Why Turkey known as the sick man of the Europe ?

 

About Turkey

According to Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia, Turkey  is a country in both Europe and Asia. The area of Turkey is about 780,000 square kilometres (300,000 sq mi).

 Turkey is a republic. There are 81 provinces in Turkey. The money of Turkey is called Turkish Lira. The capital city is Ankara, a city in the central region, called Anatolia. The cultural and economic center is in the European side of Istanbul. In the past Istanbul was called Constantinople. The republic was founded in 1923, after World War I and a war of independence (Kurtuluş Savaşı). Before that, Turkey was the core of the Ottoman Empire.

 Many civilizations were in the area that is now Turkey, like the Hittites, the Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire. Many important events in the history of Christianity happened in places that are now in Turkey. Because it lies in both Europe and Asia, some people see Turkey as the "door" between them.

 Modern Turkey's warm and varied climate lets many kinds of food crops grow, and livestock and forestry are important industries. Turkey makes enough food to feed itself. Turkish manufactures include airplanes, electronics, cars, clothing and textiles for home and for other countries.

 Turkey is a popular place for tourists to visit. It has hundreds of kilometers of beautiful beaches on its Aegean and Mediterranean coasts, and many important historical places.

Why Turkey known as the sick man of the Europe

First of all, Turkey was NEVER called the “sick man of Europe”. That term was used for the Ottoman Empire. Turkey and the Ottoman Empire are two different things. That would be like saying Italy and the Roman Empire are somehow the same when they are not. The UK and the British Empire are two very different things. You should have written “Why did the Ottoman Empire become known as the “sick man of Europe” ?” because Turkey didn’t exist as a Republic until the 20th century.

Well, some Turks might consider it to be an insulting term, but it’s not an insulting term. The Ottoman Empire was one of the most powerful empires when it emerged on the European scene around 1453. If you compare the Ottoman Empire of 1453 to the one of 1853, then you see that the Ottoman Empire of 1453 was like someone with a strong body and healthy, and the Ottoman Empire of 1853 was like someone with a weak body. It happens to empires.

When it comes to technology, weapons, science, and the arts, the Europeans were moving away from the dark ages and after the Renaissance started becoming quite powerful. You also by the 1500s had European powers that were emerging like France, Prussia, Britain, and Russia. By the 1700’s, the Ottomans were a lot weaker than they were before. The Russians who were once on the defensive began pushing very hard and taking a lot of territory the Ottomans controlled like the Crimea. The Russian encroachment led Circassian and Chechen Muslims to flee from the Caucuses to Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt, and many Circassians state that they suffered a mass genocide and lost hundreds of thousands of their people (they had a small population and still do).

 

At any rate, we are no longer in the age of empires, and all empires decline. That is why we don’t have something called the Roman Empire anymore. Under Mussolini, people were being told about the old glories of the Roman Empire, and Mussolini was using that to inspire Italians, and you see that same behavior in Turkey with neo-Ottomanism, but what’s key for Turkey or Britain is not old empires they used to have, but how advanced they are as countries in the modern era.

 

In a nutshell, the Ottoman Empire was once robust, healthy empire in terms of its power and technology. The British wouldn’t have referred to the Ottomans that was in 1650, but by 1850, in comparison to the Ottoman Empire of 1650, the empire appeared sick as it had lost lots of territory in North Africa and in Eurasia and the Caucus Mountains. It was somewhat on the retreat.

Watch Video

For more information you must watch this video made by Hemant Bhattarai for You Tube.