roissants and Viennese pastries
C
In 1683, after yet another failed siege
Turkish troops withdrew from the area
Vienna. To celebrate their liberation, the inhabitants of the Austrian capital got into the habit
of eating a new pastry, the croissant.
pastry, the croissant, the shape of which recalls
reminiscent of the emblem on Ottoman
flags. According to another source, this was
honour accorded to the city's bakers.
bakers. They got up in the middle of the night to
the alarm, as the Turkish troops tried to take
Turkish troops tried to take advantage of the darkness
to attack.
Known as the "viennoiserie", the croissant arrived in France
France with Marie-Antoinette in 1770. The Dauphine, who became queen in 1774, taught the
recipe to the court pastry cooks. The city
the city soon followed suit, with the help of snobbery, and the
croissant quickly became the essential complement to any morning drink.
The Ottoman withdrawal
After the failure of the siege of Vienna in 1683, the Turkish Empire withdrew into itself,
and watched helplessly as the victors of the First World War
victors of the First World War with the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920. In
stages:
After the defeat at Petrovaradin (1716), Austria seized Serbia.
In 1782, Russia seized Crimea.
In 1830, Greece declared independence after a war; France conquered Algeria.
France conquered Algeria.
In 1832, the Pasha of Egypt, Mehemet Ali, declared himself independent.
In 1878, part of the Turkish possessions in Central Europe were
divided between Austria and Russia.
In 1897, Crete came under international control.
The end of the Ottoman Empire
The last Ottoman sultan, Mehmet VI, reigned from 1918 to 1922. In 1914, the Sublime Porte
Porte, another name for the Ottoman Empire, after the monumental gate of honour
reserved for the Grand Vizier in Istanbul, joined the First World War alongside the
First World War alongside the Central Empires, Germany and Austria-Hungary.
Defeat led to the break-up of the Empire. The Treaty of Sèvres in 1920 completely
dismembered it.
Turkey was born with its current borders, but lost all its other territories.
its other territories. This was the moment for the revolutionary nationalist movement
led by General Mustafa Kemal, to overthrow the last Sultan.
On 29 October 1923, the Republic was proclaimed.
CULTUR
Chapter 4: The Other and the Elsewhere: Non-Western Civilisations Chapter 4: The Other
and the Elsewhere: Non-Western Civilisations 161
A career military officer, Mustafa Kemal (1881-
1938) played a decisive role in the Turkish
victory at the Dardanelles in February 1915, when the
rench and British flanks were repulsed.
F
In 1918, having become a general, he refused the armistice
and convened national congresses in Anatolia, demanding Turkish independence. The
Sultan exercised only nominal authority,
and Mustafa Kemal soon controlled the whole of Anatolia,
the vast eastern part of the country. He called general
general elections, calling a Grand National
a Grand National Assembly in Ankara in
1920, which appointed him head of government. A
expeditionary force sent against his troops
troops, was defeated and the Allies resigned. In
November 1922, the last Sultan, Mehmet VI,
fled on a British warship. The
29 October 1923, the Republic was proclaimed and
Mustafa Kemal became its first president.
He rapidly modernised Turkey along Western lines
Western model: calendar, Latin alphabet,
separation of Church and State. He even
even ahead of his role models, with Turkish women obtaining the right to vote in 1934 that
French women
French women waited until 1945.
Regarded as the father of modern Turkey, Kemal was given the title "Atatürk", i.e. "Father of
the Turks", a nickname that came to refer to him far more than his own name.
more than just his own name
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