Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

puff Empire and the Turkish Republic - Essay ExamplePrior to the vicissitude to the Turkish Republic, the archaic footstool Empire embarked on a series of disentangles to save the overaged Ottoman Empire through the efforts of Selim III, Mahmud II, Abdulaziz and Abdulhamit II that hoped to reversion its decline. These men were called the Men of Tanzimat or men of reform in their effort to reverse the decline of the old Ottoman Empire. The efforts to reform the old Ottoman Empire that hoped to reverse its decline included military reform during the time of Selim to improving the educational system and bureaucratic reform in the hope of restoring the glory of the empire. When these reform efforts still failed, the last Ottoman caliph Abdulhammit II resorted to an coercive rule and adopted religious ideology in his hope to unify and reverse the decline of the old Ottoman Empire. But instead of reversing the decline, Abdulhammit II instead set the conditions for the inevitable fa ll of the old Ottoman Empire with his lavish heartstyle that dragged the empire into bankruptcy and was eventually deposed in 1909. The final nail on the coffin of the old empires demise was when the old Ottoman Empire sided with Germany in the graduation origination War where the country was divided into pieces to become Turkey that it is today. This change to a Republic semipolitical life was not a conscious choice of the old Ottoman Empire as it invariably struggles to maintain the caliphate political system embarking on a series of reform from rehabilitating its military to improving its educational system and bureaucracy but it was already too late. Not even the adoption of a westerly concept of a Constitution saved the empire from disintegration. In sum, the old Ottoman Empire was constrained by both by internal (bankruptcy, ineffective bureaucracy) and external (siding with Germany who lost in the First World War I) circumstances to change and adapt with the ultramoder n world. The strong western ideology had also influenced the old empire to adapt to modernity and along with it, is the abandonment of caliphate political system and autocratic form of regime to constitution based republic form of government. Despite these changes in Turkeys political life and structure, the old traces of the source Ottoman ideology can still be found in modern Turkey. Among this Ottoman ideology that remained in Turkey and in the Middle East is the strong sense of Muslim nationalism which used to bind and unify Turkey before. Its sense of the strikingness of being a great empire did not diminish with present Turkey as it is considered as one of the progressive countries in the Middle East and in the world albeit it is only a fraction of its former might when the former Ottoman Empire was at its height.