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A Prisoner of His Ambitions: Bayezid “The Underbolt”

Feridun Emecen

Monday, May 23, 2016 5:30 PM Salon: ŞAKİR KOCABAŞ SALONU

On May 23th 2016, Center for Turkish Studies will host Feridun M. Emecen* under the diskussions theses-articles. Emecen will deliver a speech about “A prisoner of his ambitions: Bayezid “the underbolt”"** based on his thesis.***

The Ottoman defeat at the Battle of Ankara (1402) constitutes one of the breaking points in Ottoman history. This defeat stopped the Ottoman expansion in Anatolia and the Balkans and drove the empire into chaos in such a way that it would take half a century for the empire to recover. This situation that put the state on the verge of collapse traumatized early Ottoman histories and the vanquished of the battle, Bayezid I, the “Thunderbolt,” became the first Sultan to have been criticized on account of his wrong strategy. The Sultan’s swift implementation of reforms created a large number of discontented people and the negative light in which he was depicted by contemporary historians seems to have been affected by the post-1402 trauma. It was not only the Ottoman historians, but also their non-Ottoman colleagues that depicted a different Bayezid I. It appears that his actions that provoked resentment were not driven by personal ambition; but rather he followed an imperial strategy that would later be implemented by his successor, Mehmed II.

 

*Prof. Dr., İstanbul 29 Mayıs University, Departman of History.

**Feridun M. Emecen, “İhtirasın Gölgesinde Bir Sultan: Yıldırım Bayezid”, Ottoman Studies, XLIII (2014), s. 67-92.

***The speech will be conducted in Turkish.

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