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YeşilVatan

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I dont believe after suleiman the empire was declining because in the 1600s they were still on the prime despite setbacks.

Once they reached the 1700s is when things started to tumble down.

I do believe Suleiman has to be blamed because he gave too much power to the Jannisaries.

Gave too much power to women like hurrem. Hurrem and the other women were eating each other up.

I do believe kopurlu family deserve the credit for the empires resinurgence in the 1600s.

Murad the 4th and Genc Osman these two leaders had the potential to surpass their predecessors but died young.
No, once Celalî rebellions became a regular occurance, Ottomans were not a true empire, but a gargantuan state mechanism that tried to consolidate on what they have and deal with rebellions while the central power continiously rot in decadence. It really was like the imperium of man in Warhammer 40k, and not in a good way. The only thing that saved Ottomans after that point was their image of invincibility and lack of great power that could threaten them. After 1570-90, whenever they encountered resistance from another great power they folded. Portuguese embarrased Ottomans in the Indian Ocean, Hungarian front turned into Kleinkrieg which culminated in the catastrophe that was the second siege of Vienna, Eastern front was a messy tug of war, and supremacy in the Mediterranean was gradually lost to christians.
Ibn Khaldun holds the belief that warriors not coming from urban backgrounds.

Much more tougher soldiers.

This echoes the view Mahmud Kashgari had on urban folk.

Since the Turks come from nomadic origins not urban they have to fight to survive. War becomes a daily life while urban man has surplus of food and has to be called into fight.

More in a way the locals hated the Turks in the Middle East but could not do anything because it was better to submit rather than fight them.

Whats interesting the Seljuks planned on conquering Egypt rather than Anatolia.

I wonder how different history would be.
Nomadic way of life is decidedly action-oriented and rural. But the empire-founders don't have to be nomads. Germanics weren't nomads, but they ruled the western civilization until about 1960s.
 
S

-Sinan-

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Bilal oğlum!

Bugün tam bir buçuk yaşındasın. Vasiyetnameyi bitirdim kapatıyorum. Sana bir resmimi yadigâr olarak bırakıyorum. Öğütlerimi tut, iyi bir Ümmetçi ol!
Siyonizm bize düşman bir meslektir. Bunu iyi belle. Yahudiler bütün milletlerin gizli düşmanıdır. Cehape zihniyeti, İsrailoğulları tarihi düşmanlarımızdır.
Feto, Samanyolu TV, Zaman gazatesi, Paralel yapı, New York Times yeni düşmanlarımızdır.
Türkçüler, Irkçılar, Komunistler, Naziciler içerideki düşmanlarımızdır.

Bu kadar çok düşmanla çarpışmak için iyi hazırlanmalı.

Allah yar ve yardımcın olsun.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Nice fabricated story.

He was selling sucuk when bilal was 1 year old. When he go bankrupt, he said we are going to earn money from politics.
 
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-Sinan-

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Turkish people are really strange when it comes to politics. Most of us are as fanatic as if they support their football team.

Whenever I like something, or praise for instance our defense industry there comes a dude and accuses me of being a covert AKP supporter. When I make remarks about how bad the economy or agricultural politics are I become a blind opposition CHP freak.

You guys should chill a bit, no any party is pure black or white and we should not regard the parties as football teams (supporting them fanatically). It is in all our interest that we support the good things and criticize the bad (unrelated to partisanship). Good is good, bad is bad no matter whether AKP or CHP or any other party is involved in it.
It was not like tha 10 years ago.

But a certain man, destroyed our lives. People want to get rid of him while he wants to steal more.
 
S

-Sinan-

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Do you really think I'd care about Erdogan's persona?

Just for your information, this is Turkey so don't count your chickens before they hatch because the dynamics on the ground are changing once again.

From my recent ask arounds, I can deduce that people are slowly gravitating back towards AKP.

1. IYI party votes fell almost 50% after her recent hassle.
2. Muharrem Ince is taking his share from patriotic Kemalists.
3. AKP is uniting the conservative and religious votes (YRP, HÜDA-PAR etc.) behind her. Saadet Party voters are appaled by KK. It looks like only the actual members in the HQ of SP are supporting KK.
4. MHP is changing his tune and is now courting right-wing voters. Many former MHP voters are turning back to their roots.

Last but not least, you guys are constantly making one big mistake:

AKP and Erdogan are not synonymous. Erdogan's person is still very popular among the Anatolian masses and the educated conservative upper class. KK still has his image of an incompetent and unfit leader.

To give you some international examples:

There was one famous poll in Germany where 70% of the population was unhappy with the government's work while in the same poll 70% of the voters stated support for Merkel. People tend to differentiate between the government and the head of the state even though the former is responsible for the governing.

tl;dr

Right before the elections, the Turkish populace has still not made up its mind which empirically is almost always a good sign for the party occupying the office.
Fantasy Novel.
 

Ryder

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No, once Celalî rebellions became a regular occurance, Ottomans were not a true empire, but a gargantuan state mechanism that tried to consolidate on what they have and deal with rebellions while the central power continiously rot in decadence. It really was like the imperium of man in Warhammer 40k, and not in a good way. The only thing that saved Ottomans after that point was their image of invincibility and lack of great power that could threaten them. After 1570-90, whenever they encountered resistance from another great power they folded. Portuguese embarrased Ottomans in the Indian Ocean, Hungarian front turned into Kleinkrieg which culminated in the catastrophe that was the second siege of Vienna, Eastern front was a messy tug of war, and supremacy in the Mediterranean was gradually lost to christians.

Nomadic way of life is decidedly action-oriented and rural. But the empire-founders don't have to be nomads. Germanics weren't nomads, but they ruled the western civilization until about 1960s.

Every empire that faced a great power in equal power will struggle.

Tigers and Lions will never fight each other in their prime.

Compare the Spanish against the Aztecs and Incas.

They could not replicate such a feat against the Ottomans, English, French, Dutch and the Portuguese.

Ottomans lost control of the Western med but the Eastern Med became a Turkish lake for centuries

Ottomans did pretty well against the Portuguese who had better ships.

Compare the Caravels, Caracks to the galleys. Surprising that Ottomans were able to traverse a ship that was made for the Med even fight.

Romans and Persians could not even outright conquer each other. Arabs were successful because the two empires destroyed each other pretty much to even fight the Arabs.
 

Ryder

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Nice fabricated story.

He was selling sucuk when bilal was 1 year old. When he go bankrupt, he said we are going to earn money from politics.

Thats not true actually tayyip wrote this in his will
 

Afif

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I'd argue that Ottoman "period of national greatness" was 1320-1570. After that, the bureucratic and military structure of the central government was just managing the decline. I read this very good paper by Glubb Paşa (Sir John Glubb); Fate of the Empires. It was about 25 pages but it really broadened my horizons.Basically, there are patterns to 'empires'. From Ibn Khaldun to Glubb Pasha to Oswald Spengler, people just recognize that pattern.

Khaldun would argue about some kind of primal invaders because he lived in middle ages in the Islamic world. There was a stark contrast between the decidedly urban and tame muslim city folk and the invaders, who were basically mercenary barbarians. There is also a strange parallel with what Turks did to the muslim world and what Germanics did to the western christian world. They both took power by way of invasions and such, and became the "ruling elite" of the respective civilizational blocs. Khaldun was an acute observer of this strange phenomenon, and coined the term 'assabiyyah' for the seemingly unending source of action and energy that these barbarians posessed. Assabiyyah is what drives groups people to take action, perservere in the face of adversity and work towards a common goal as a united front.

Glubb pasha was more analytical about it, and he had the more scientific history to depend on to draw conclusions, plus his lived experience as a subject of the British crown in the early 20th century. He even listed the characteristics of rising and dissolving empires. He also defined what an empire is. Glubb Pasha says that an empire is; a center of power that dominates its 'world' - how big that world is depends on technological level mostly. Assyrians can dominate the fertile crescent and eastern Mediterranean, British can project power through oceans, Americans can interfere in tribal conflicts in jungles.

The empire goes through stages of life. I'll give some examples.
  1. Age of Pioneers: extraordinary displays of courage and action. Action, action, action. Rulers often don't even try to justify their moves. Think of Mongol invasions. In Ottomans' case, taming of the Balkans and consolidating Anatolia, culminating in the Conquest of Konstantiniyye.
  2. Age of Conquests: Now, our nation goes on to conquer vast swathes of territory. Think what Selim the Grim did, and Suleiman's early rule.
  3. Age of Commerce: Conquests stop. Wars may continue, but whether it is geopolitical, technological or societal, some kind of constraint stops the expansion. Suleiman's later rule is a good example of this; from the messianic conqueror Khan into a kind of a father figure 'wise sultan'. Trade flourishes. Wealth is 'created' in this stage. Because of rapid economic expansion, exploitation is relatively less egregious than the later stages.
  4. Age of Affluence: People become gradually selfish. A lot of clout chasing, bootlicking, back-stabbing. Rentier class grow in size and influence. "Let them eat cake" mentality slowly begins as the ruling elite become disconnected with the peripheral elements of society such as the urban poor and the 'provincials'. People begin to think that sacrifice is a needless folly. Morals begins to transform into ethics. Honor is no longer something to die and kill for. Wealth is distributed in this period. You have money not because you make something of yourself, but because you steal from or defraud others by legal or illegal means.
  5. Age of Intellect: People debate things in and out of existence. While problems grow, no one takes action. The notion that intellect itself can solve all issues goes rampant. Things become sterilized, or at least they try to be.
  6. Age of Decadence: Crises reach into their respective breaking points. Whatever form they take, they just transform the imperial order into something that can not be described as the imperial order. In the Ottoman example it's corruption of devshirme system and Celalî rebellions transforming the classical Ottoman imperial order into a bureucratic mess that tries to hold on to what it got, utilizing its image of invincibility, while a million hungry mouths eat away its central life-force.
Oswald Spengler is by far the most wacky of the bunch, because he was kind of an esotericist and a dilettante. There is an awesome but old youtube channel by his name, you should check it out. Warning: the videos hit different if you are baked out of your mind.

Spengler's epochs go beyond specific empires. Dude talks about entire civilizations. He believes the civilization revolves around a central concept, and everything produced by the civilization reflects that. Western civilization, he says, have infinity as its focal concept. Architecturally, it is gothic cathedrals for example. Then the civilization goes through life-stages of spring, summer, fall, winter. Usually it takes about 1000 years. I'll explain with an example; a bastardization of his theory can be applied to Turkish civilization in Anatolia.
  • In the spring you have a decidedly rural population. Turkmen settlers who don't care, nay, don't even think about what the city-folk or the ruling class thinks unless it becomes a problem ("you can't get those pastures" kind of conflict). People are religious, but their religiosity doesn't have to be reflected in an organized religion. In our example, Turkmen settlers were wildly heterodox. But their belief in a higher power is not in question. They believe in it, and in some cases kill or die for it, but they are just pragmatic about it. The culture entrenches itself into the land, and puts down roots. Military action in this stage is kind of mythical, think Danişmend Ghazi and stuff. Spring-period people go hard on the Dede Korkut stuff.
  • Then comes the summer period. It's the mid-day, where the sun shines the brightest, and few shades remain where the warming (or burning) rays of the sun doesn't reach. This period is characterized by institutionalization and things reach their zenith. Folk songs take the back seat against more 'urban' styles (less türkü and more Türk sanat Müziği). Less church music and more classical symphonies. The energy possessed by the civilization bursts into military expansionism. Think Ottoman conquests.
  • Fall period comes with all the pleasant bur corroding characteristics that is described above in the age of affluence and intellect. The city dominates the rural in this period, think Celalî rebellions. The later stages described in Glubb Pasha's paper are also valid for Spengler, just for a larger period.
  • Winter: The culture gradually dies. Another may rise from its ashes. Spengler's example is Roman culture dying to make way for the western civilization to be born. I firmly believe early republican idealism reflected the rise of a new culture. If we can purge the corroding elements, we can start anew but the world is a lot more complicated than a thousand years ago.
Excellent post.
Can you give me any link to Sir John Glubb's paper?
 

Tuncay

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is hurjets first flight still going on or has that been postponed to April too. Been waiting for this day for a long time and feel empty right now no Anka 3 no Atak 2 no Hurjet how am I going to wait 1 month :D to be fair at least the tf-x gave us a visual feast yesterday
 

YeşilVatan

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Excellent post.
Can you give me any link to Sir John Glubb's paper?
 

Angry Turk !!!

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@Ripley

What is there to laugh about?

Are you one of those who think the US will dominate for eternity or what?
It will die like the 1000 empires before it.
 
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