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The Conquest of Armenia by the Ottoman Turks

The conquest of Armenia by the Ottoman Turks did not take place until the 16th century. This conquest was a natural expansion of the empire and the continuation of the conquest of Constantinople. During the second half of the 15th century and the 16th century the Turks conquered Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia and Egypt, and Hungary in Europe. In the East, following the conquest of Constantinople Sultan Mehmet II conquered the Greek city of Trabizond in 1461. One by one, he vanquished the small Seljuk states which had been remained after the dissolution of their empire in Asia Minor, and incorporated them into the Ottoman Empire.

At the Armenian border, Sultan Mehmet II encountered the Turkmen who controlled Persia and Armenia and consequently posed a threat to Asia Minor. He defeated the Turkmen army at Terjan, by the Euphrates River. The battle was bloody, probably the harshest which Sultan Mehmet II had yet experienced. The Ottomans won the battle mainly due to their larger number of canons. Thereby the Turkmen threat against Asia Minor was eradicated. By the time of his death, Sultan Mehmet II had expanded the Ottoman Empire as far as the present day Erzinjan.

Only Armenia and Persia remained in Turkmen possession. Persia, however, with the emergence of the Sefevid Ismail Shah, pulled its forces together, defeated the Turkmen and liberated itself from foreign rule, expelling the Turks in 1472 not only from Persia, but also from Armenia.

This Persian rule over Armenia was short-lived. At the start of the 16th century, the successors to Sultan Mehmet II resumed the task of expanding the Ottoman Empire eastward. Sultan Selim I attacked Persia, defeated Ismail Shah and, after the great war of 1514-1516, conquered the majority of Armenia



Sultan Selim I, "the Cruel", ruled between 1512 and 1520 and was the prominent conqueror of the Middle East, expanding the Ottoman Empire furthest in this part of the world. At his accession to the Ottoman throne, the empire in the east stretched only to Erzinjan and Adana; he extended its boundaries eastward to Ararat and southward to Assouan, and incorporating the major parts of Armenia, Syria and Egypt into his empire. It si stipulated that this sultan also had plans for conquering Persia and India; his successor, Sultan Suleiman II, who ruled between 1520 and 1566, however, concentrated his powers against Baghdad and Mesopotamia (Iraq) and assimilated them in his empire.

Sultan Suleiman II also spread his empire to subsume the countries of Tunisia and Algeria through treaties with the famous pirate Barverousse, Khejaradin, who came from Mithylène and had been in control of these countries for a long period. Morocco, however, was able to sustain its independence outside of the Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman Empire was one of the most illustrious realms in history. The Ottoman sultans not only inherited the Byzantine Empire, but their leaders assumed the title of caliph, like the caliphs of Baghdad, and in this way united the symbols of these two empires, Byzantine and Persian, which for centuries had ruled the world.