The Ottoman Empire was once one of the largest military and economic powers in the world, and in its golden age in the fifteenth century, it extended its control over an area that included not only its main lands in Asia Minor, but also a large part of southeast Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

Although the Ottoman Empire continued to dominate for 600 years, it succumbed to what most historians describe as a slow and prolonged decline, despite efforts to modernize.

The entry of the Ottoman Sultanate into the First World War was a milestone in its history, and years after the war was lost, the Treaty of Lausanne was signed in Switzerland in 1923, between Turkey - the heir to the Ottoman Empire - and the victorious powers in the war, which defined the borders of the modern Turkish state, and its loss of the war was an excuse for the powers. European countries to share the spoils of the Sultanate, which was known as "the sick man of Europe."

The empire was dismantled and its state ended in 1922, when the last of the Ottoman sultans, Muhammad VI, was overthrown after he was dismissed and left the Ottoman capital (Istanbul) on board a British warship, and the modern Turkish state arose on the ruins of the shattered Ottoman Empire.

Although historians do not fully agree on the causes of the tragic collapse of the Ottoman Empire, History TV has listed some influencing factors, including:

Agricultural Character


At a time when the Industrial Revolution swept through Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Ottoman economy remained dependent on agriculture.

The empire lacked the factories to keep pace with Great Britain, France and even Russia, says Princeton University Associate Professor of Near Eastern Studies Michael E.

Reynolds.

As a result, the empire's economic growth was weak, and the agricultural surplus the empire was producing was going to pay off the loans of European creditors.

When World War I broke out, the Ottoman Empire did not have sufficient industrial expertise to produce the heavy weapons, ammunition, iron and steel needed to build railroads to support the war effort.

Internal cohesion:


The Ottoman Empire at its peak included Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece, Hungary, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Macedonia, Romania, Syria, parts of Arabia and the northern coast of Africa.

Reynolds argues that the enormous diversity of race, language, economy and geography did not suit modern homogeneous societies.

And the various peoples who were part of the empire, revolted steadily.

By the 1870s, the Empire was forced to allow Bulgaria and other countries to gain independence, which was accompanied by the ceding of more territories.

After losing the Balkan wars between 1912 and 1913 to an alliance that annexed some of its former imperial possessions, the Ottomans were forced to give up all that remained of their European lands.

Education


Despite efforts to improve education in the eighteenth century, the Ottoman Empire lagged behind its European competitors in literacy, despite the presence of a number of universities and specialized schools in its provinces.

"The human resources of the Ottoman Empire, like natural resources, were relatively underdeveloped," Reynolds notes, adding that this meant that the empire was short of well-trained military officers, as well as engineers, writers, doctors and other professions.

Rivalry of empires


As Eugene Rogan, director of the Middle East Center at Saint Anthony’s College, explained, the ambitions of European powers helped accelerate the demise of the Ottoman Empire.

Both Russia and Austria sought to support rebel nationalists in the Balkans to consolidate their influence there, and the British and French were eager to carve out the Ottoman Empire's territory in the Middle East and North Africa.

Conflict with Russia


Reynolds says, "Neighboring Tsarist Russia - whose sprawling world also included Muslims - increasingly sought to become a rival. The Russian Empire also posed the greatest threat to the Ottoman Empire, and was a real existential threat."

And when the two empires took opposite positions in World War I, the Russians ended up collapsing first in part because the Ottoman forces prevented Russia from obtaining supplies from Europe via the Black Sea, and Tsar Nicholas II and his Foreign Minister Sergei Sazanov also resisted the idea of ​​negotiating a separate peace agreement with The Ottoman Empire, which might have saved Tsarist Russia from collapse.

World War


Siding with Germany in World War I was perhaps the most important reason behind the demise of the Ottoman Empire.

Before the war, the Ottoman Empire had signed a secret treaty with Germany, which turned out to be a very poor choice.

In the conflict that followed, the Empire's army waged a brutal, bloody campaign in the Gallipoli peninsula to protect Constantinople from invading Allied forces in 1915 and 1916.

Ultimately, the Ottoman Empire lost nearly half a million soldiers, most of them to disease, in addition to about 3.8 million others who were wounded in war or sickness.

In October 1918, the Ottomans signed an armistice with Great Britain, and they emerged from the war.

Some specialists argue that were it not for the sinister choice of World War I, the Ottoman Empire might have survived and took an opportunity for modernization and development.

Mustafa Minnawi, a historian at Cornell University, believes that the Ottoman Empire had the potential to develop into a multi-ethnic and multilingual federal state.

Instead, Minnawi argues, the First World War led to the disintegration of the empire, because "the Ottoman Empire sided with the losing side."

He noted that when the war ended, "the victors decided to divide the lands of the Ottoman Empire among themselves."