In 1453 when the last vestige of ancient Roman power fell to the Turks, the city officially shifted religions -- although the Patriarch, or Pope, of the Orthodox Church continued to live there, and still does -- and became the capital of the Ottoman Empire.

The Aegean Sea was later invaded by the Persians and the Romans, and inhabited by the Byzantine Empire, the Bulgarians, the Venetians, the Genoeses, the Seljuq Turks, and the Ottoman Empire.

* 1903 – Macedonian rebels in Kruševo proclaim the Kruševo Republic, which exists only for 10 days before Ottoman Turks lay waste to the town.

* 1799 – Napoleonic Wars: The Battle of Mount Tabor – Napoleon drives Ottoman Turks across the River Jordan near Acre.

As the German princes were experiencing the tumult of the Reformation, the German Peasants ' War, and the wars against the Ottoman Turks, they did not enforce the ban on the duke, and agitation against him soon died away.

* This article incorporates text from the History of Ottoman Turks ( 1878 )

The subsequent years witnessed the gradual extinction of Byzantine rule in Asia Minor, as Orhan of the Ottoman Turks, who had already defeated Andronikos III at Pelekanos in 1329, took Nicaea in 1331 and Nicomedia in 1337.

Nicaea, until 1261 the capital of the Empire, was under siege by Ottoman Turks.

His loss of the empire's few remaining territories in Anatolia made the Ottoman Turks posed to expand into Europe as did its lack of strength following his reign to prevent the formation of the Serbian Empire.

By the end of Andronikos II's reign, much of Bithynia was in the hands of the Ottoman Turks of Osman I and his son and heir Orhan.

* 1521 – The Ottoman Turks occupy Belgrade.

* 1521 – The Ottoman Turks capture Nándorfehérvár, now known as Belgrade.

* 1526 – Battle of Mohács: The Ottoman Turks led by Suleiman the Magnificent defeat and kill the last Jagiellonian king of Hungary and Bohemia.

* 1541 – The Ottoman Turks capture Buda, the capital of the Hungarian Kingdom.

The area thrived during the Ottoman Empire, as the centre of opium production and Afyon became a wealthy city with the typical Ottoman urban mixture of Turks, Armenians and Greeks.

) The mosques that were built after the conquest of Constantinople ( Istanbul ) by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, and influenced by the design of the 6th century Byzantine basilica of Hagia Sophia, had increasingly elevated and large central domes, which create a vertical emphasis that is intended to be more overwhelming ; in order to convey the divine power of Allah, the majesty of the Ottoman Sultan, and the governmental authority of the Ottoman State.

In fact, as the Ottoman Turks closed in on Constantinople, they constructed a fortification on each side of the strait, Anadoluhisarı ( 1393 ) and Rumelihisarı ( 1451 ).

Constantinople was captured by the Ottoman Turks, becoming the capital of their empire, in 1453.

On May 29, 1453, the city fell to the Ottoman Turks, and again became the capital of a powerful state, the Ottoman Empire.

* Battle of Adrianople ( 1365 )-Capture by Ottoman Turks

Gladstone, however, saw the issue in moral terms, for Bulgarian Christians had been massacred by the Turks and Gladstone therefore believed it was immoral to support the Ottoman Empire.

In 1867 he was the first Ottoman sultan to visit Western Europe ; his trip included a visit to the United Kingdom, where he was made a Knight of the Garter by Queen Victoria and shown a Royal Navy Fleet Review with Ismail of Egypt.

He established the first Ottoman railroad network and Sirkeci Train Station in Istanbul, terminus of the Orient Express.

Bursa became the first major capital city of the early Ottoman Empire following its capture from the Byzantines in 1326.

The first great battles were at the Adrianople – Kirk Kilisse defensive line, where the Bulgarian 1st and 3rd Armies ( together 110, 000 men ) defeated the Ottoman East Army ( 130, 000 men ) near Gechkenli, Seliolu and Petra.

After this event many Jews emigrated, in two waves ; some fled to the Muslim lands of the Ottoman Empire, but many also went to Christian Europe, first to northern Italy, then to the Netherlands, and later to England.

Other rewards were bestowed by foreign states, particularly the Ottoman Emperor Selim III, who made Nelson the first Knight Commander of the newly created Order of the Crescent, presented him with a chelengk, a diamond studded Rose, a sable fur and numerous other valuable presents.

" Theorist Basil Liddell Hart considered that the most important aspect of the operation was the degree to which the Ottoman commanders were first denied intelligence on the British preparations for the attack through British air superiority, and then crippled by air attacks on their headquarters and telephone exchanges, paralysing their attempts to react to the rapidly deteriorating situation.

The Ottoman army was successfully repelled for the first time on the territory of Croatia following the battle of Sisak in 1593.

He first saw action against the Ottoman Turks at the Siege of Vienna in 1683 and the subsequent War of the Holy League, before serving in the Nine Years ' War, fighting alongside his cousin, the Duke of Savoy.

Diplomatic relations were also established with the Ottoman Empire with the chartering of the Levant Company and the dispatch of the first English ambassador to the Porte, William Harborne, in 1578.

* 1915 – World War I: The first naval attack on the Dardanelles begins when a strong Anglo-French task force bombards Ottoman artillery along the coast of Gallipoli.

* 1897 – Greco-Turkish War: The first full-scale battle takes place when the Greek expeditionary force in Crete defeats a 4, 000-strong Ottoman force at Livadeia.

After the devastating 1354 earthquake, the Greek city of Gallipoli was almost abandoned, but swiftly reoccupied by Turks from Anatolia, the Asiatic side of the straits, making Gallipoli the first Ottoman position in Europe, and the staging area for their expansion across the Balkans.

The area became a focal point of conflict between Christianity and Islam between 1096 and 1291 and from the end of the Crusades until the British conquest in 1917 was part of the Syrian province of first the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and then ( from 1517 ) the Ottoman Empire.

The Mamluk province of Bilad a-Sham ( Syria ) was conquered by Turkish Sultan Selim II in 1516 – 17, becoming a part of the province of Ottoman Syria for the next four centuries, first as the Damascus Eyalet and later as the Syria Vilayet ( following the Tanzimat reorganization of 1864 ).

He re-established military unity, bringing an end to the second phase of the civil war ; re-organised the military, which was then able to reconquer territory lost to the Ottoman military during the civil wars, and introduced the first modern quarantine system in Greece, which brought epidemics like typhoid fever, cholera and dysentery under control for the first time since the start of the War of Independence ;

Kapodistrias negotiated with the Great Powers and the Ottoman Empire the borders and the degree of independence of the Greek state and signed the peace treaty that ended the War of Independence with the Ottomans ; introduced the phoenix, the first modern Greek currency ; organised local administration ; and, in an effort to raise the living standards of the population, introduced the cultivation of the potato into Greece.

Instead, the Ottoman Navy spent the first two months of the war in operations against the Bulgarians in the Black Sea, giving the Greeks valuable time to complete their preparations and allowing them to consolidate their control of the Aegean.

It remained under Ottoman control as part of the Rumelia province until 1912, when the first independent Albanian state was declared following the short occupation by Kingdom of Serbia.

The initial sparks of the first Balkan War in 1912 were ignited by the Albanian uprising between 1908 and 1910 which were directed at opposing the Young Turk policies of consolidation of the Ottoman Empire.

Peter's first military efforts were directed against the Ottoman Turks.

Kuwait was recognized as a separate province from Iraq and given autonomy under Ottoman suzerainty in the draft Anglo-Ottoman Convention, however this was not signed before the outbreak of the first World War.

Ottoman territorial claims were first addressed in the Treaty of Sèvres ( 1920 ) and finalized in the Treaty of Lausanne ( 1923 ).

The first group, or Class A mandates, were territories formerly controlled by the Ottoman Empire that were deemed to "... have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone.