Ottoman Navy

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The Ottoman Navy was the naval force of the Ottoman Empire . It was founded in the 14th century and dissolved after the Ottoman defeat in the First World War .

root

The Seebeyliks Aydin, Saruhan and Karesi were in western Anatolia

The Rum Seljuks were the first Turkish Muslim dynasty to set up a navy in Anatolia from 1081. With the fall of the power of the Seljuks, however, there was no longer a centrally controlled Turkish fleet in Anatolia. However, some Beyliks had smaller pirate fleets. The largest and most powerful of these medieval pirate fleets was that of the Emir Umur Bey of Aydin until 1348 . The Saruhan-Beys of Manisa and the Mentesche of Milas ( Caria ) also had relatively considerable naval forces at that time.

founding

From the beginning of the 14th century the Ottoman Empire expanded, but it was not until 1333 that the first port city, Gemlik, was conquered. With the conquest of the Beyliks Karesi on the Dardanelles in 1346, its small fleet also fell into the hands of the Ottomans, but this small fleet was initially inferior to the Christian fleets in every respect - at least it could not yet dare a direct confrontation with the Northern Italian or Crusader fleets . You could nevertheless undertake minor attacks and raids on the Aegean Islands ; when trying to conquer the island of Imbros, they were defeated by a Johanniter fleet in 1347.

In the years that followed, the Ottoman fleet took part in the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, but the navy did not yet play a major role in the Ottoman military. Ships were mainly used to transport troops. However, this was mostly adopted from Venice or Genoa . The military strength of the Ottomans lay with the land forces . With increasing expansion, however, the Ottomans met peoples who had been shipping since ancient times. The first naval arsenal was built in Gelibolu since 1390 .

Increased importance

Mehmed II was already expanding the navy with a view to the siege of Constantinople . When Constantinople was captured in 1453 , the Ottoman Navy played a significant role for the first time. They supported the transfer of troops across the Bosporus and blocked Constantinople from the sea. In the years that followed, a strong Ottoman fleet helped conquer the Aegean , Black, and Ionian Seas . However, the Ottoman fleet was not powerful enough to be able to achieve naval supremacy in the wars against Venice and the other Italian states. With the help of the fleet, the Ottomans were able to land troops in Apulia and even briefly conquer Otranto in 1480/81 , but they could not supply these landed troops via the enemy-controlled sea and also not bring the Spanish Muslims the help they had hoped for in the defense of Granada .

Bayezid II therefore devoted himself intensively from 1484 to the reorganization and expansion of the navy and the establishment of an ocean-going fleet, which consisted of both rowing ships (galleys) and sailing ships. Lumber for this fleet came mainly from the Cilician plain; the coastal Balkan forests were already exhausted at this point. The decisive factor was the takeover of the corsair Kemal Reis in Ottoman services in 1495 , he reformed the naval war strategy, and in 1498 (Sea Battle of Sapienza), 1499 (Battle of Zonchio) and 1500 (Battle of Modon) the Ottomans were able to seize the sea fortresses Lepanto, Modon and Koron conquer by the Venetians. In smaller sea battles the Ottomans were henceforth usually superior to the enemy and victorious; in larger sea battles, however, their strategy often failed and in 1532 the Ottomans suffered several defeats against the Spanish fleet under Andrea Doria , as a result of which Koron, Patras and Lepanto were briefly lost again.

With the establishment and expansion of the naval arsenal under Selim I , the last necessary foundations for the creation of a navy on a par with the Occident had been laid.

The Khair ad-Din era

Victory at Preveza (1538)
Contemporary depiction of the wintering of the Ottoman fleet in Toulon (1543)

Also Khair ad-Din was a corsair , who over Algiers prevailed. To protect himself against Spain, he placed himself under the rule of the high gate and was made pasha. Thanks to his successful raids, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Ottoman Mediterranean Navy ( Kaptan-ı Derya ) by Suleyman I in August 1533 . He rebuilt the Ottoman fleet and undertook raids in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. He also drove Venice from the Aegean Islands, but lost Tunis to Andrea Doria in 1535 . In order to stand up to the Ottomans, Pope Paul III promoted. in February 1538 a Holy League made up of the armed forces of Venice and Spain. Despite the numerical superiority of the Holy League, the Ottoman fleet triumphed in the naval battle of Preveza on September 28, 1538 over the Spaniards under Andrea Doria, and in 1541 the Spaniards and Doria also failed at Algiers. This led to the Ottoman navy dominating the Mediterranean for decades.

France then formed an alliance with the Ottomans . The Ottoman fleet wintered in Toulon, France (1543/44), when they returned, five French galleys under Antoine Escalin des Aimars made a return visit to Istanbul.

In the struggle against Portuguese supremacy in the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean, Ottoman warships reached Diu in 1531, Gujerat in 1538, Hormuz in 1552, Daman in 1554, Aceh in 1569 and Mombasa in 1586.

Large Ottoman naval arsenals were in Galata and Gallipoli in the 16th century, while smaller arsenals were also in Iznik, Istanbul, Sinope and Suez. Larger squadrons were anchored in Rhodes, Alexandria and Kavalla. Antalya, Azov, Basra and Mocha were bases for smaller flotillas. The establishment of a canal between the Don and the Volga, the establishment of a Caspian flotilla in Derbent and thus the attainment of naval supremacy on the Caspian Sea failed in 1569 because of the unsuccessful campaign against Astrakhan. The forces that could be used by the Ottomans were too small.

Decline and modernization

The flagship Mahmudiye , built in 1829, has since become the largest warship in the world

After the invasion of Corsica (1553) , the invasion of Menorca (1558) , the Ottoman naval victory over the Spaniards at Djerba (1560), the siege of Malta (1565) and the capture of Cyprus by the Ottomans (1570/71), the Christian powers forged Europe In 1571 a holy league was once again established . On October 7, 1571, the battle of Lepanto broke out . This is considered the largest galley battle in history and ended with the almost complete destruction of the Ottoman fleet. The Ottomans lost 225 ships and 20,000 men, but at great expense and by "pressing" Greek and Slavic coastal residents, the Ottoman fleet was completely restored under Kılıç Ali Pascha . Only six months after Lepanto, the new fleet set sail and three years later conquered the Spanish-occupied Tunis, in 1575 the Ottomans even brought them to Castro in Puglia .

Another invasion of Malta failed in 1614, but in the war for Crete the Ottoman fleet successfully landed troops on the island from 1645 onwards, first defeating the Venetians in 1654 off the Dardanelles and then despite their defeat in another battle of the Dardanelles (1656) and near Kos (1662) ) still conquer Crete. During the 17th century, the Ottoman fleet became obsolete and its importance decreased. The Ottomans last won victories at sea over the Venetians in 1694 before the Dardanelles, in 1695 before Chios and in 1697 before Lemnos, and towards the end of the Great Turkish War , the Ottoman Navy had 45 ships of the line and frigates in the Black Sea and 35 larger warships in the Aegean. After they had been able to hold their ground against the Venetians at Imbros in 1717 only with difficulty and thanks to the majority, a Portuguese-Venetian-Maltese fleet defeated the Ottomans just a few weeks later at Cape Matapan.

More serious than the defeat of Lepanto was the defeat of Çeşme against the Russian Navy in 1770 . As a result, Cezayirli Gazi Hassan Pasha tried to modernize the Ottoman fleet, and he succeeded in having a new one built during the war. Of the planned 40 large western-type liners, only 36 were built in 1778, of which 20, then 30, were in the Black Sea. Nevertheless, in the next war in 1787 a landing at Kinburn failed , and in 1788 Hassan Pasha was defeated by the Russians before Ochakov . The Ottomans lost many ships of the line off Kinburn and Otschakow, but as early as 1789 they dispatched 22 new ships of the line to the Black Sea. These, however, were subject to the Russians at Kerch and Tendra in 1790 . In view of these failures, Sultan Selim III hired . after Hassan's death initially employed British naval officers and instructors; nevertheless, the Ottoman Navy lost again in 1791 off Cape Kaliakra .

After these defeats Selim III got. 1793 French naval instructors entered the country instead of the British. Whether the French deliberately delayed the reform of the Ottoman Navy or whether the funds spent on modernization were embezzled by Ottoman naval officers unwilling to reform, in any case the Ottoman fleet was de facto not operational at the beginning of the French conquest of Egypt . Worm-eaten wood, rotten ropes and outdated artillery with short range and inferior powder hid behind fresh paint on the warships. In an alliance with the British and Russians against the French, the Ottoman fleet led by Küçük Hüseyin Pasha was able to conquer the Ionian Islands in 1799 and land troops in Egypt and Italy. The commander of the combined Russian-Ottoman fleet was precisely that Russian admiral Ushakov , who eight years earlier had defeated the Ottomans at Kerch, Tendra and Kaliakra several times. From 1802 again in possession of Egypt and again allied with the French, the Ottoman Navy was able to assert itself against the British Royal Navy in front of the Dardanelles in 1807, but was defeated by the Russians at the same point a few months later.

In the course of the 19th century there were further efforts to modernize the fleet. During the Greek Revolution in 1824, the Egyptian and Ottoman fleets were united. However, in the Battle of Navarino , in which the fleets of Russia, Great Britain and France faced the Ottoman, three quarters of the Turkish and Egyptian ships were sunk in 1827. A new Ottoman fleet forced Tripoli and Tunis again under Ottoman rule in 1835, but in the conflict with the renegade Egypt, the Ottoman Kapudan Pasha handed the entire fleet over to the Egyptians in 1839. (His deputy, the patrona , remained loyal to the Sultan.) Only a British-Austrian fleet demonstration forced the Egyptians to return the Ottoman fleet in 1840. Another major setback for the Ottoman-Egyptian fleet occurred in the sea ​​battle at Sinope at the beginning of the Crimean War .

Under Sultan Abdülaziz (1861–1876), some half-hearted reforms were started again to reorganize and modernize the navy. The English initially played a key role. Most of the ships were bought in the UK or designed by British engineers in Ottoman shipyards. The English naval officer Adolf Slade (aka Muchaver Pascha) rearranged the Ottoman navy after the Sinope disaster, and during a Greek uprising in Crete (1866–68), the Ottoman fleet under the British-Ottoman admiral Augustus Charles Hobart successfully sealed off the island . In addition, a naval ministry was established and a new naval school opened.

With the Abdülhamid , the first submarine was put into service in 1888

Abdülaziz had the first ironclad ships bought without initially having trained crews for them. In addition, there were three more ironclad ships that Egypt had to deliver to the Ottomans in 1870. In 1875 the Ottoman fleet comprised almost 200 larger and smaller warships and was at least in third place in the world for a short time, but only 19 of them were large ironclads. The state bankruptcy of 1881 put an end to further armament of the fleet. In 1887 the Ottoman fleet consisted of only three large ironclads, four outdated armored frigates and seven armored corvettes. At the end of the 19th century, it was only considered a third-rate sea power.

The outdated sailing frigate Ertuğrul visited Japan in 1890, but sank on the way back, killing 530 sailors with it.

From 1909 onwards, more warships were bought, mainly by Great Britain and France, and smaller warships were also built in Ottoman shipyards. From 1910 a British naval mission under the admirals Hugh Williams, Douglas Gamble and Arthur Limpus worked on the reform and modernization of the Ottoman fleet, while at the same time the German military missions in the Ottoman Empire endeavored to rebuild the Ottoman army. French and even Russian officers also took part in the naval mission, but British influence dominated. Ottoman ships had the same paintwork as British ships, and the badges of rank of the Ottoman Navy were similar to those of the Royal Navy. At first, however, both the Ottoman Navy and the Ottoman Army were defeated in the Italo-Turkish War in 1911/12 - the Italian Navy freely supplied its troops landed in Tripolitania (Libya) and bombed various Turkish port cities - and in the Balkan Wars in 1912/13 . It was defeated by the Bulgarians at Kaliakra in the Black Sea, and by the Greeks at Tenedos in the Aegean. At the beginning of the First World War, the Ottoman naval minister Cemal Pascha , who was familiar with the British naval mission, was initially quite pro-British; The remaining Young Turkish cabinet members, however, reached the conclusion of a military alliance with the German Empire against the Entente powers Great Britain, France and Russia.

Even before the First World War, the German Empire had sold the Ottoman warships, in 1910, for example, the SMS Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm (Barbaros Hayreddin) , SMS Weißenburg (Torgud Reis) and the torpedo boats S 165 to S 168 , which were included in the equipment , in terms of size and armament corresponded to the contemporary British destroyers. They were replaced in the Imperial Navy by identical boats and put into service in the Ottoman Navy under the names Muavenet-i Milliye , Yadigar-i Millet , Numune-i Hamiyet and Gayret-i Vataniye . In 1914 the German Mediterranean division (battle cruiser Göben and small cruiser Breslau) was sold to the Ottoman Empire and added to its fleet. The ships, which from then on continued to sail with a German crew but under the Turkish flag as Yavuz Sultan Selim and Midilli , were a major factor in Turkey's entry into the war on the German side. The German Vice Admiral Wilhelm Souchon took over the supreme command of the Ottoman Navy, uniforms and ranks were brought into line with the German Navy.

  • Barbaros Hayreddin

  • Torgud rice

  • Muavenet-i Milliye

After the loss of the First World War and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the remains of the Ottoman Navy first had to be given to the Allies. In 1924 the Ottoman successor state of Turkey founded the new Turkish Navy with the returned ships (including the Yavuz Sultan Selim, which remained in service until the 1950s) .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ David Nicolle : The Ottomans - 600 years of Islamic world empire , pages 41, 45 and 89-93. tosa, Vienna 2008
  2. ^ Günter Kettermann: Atlas zur Geschichte des Islam , page 108. Primus Verlag, Darmstadt 2001
  3. ↑ a b Detailed history of the Ottoman Navy . (Accessed June 10, 2012.)
  4. ↑ a b c d e f Ernst Werner , Walter Markov : History of the Turks - From the beginnings to the present , pages 62f, 82ff, 103f, 117ff, 145f and 161. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1978
  5. ↑ List of important battles of the Ottoman Navy . Accessed June 10, 2012.
  6. ^ David Nicolle: The Ottomans - 600 Years of the Islamic World Empire , page 119. tosa, Vienna 2008
  7. ^ William C. Brice (ed.): An Historical Atlas of Islam , pages 32 and 46. EJ Brill, Leiden 1981
  8. ↑ David Nicolle: The Ottomans - 600 Years of Islamic World Empire , page 95. tosa, Vienna 2008
  9. ↑ Paul Badde : Holy Land. On the royal road of all pilgrimages. Gütersloher Verlags-Haus, Gütersloh 2008, ISBN 978-3-579-06470-3 , p. 32.
  10. ↑ David Blackmore: Warfare on the Mediterranean in the Age of Sail - A History, 1571-1866 , 147f. McFarland, Jefferson 2014
  11. ↑ The time about the Battle of Navarino . Accessed June 6, 2012.
  12. ↑ Pierer's Universal Lexikon , Volume 18 (Turkish Empire), page 15. Altenburg 1864
  13. ^ A b Meyers Konversationslexikon , Volume Fifteen, Pages 204 and 209 (Turkish Empire), Third Edition. Publishing house of the Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig 1878
  14. ^ About the Ottoman Navy 1828–1922 . Accessed June 10, 2012
  15. ^ Meyers Konversationslexikon, first volume, page 166 f (Egypt), third edition. Publishing house of the Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig 1874
  16. ↑ GlobalDefence on the history of the Turkish Navy ( Memento from December 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). Accessed June 10, 2012.
  17. ↑ Brockhaus' Conversations-Lexikon, supplement volume, page 571 (Ottoman Empire), thirteenth edition. Bockhaus, Leipzig 1887
  18. ^ Meyers Konversations-Lexikon , Volume 15, Page 844 (Sea Power) . 5th edition, Leipzig / Vienna 1897
  19. ↑ David Nicolle: The Ottomans - 600 Years of Islamic World Empire , page 168f. tosa, Vienna 2008

literature

  • Katib Çelebi : The History of the Maritime Wars of the Turks . London 1831 (digitized: The History of the Maritime Wars of the Turks - Arabic: Tuhfat al-kibâr fi asfâr al-Bihâr . Translated by James Mitchell).
  • Bernd Langensiepen and Ahmet Güleryüz: The Ottoman Steam Navy 1828–1923 . Conway Maritime Press, London 1995 (Original title: Osmanli Donanmasi 1828-1923 . Translated by James Cooper).
  • Tuncay Zorlu: Innovation and Empire in Turkey: Sultan Selim III and the Modernization of the Ottoman Navy. 2, revised edition. IB Tauris, London 2011, ISBN 978-1-84885-782-7 .

Web links