Turkey–Russia Relations
In 1453, when the Ottoman Turkish sultan Mehmet (Muhammad) II (1432–1481) conquered Byzantium (Constantinople), the historic capital of the Eastern Roman empire, the Russian grand duke Ivan, whose wife was a niece of the last Byzantine emperor, laid claim to the symbolic imperial legacy by declaring Moscow to be the third Rome (Constantinople having been the second). In ensuing years, there was constant tension and rivalry between Russia and Ottoman Turkey. This rivalry was at once ideological, symbolic, and strategic.
Nineteenth-Century Relations
Ideologically and symbolically, Russia hoisted the banner of the Christian churches against the Muslim Turks, who were perceived as infidels in a continuing holy war. In the late eighteenth century, Russia annexed the Crimea and came to dominate the Black Sea from the Caucasus on the east to the mouth of the Danube River in the west. The next goal for expanding Russian power was the imperial city of Istanbul (the Turkish name for Constantinople) and the straits of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, connecting the Black Sea with the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas. Russian attempts to achieve this goal by military conquest and diplomatic maneuvering were one of the main issues in nineteenth-century European diplomacy.
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