Ottoman Turkish Religion

Before adopting Islam a process that was greatly facilitated by the Abbasid victory at the 75 battle of Talas, which ensured Abbasid influence in Central Asia the Turkic peoples practiced a variety of shamanism. After this battle, many of the various Turkic tribes including the oguz Turks, who were the ancestors of both the Seljuks and the Ottomans gradually converted to Islam, and brought the religion with them to Anatolia beginning in the 11th century. In the Ottoman Empire, in accordance with the Muslim Dhimmi system, Christians were guaranteed limited freedoms such as the right to worship but were treated as second class citizen. Christians and Jews were not considered equals to Muslims: testimony against Muslims by Christians and Jews was inadmissible in courts of law.

Ottoman Turkish Language

Ottoman Turkish was a Turkis language highly influenced by Persian and Arabic. The Ottomans had three influential languages: Turkish, spoken by the majority of the people in Anatolia and by the majority of Muslims of the Balkans except in Albania and Bosnia, Persian, only spoken by the educated and Arabic, spoken mainly in Arabia, North Africa, Iraq, Kuwait and the Levant. Throughout the vast Ottoman bureaucracy Ottoman Turkish language was the official language, a version of Turkish, albeit with a vast mixture of both Arabic and Persian grammar and vocabulary.

The Ottoman Empire Culture

The Ottoman Empire had filled roughly the territories around the Meditteranian seaand Black sea while adopting the traditions, art and institutions of cultures in these regions and adding new dimensions to them. Many different cultures lived under the umbrella of the Ottoman Empire, and as a result, a specifically "Ottoman" culture can be difficult to define, except for those of the regional centers and capital. However, there was also a specific melding of cultures that can be said to have reached its highest levels among the Ottoman elite, who were composed of myriad ethnic and religious groups. This multicultural perspective of "millets" was reflected in the Ottoman State's multi-cultural and multi-religious policies.

Modernization of Turkey under Ottoman Era

Mahmud started the modernization of Turkey by paving the way for the Edict of Tanzimat 1839 which instituted European-style clothing, uniforms, weapons, architecture, education, legislation, banking, institutional organization, agricultural and industrial innovations, new technologies in transport and communications, and land reform. During the Tanzimat period from Arabic tanzīm, meaning "organization" the government's series of constitutional reforms led to a fairly modern conscripted army, banking system reforms, the decriminalisation of homosexuality, the replacement of religious law with secular law and guilds with modern factories. In 1856, the Hatt-Humayan promised equality for all Ottoman citizens regardless of their ethnicity and religious confession; which thus widened the scope of the 1839 Hatt-e Gulhane. Overall, the Tanzimat reforms had far-reaching effects.

Why was Ottoman Empire Successful?

There were many reasons why the Ottoman Empire was so successful:

• · Highly centralized.
• · Power was always transferred to a single person, and not split between rival princes.
• · State-run education system.
• · Religion was incorporated in the state structure, and the Sultan was regarded as "the protector of Islam".
• · State-run judicial system.

Ottoman Institutions and Reasons behind Success of This Empire

The administrative institutions characteristic of the late Ottoman Empire had already taken shape in the fourteenth century during the reigns of the first sultans. At the apex of the hierarchical Ottoman system was the person of the sultan, who acted in a number of capacities, political, military, judicial, social, and religious--under a variety of titles. Officially the sultan was called padishah. Among the Turks he was, as his nomadic warrior forebears had been, the khan, a master of the tribal ruling class. For his Christian subjects he was the "emperor"; later, among the Arabs under Ottoman rule, he was the imam, the protector of Islam. He was theoretically responsible only to God and God's law, the Islamic seriat , of which he was the chief executor. All offices were filled by his authority, and all legislation was issued by him in the form of a fireman. He was supreme military commander, and he had basic title to all land.

Modernization and Cultural Reconfiguration: Cultural Features of Turkey under Ottoman Empire

The political and geographical entity governed by the Muslim Ottoman Turks and Their Empire was centered in present-day Turkey, and extended its influence into southeastern Europe as well as the Middle East. Europe was only temporarily able to resist their advance. The turning point came at the Battle of Varna in 1444 when a European coalition army failed to stop the Turkish advance. Only Constantinople remained in Byzantine hands and its conquest in 1453 seemed inevitable after Varna. The Turks subsequently established an empire in Anatolia and southeastern Europe which lasted until the early twentieth century. Although the Ottoman Empire is not considered a European kingdom per se, Ottoman expansion had a profound impact on a continent already stunned by the calamities of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and the Ottoman Turks must, therefore, be considered in any study of Europe in the late Middle Ages.

Modernization and Cultural Reconfiguration: The Origin of Turks

The first historical references to the Turks appear in Chinese records of about 200 B.C. These records refer to tribes called the Hsiung-nu, an early form of the Western term Hun, who lived in an area, bounded by the Altai Mountains, Lake Baikal, and the northern edge of the Gobi Desert and are believed to have been the ancestors of the Turks. Specific references in Chinese sources in the sixth century A.D. identify the tribal kingdom called Tu-Küe located on the Orkhon River south of Lake Baikal.

Modernization and Cultural Reconfiguration

As a predominantly Muslim nation with a democratic tradition and government, Turkey has become the symbolic bridge between the democratic West and the Islamic East. Within the past decade, Turkey has embraced its unique position and now seeks to become a major player in the international community, starting in its own neighborhood. Turkey has a unique history, with both an Islamic past and a secular and democratic present. The idea that a nation with a majority Muslim population would embrace a wholly secular and democratic government was groundbreaking when Kemal Ataturk introduced the concept in the 1920’s, and it has endured for the past ninety years.

US policy of War on Terror in the Effect of 9/11

The terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 have affected US global policy. The terrorist attacks have presented an “opportunity” for Washington to attempt to constrain the emerging complexity of the emerging international system as a whole by shifting international focus to the relatively narrow, but no less significant, issue-area of 'anti-terrorism'. Since then, the US has made consistent and persuasive, indeed unremitting, attempts to reduce many other items on the international political and economic agenda to an anti-terrorist essence. They took the policy of preemption. They argue that, “In the cold war essentially following the Cuban Missile crisis we faced a general status quo, risk adverse adversary. Deterrence was the effective defense. But deterrence based only upon the threat of retaliation is less likely to work against the leaders of rogue states more willing to take risks gambling with the lives of their people, and the wealth of their nation.”