Decline
Decline
The power of the empire was waning by 1683 when the second and last attempt was made to conquer Vienna. It failed. Without the conquest of Europe and the acquisition of significant new wealth the Empire lost momentum and went into a slow decline.
Several other factors contributed to the Empire's decline:
- The European powers wanted to expand
- Economic problems
- Competition from trade from the Americas
- Competition from cheap products from India and the Far East
- Development of other trade routes
- Rising unemployment within the Empire
- Ottoman Empire became less centralised, and central control weakened
- Sultans being less severe in maintaining rigorous standards of integrity in the adminstration of the Empire
- Sultans becoming less sensitive to public opinion
- The low quality Sultans of the 17th and 18th centuries
- The ending of the execution of Sultan's sons and brothers, imprisoning them instead
- This apparently humane process led to men becoming Sultan after spending years in prison - not the best training for absolute power
Kemal Ataturk created a new modern identity ©
Soon the very word Turk became synonymous with treachery and cruelty. This led Turks like Kemal Ataturk, who was born late in the nineteenth century, to be repelled by the Ottoman Turkish political system and the culture it had evolved. Seeing little but decay and corruption, he led the Turks to create a new modern identity.
The empire officially ended on the 1st November 1922, when the Ottoman sultanate was abolished and Turkey was declared a republic. The Ottoman caliphate continued as an institution, with greatly reduced authority, until it too was abolished on the 3rd March 1924.
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