Hi Joanne, thank you very much for your comments under my history articles. It was a pleasure to read your kind words.

I am glad that my writings satisfied your curiosity about Ottoman history and stimulated your imagination.

All the best, Serhat.

Suleiman was truly magnificent, no doubt about it. His wife also – very impressive individuals.

Peace be upon you. Namaste 🙏🏼

It is very difficult to find an accurate scaled map of Turkiye in English. Since I am not a graphic designer, I need to use the quality maps I can find. This image was designed by a mapmaker named Rand McNally.

If the map was violating the borders of the Republic of Turkiye, I would not use the map. However, I think the person who prepared the map wanted to highlight the region where Kurds live in Turkiye, Iran and Iraq.

This did not seem strange to me, because the Kurds have really lived there for a long time. For this reason, I did not see any harm in using the map.

P.S. Actually this issue bothered me as well and I licensed another map from a stock illustration site. Thank you.

According to the books I read and the education I have received so far on Ottoman history, the heart of the empire was Anatolia.

The Ottomans were one of the states established after the disintegration of the previous Turkish state in Anatolia, the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum.

The Ottoman policy of expansion towards the West was ideological rather than economic. The Ottomans did not rule the Balkans directly. After conquering those lands, they left the administration to Christian rulers who were loyal to them.

The important thing for the Ottomans was that those lands were subject to them politically and they paid taxes. Orthodox Christian rulers were appointed to regions on the western outskirts of the empire such as Hungary and Romania.

For both Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire, Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Egypt were economically more important than Europe. The provisions of both states came from these lands. These were also the crossroads of the Silk Road from China and the Spice Road from India.

The Ottomans inherited Anatolia from the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum and bequeathed to the Republic of Turkey. When the empire collapsed, indispensable lands were the borders surrounding Anatolia. For this reason, these lands were defended to death (by the former Ottoman generals) in the War of Independence after WWI.

PS: I see Istanbul as a small model of Anatolia. Istanbul represents Anatolia, which acts as a bridge between East and West. In fact, when I say that Anatolia was the heart of the Ottoman Empire, I do not exclude Istanbul from this. Having the Bosphorus does not mean anything unless you control the passages through the Dardanelles. And these straits should be controlled from both the Anatolian (or Asian) and European sides.

Thanks for this article, very informative. One question: you are referring to Anatolia as the heart of the Ottoman Empire. But hasn’t it been Istanbul? I recently came across this book, which argues, that you could regard the Ottoman empire also a European Empire, since at its beginnings the economic heart was in the balkans.

Wolf

Hello Joe, thank you for your comment. I hope you will have the chance to visit these beautiful places again as an adult. So you can enjoy it better.

Hi Reme, thank you for the review.