Middle East - Turkey & Ottoman Empire Archives

The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs

by Marc David Baer@MarcDavidBaer1 This major new history of the Ottoman dynasty reveals a diverse empire that straddled East and West. The Ottoman Empire has long been depicted as the Islamic, Asian antithesis of the Christian, European West. But the reality was starkly different: the Ottomans’ multiethnic, multilingual, and multireligious domain reached deep into Europe’s heart. Indeed, the Ottoman rulers saw themselves as the new Romans. Recounting the Ottomans’ remarkable rise from a frontier principality […Learn More]

Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World

In the wake of the September 11 attacks and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Suzy Hansen, who grew up in an insular conservative town in New Jersey, was enjoying early success as a journalist for a high-profile New York newspaper. Increasingly, though, the disconnect between the chaos of world events and the response at home took on pressing urgency for her. Seeking to understand the Muslim world that had been reduced to scaremongering headlines, she moved to Istanbul. […Learn More]

God’s Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World

Long neglected in world history, the Ottoman Empire was a hub of intellectual fervor, geopolitical power, and enlightened pluralistic rule. At the height of their authority in the sixteenth century, the Ottomans, with extraordinary military dominance and unparalleled monopolies over trade routes, controlled more territory and ruled over more people than any world power, forcing Europeans out of the Mediterranean and to the New World. […Learn More]

The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East

The thrilling and definitive history of World War I in the Middle East

By 1914 the powers of Europe were sliding inexorably toward war, and they pulled the Middle East along with them into one of the most destructive conflicts in human history. In The Fall of the Ottomans, award-winning historian Eugene Rogan brings the First World War and its immediate aftermath in the Middle East to vivid life, uncovering the often ignored story of the region’s crucial role in the conflict. […Learn More]

Erdogan’s Empire

Gradually since 2003, Turkey’s autocratic leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sought to make Turkey a great power — in the tradition of past Turkish leaders from the late Ottoman sultans to Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. Here the leading authority Soner Cagaptay, author of The New Sultan — the first biography of President Erdogan — provides a masterful overview of the power politics in the Middle East and Turkey’s place in it. […Learn More]