![]() ![]() These would-be conquerors, however, were bloodily repulsed and driven to their ships. Genoa, in 1437, dispatched a fleet and force of 10,000 men with the deliberate intention of occupying Constantinople. The Venetians seized and fortified Tenedos off the mouth of the Hellespont. They were aided by the selfishness of the Italian naval powers which even in the Empire’s dying agony could not refrain from encroachments. Their armies made permanent conquests in Europe, occupying Adrianople in 1357 and Salonica in 1387 their fleets took many of the Aegean Islands and large portions of continental Greece. ![]() On sea and on land, the Turks reappeared in greater numbers after each reverse. The Venetians and the Genoese who, if united, might have driven the Turks from the sea and saved Constantinople, were engrossed in the pursuit of commerce and in mutually destructive warfare. The small Byzantine fleet, save during a few short intervals, was sunk in a state of lethargy and decay. But the efforts of the Christian maritime powers to stem the flood of barbarism proved ineffectual. John of Jerusalem, who had seized the Byzantine island of Rhodes in 1308, battled heroically in that stronghold against the Turkish sea power. Many severe defeats were inflicted on their fleets by the Byzantine and Italian squadrons. About the same time, too, this Central Asian people, drafting the aid of their conquered Greek maritime subjects, took to the sea, infested the Aegean with their pirate craft, and crossed in large plundering expeditions to Europe. By 1330 they had taken Nicaea and virtually swept the Byzantine power from Asia Minor. During this time the Turks made steady progress. A fleet and army of Catalans, hired as mercenaries by the Emperor Andronicus II, halted the Turks momentarily but turning treacherously against their employers and making common cause with the Infidel, they ran amuck in a wild course of plunder and destruction which kept the Empire in turmoil for 12 years. So rapid was the Ottoman success that by the beginning of the fourteenth century they had penetrated the Asiatic frontier of the Byzantine Empire and defeated its forces in pitched battles. This power, while consolidating itself in Anatolia, the heart of Asia Minor, constantly expanded at the expense of the dying Eastern Roman, or Byzantine Empire. Through the genius of their early chieftains they founded a great and enduring military power. First as feudatories, then as independent allies, finally as supplanters in power of the Seljuks, their rise, considering their small original numbers 2 and the period of the world’s history, was meteoric. A small horde wandering in Asia Minor, they rendered important service to the sultans of the decadent Seljukian Turkish Empire. Driven westward by mass pressure of the Mongols, their first appearance in history dates from the early years of the thirteenth century A.D. The Ottoman Turks originated in the pasture lands of Transcaspia in western Central Asia where their kinsmen, the Turkomans, dwell with their flocks and herds today. A survey of Turkish history with stress on sea power should therefore be of interest at the present time. In the not unlikely event that Turkey is drawn into the maelstrom of the present conflict, the remembrance of her past-of Mohammed the Conqueror, of Solyman the Magnificent, Barbarossa and other great sultans and admirals-will be a living force in her war conduct and aims. The past exerts a mighty influence on peoples, particularly in war, as is supremely exemplified by the heroism of the British people today. For a century and a half her sea power was dominant in the Eastern Mediterranean. ![]() Turkey has an astounding and, in the minds of her rulers and people, a glorious naval past. All these are obvious strategic considerations of major importance which students of the war have to keep constantly in mind. She can perhaps keep out the Axis forces by her military power she can certainly admit them, if she wills, into her territories and adjacent waters for an attack on the vital oil fields of the Caucasus. She can either bar or allow, as she sees fit, sea communication between Russia and Britain. Holding these vital waterways from which, judging by World War I experience, she could be driven only by a military operation of the greatest magnitude, Turkey controls the most strategic sea route of the Near East. Though the present Turkish Navy as reckoned in ships and personnel must be classed as a minor fighting force 1, the possession of the Dardanelles and the Bosporus which the Ottoman State has held for nearly 600 years and which in 1936 it reclaimed the right to fortify, in itself makes Turkey a highly important sea power. ![]()
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