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

hassock imperium and the Turkish Republic - Essay ExamplePrior to the transition to the Turkish Republic, the old footstool Empire embarked on a series of reforms to save the old pull Empire through the efforts of Selim III, Mahmud II, Abdulaziz and Abdulhamit II that hoped to reverse its decline. These custody 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 armed services 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 kaliph Abdulhammit II resorted to an grand rule and adopted religious ideology in his hope to unify and reverse the decline of the old Ottoman Empire. But alternatively of reversing the decline, Abdulhammit II instead set the conditions for the inevitable fall of the old Ottoman Empire with his lavish lifestyle that dragged the empire into bankruptcy and was eventually deposed in 1909. The lowest nail on the coffin of the old empires demise was when the old Ottoman Empire sided with Germany in the First World War where the body politic was divided into pieces to become Turkey that it is today. This remove to a Republic political life was not a conscious choice of the old Ottoman Empire as it always struggles to maintain the caliphate political system embarking on a series of reform from rehabilitating its military to improving its educational system and bureaucracy tho it was already too late. Not even the adoption of a western concept of a Constitution saved the empire from disintegration. In sum, the old Ottoman Empire was forced 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 modern world. The sanitary 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 government to constitution based republic form of government. Despite these changes in Turkeys political life and structure, the old traces of the causation 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 Islamic nationalism which used to bind and unify Turkey before. Its sense of the greatness of being a great empire did not return 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.