The Austro Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire.

Until 1917, the Ottoman Empire occupied the whole region.

This was then part of the dying Ottoman Empire.

In the Ottoman times, there were itinerant storytellers called meddah.

( Intrigue and murder among 16th century Ottoman court painters. ) (Laughter)

like Ibrahim Muteferrika, an Ottoman official, the man who introduced printing, very belatedly, to the Ottoman Empire who said in a book published in 1731,

Constantinople fell to the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1453.

At its peak, the Ottoman Empire controlled much of the Muslim world.

The Ottoman Empire's not that far from Europe, but there's no scientific revolution there.

And Russia was allowed to do anything that they want with the Ottoman Empire.

Turkey , essentially, was formed out of part of the remnants of the Ottoman Empire.

The last time that was the case was actually a century ago, during the Ottoman Empire.

like the Austro Hungarian Empire or not just in the Middle East like the Ottoman Empire.

In the early 20th century, with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the whole Middle East was colonized.

I say 400 years because it's the end of the Ottoman Empire of the hegemony of Western power,

Turkey has never been colonized, so it remained as an independent nation after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Ottoman Empire which started to allow these people to start to have more energy behind their desire to form a unified state.

Now those of you who have been to Istanbul have probably seen Topkapi Palace, which was the residence of Ottoman sultans for more than 400 years.

The other thing that was very different or the other country or nation or empire that we are not very familiar with today is the Ottoman Empire.

And that's why the Ottoman Empire in its last decades turned into a proto democracy, a constitutional monarchy, and freedom was a very important political value at the time.

This ethnic grouping, this linguistic grouping, tended to be broken up with the Austro Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, entering into World War I you have this decline of the

Why do Christian nations which were so weak in the past compared with Muslim nations begin to dominate so many lands in modern times and even defeat the once victorious Ottoman armies?

The Ottoman Empire contained much of modern day Turkey, and much of what we now call the 'Middle East.' including much of what is now Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, and some of what is now Saudi Arabia.

Economic fears are not the only concern for EU citizens. Turkey was the theater of exceptional violence in the twentieth century its participation in WWI fueled hatred and gigantic massacres, with the genocide of the Armenians the last vicious spasm of the Ottoman Empire s brutal demise.

And that's why actually in the 19th century the Ottoman Empire, which then covered the whole Middle East, made very important reforms reforms like giving Christians and Jews an equal citizenship status, accepting a constitution, accepting a representative parliament, advancing the idea of freedom of religion.