters. He promoted the prose master Sinan Pasha and the poet Ahmed Pasha to the position of vizier, and had the Ptolemy Map translated again in 1466 and had the names on the map written in Arabic letters. In scientific problems, he would protect scholars, regardless of their religion and sect, and have them write works. Attaching great importance to science, Fatih Sultan Mehmet brought great scholars from foreign countries to Istanbul. Fatih, who ensured that the famous mathematician and astronomy scholar Ali Kuşçu stayed in Istanbul, became the first sultan to bring the Italian painter Gentile Bellini to Istanbul in 1479 and have his paintings painted.

One of the most valued scholars of Fatih, who had articles written and examined on interesting and unknown subjects, was one of the scholars he had previously studied, who devoted himself to books with his superior intelligence and understanding, and tireless work power, and who specialized in Islamic sciences, medicine, astronomy, biology and mathematics. It was Şemseddin Muhammed Bin Hamza, who made a name for himself and was known as Akşemseddin. Istanbul became a center of science and art during the time of Fatih, and Fatih madrasahs formed the basis of classical Ottoman madrasahs.

Fatih Sultan Mehmet, who was known for his determination, the way he implemented the decisions he made, and his will, participated in 25 campaigns that he personally led, at the head of his army, during his 30-year reign until 1481. He increased the Ottoman territory from 900,000 square kilometers to 2,214,000 square kilometers.



After conquering Bosnia in 1463, Fatih Sultan Mehmet, who gave religious freedom to the people of the region in line with the policy of the Ottoman Empire, gave the decree to the Latin priests there in 1478 as follows.

The Imperial Order is that I am Sultan Mehmet Khan; Let it be known to all the people, high and low, that I have granted favor to the Bosnian priests who carry this decree and ordered the following: The said priests and their churches will not be hindered or disturbed by anyone. May peace be upon those who stay in my country recklessly and those who flee, so that they may come to our country, calm down without fear, and settle in their churches; Neither I, nor my viziers, nor anyone from my people will interfere with or harm them in any way.

I swear with the heaviest oath that I have created the heavens and the earth for themselves, their lives, their property, their churches and those whom they will bring to our country from abroad, by our Prophet Muhammad Mustafa, by the seven Mushafs, by the rights of one hundred and twenty-four thousand prophets, and by the sword I am girded with. The foregoing will not be opposed by anyone as long as the priests in question are obedient to my service and my command.