It is the Republic of Turkey between Eurasia and Europe.
The Turks are descendants of the ancient Turks, and Turkey is the evolution of the word "Turkic". The Turks first lived on the vast desert grasslands of the Amu Darya River basin in Central Asia, engaged in nomadic herding since ancient times, and lived by water and grass; they once posed a great threat to the ancient Zhou, Qi, Sui and Tang dynasties in China. In the 13th century, the Mongol Empire rose to expand into Central Asia, and the Turks were forced to move westwards to today's Asia Minor and establish the Seljuk Empire. In 1243, the Mongols invaded Asia Minor and destroyed the Sultanate of Roma, the successor of the Seljuk Empire, which split into 36 small principalities, one of which, the Ottomans, gradually became powerful, annexing the surrounding principalities and repelling foreign invasions.
In 1299, the Ottoman Empire was established, a great empire built by the Turks. The ottoman empire was named after the Ottoman I by its founder, and from then on began the territorial expansion of the Southern Expedition and the Northern War.
After the Ottoman monarch Murad I succeeded to the throne in 1360, the empire grew in strength, and its territory had crossed the Turkish Strait and begun to expand into the Balkans in Europe. In the following hundred years, the Ottoman Empire emerged a number of brilliant and wise monarchs, leading the empire step by step to become stronger.
In 1362, the Ottomans captured the Byzantine stronghold of Adriatic Fort, renamed it Edirne, and settled it there, then conquered Western Thrace, Macedonia, Bulgaria, and all of northern Greece.
In 1389, the combined forces of Serbia, Bulgaria and Hungary were defeated. The battle shook the nations of Europe and began to take an islamic state seriously.
At the Battle of Fort Nico in 1396, the Combined French, German, and Hunnics were defeated and most of the Balkans were occupied, leaving the Byzantine Empire in jeopardy.
In 1453, at the age of 21, Mehmed II succeeded to the throne, personally led a large army to attack the byzantine capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople, 53 days later, the city was destroyed, the Ottoman Empire moved its capital here, changing Constantinople to Istanbul, and at this point, the Byzantine Empire fell for more than 1400 years.
In addition to its frantic expansion in Europe, the Ottoman Empire also set its sights on North Africa and the Persian Gulf.
In 1517, the Ottoman Empire destroyed the Mamluk dynasty in Egypt and expanded its power to both sides of the Red Sea. In 1520, Suleiman the Magnificent became Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, an outstanding emperor of the West in the 16th century.
In 1521, the Ottomans captured Belgrade and then the island of Rhodes. In 1526, the Hungarian monarchy was destroyed and the Ottoman hungarian state was established.
In 1529 and 1532, the army came to Vienna twice. After 1543, the Habsburgs, Wallachia and Moldova all became vassal states of the Ottomans, and the Ottoman navy occupied Nice of the Holy Roman Empire.
In North Africa, Tripoli, Cylangani, Tunisia, and Algeria were all conquered, and the Ottoman army fought all the way to the Strait of Gibraltar.
To the east, the Ottomans seized Baghdad at the hands of the Persians and took control of the Fertile Crescent to the south, with Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, and the Persian Gulf coast all incorporated into the Ottoman Empire. The Turks also crossed the Red Sea and occupied Eritrea and Somalia along the coast. In just over a hundred years, almost all islamic countries were conquered by Turkey.
During the reign of Suleiman the Great, the empire reached its peak, and its territory reached its peak in the 17th century. The Ottoman Empire at that time spanned three continents, from the northern Balkan Peninsula in the north, to the Gulf of Aden in the south, to the Strait of Gibraltar in the west, to the vast territory of the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf in the east, controlling the black and red sea coasts, and controlling most of the Mediterranean. The Empire owned about 4.5 million square kilometers of land, reaching 5.5 million square kilometers at its peak, and a population of 15 million. Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, had a population of more than 500,000 in its heyday, larger than any European city.
Since the destruction of the Byzantine Empire and the establishment of Istanbul as the capital, the Ottoman Empire to the east has presented itself as the heir to the Roman Empire. The Sultan, the monarch of the Sman Empire, regarded himself as the lord of the world, and he combined the political civilization of Byzantium with the scientific culture of Arabia, inheriting the Islamic culture of the Eastern Roman Empire, so that the Eastern and Western civilizations were integrated, and the Ottoman Empire had a decisive influence on Western civilization. The Siman Empire was also the only Islamic power in the 15th and 19th centuries that could challenge the rising European states.
However, the rise and fall of the extreme is the unchangeable law of the dynasties in history.
After Suleiman's death, Turkey's territorial expansion gradually slowed. As the maritime powers of Western Europe grew stronger, the sea route from Europe to Asia undermined Turkey's economic development, and the Ottoman Empire began to stagnate.
During the Ottoman period, many Balkan possessions fell into the hands of the Austrian Empire, while Egypt, Tripoli, Tunisia, and Algeria in North Africa seized the opportunity to gain independence.
Between the 17th and 19th centuries, Tsarist Russia, which emerged in eastern Europe, grew stronger and stronger, gradually expanding into Western Asia, colliding with the Ottoman empire. In order to open the mouth of the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, Tsarist Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire under the banner of "saving Christians under the oppression of the Ottoman Empire" and "protecting the Slavic brothers", and the two countries launched more than a dozen wars in the past hundred years, winning and losing each other, which also greatly depleted the Ottoman national strength.
At that time, the rapid development of military technology of European powers gradually distanced themselves from the Ottomans, which made the Turks even worse.
In the 19th century, nationalism began to rise around the world, and the Ottoman Empire was not immune. In 1829, with the intervention of Britain, France, and Russia, Greece declared its independence and engaged the Turks several times. In 1875, Serbia, Montenegro, and Moldova declared independence from the Empire.
From 1877 to 1878, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria became independent.
In 1911, Italy declared war on the Ottomans for colonies, and the following year ended with the defeat of the Turks.
With the rise of nationalism in southeastern Europe, the Balkan League declared war on the Ottoman Empire in late 1912 in an attempt to dismember the Ottomans, and the Balkan wars lost all Balkan territories except Eastern Thrace and Edirne.
The Arab uprisings of 1916 led to a sharp shift in the Ottoman Empire's middle eastern front, and the Arabs, the empire's second largest Muslim group, seceded from the empire and became independent.
When World War I broke out in 1914, the Ottoman Empire sided with the Allies led by Germany, and the First World War was finally won by the Allies led by Britain and France, and the Ottomans suffered heavy casualties and were forced to sign the Treaty of Sèvres. European countries regarded the Ottomans as "heretics" and punished them most severely. The treaty stipulated that the Ottomans would cede 80% of the land, the western part of the native Asia Minor peninsula would be assigned to Greece, the eastern part would be entrusted by the Entente, leaving only a corner in the middle, and the Ottoman Empire was in danger of being destroyed.
This was a great shame for the once-invincible Turks, and the national sentiment was unprecedentedly high. Turkish "Father of the Nation" Mustafa Kemal turned the tide, won the victory of the revolution, overthrew the feudal rule of the Sultan, and forced the Allies to re-sign the Treaty of Lausanne with Turkey, which gained de facto independence and established the Republic of Turkey, which established the territory of modern Turkey. At this point, the Ottoman Empire, which lasted more than six hundred years, became history.
Today's Republic of Turkey has an area of only 780,000 square kilometers, and it can only be ranked as a third-rate country, which is not the same as the 5.5 million square kilometers of land at its peak. Occupying only a corner of the Peninsula of Asia Minor and the Balkan Peninsula, the islands off the coast of the Western Aegean Sea are all occupied by Greece, and even approaching the doorstep, except that the beach is Turkish, and even a swim in the sea can enter the Greek sea, which can be described as a real sigh. The Empire that once looked at the world collapsed in just one hundred years, and the turks' hearts should also be sad!