Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the context of "Sultan of the Ottoman Empire"

Macedonians (Macedonian: Македонци, romanized: Makedonci [maˈkɛdɔnt͡si]) are a nation and a South Slavic ethnic group native to the region of Macedonia in Southeast Europe. They speak Macedonian, a South Slavic language. The large majority of Macedonians identify as Eastern Orthodox Christians, who share a cultural and historical "Orthodox Byzantine–Slavic heritage" with their neighbours. About two-thirds of all ethnic Macedonians live in North Macedonia; there are also communities in a number of other countries.

The concept of a Macedonian ethnicity, distinct from their Orthodox Balkan neighbours, is seen to be a comparatively newly emergent one. The earliest manifestations of an incipient Macedonian identity emerged during the second half of the 19th century among limited circles of Slavic-speaking intellectuals, predominantly outside the region of Macedonia. They arose after the First World War and especially during the 1930s, and thus were consolidated by Communist Yugoslavia's governmental policy after the Second World War.The formation of the ethnic Macedonians as a separate community has been shaped by population displacement as well as by language shift, both the result of the political developments in the region of Macedonia during the 20th century. Following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the decisive point in the ethnogenesis of the South Slavic ethnic group was the creation of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia after World War II, a state in the framework of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This was followed by the development of a separate Macedonian language and national literature, and the foundation of a distinct Macedonian Orthodox Church and national historiography.

Minorities in Turkey form a substantial part of the country's population, representing an estimated 25 to 28 percent of the population. Historically, in the Ottoman Empire, Islam was the official and dominant religion, with Muslims having more rights than non-Muslims, whose rights were restricted. Non-Muslim (dhimmi) ethno-religious groups were legally identified by different millet ("nations").

Following the end of World War I and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, all Ottoman Muslims were made part of the modern citizenry or the Turkish nation as the newly founded Republic of Turkey was constituted as a Muslim nation state. While Turkish nationalist policy viewed all Muslims in Turkey as Turks without exception, non-Muslim minority groups, such as Jews and Christians, were designated as "foreign nations" (dhimmi). Conversely, Turk (term for Muslims) was used to denote all groups in the region who had been Islamized under Ottoman rule, especially Muslim Albanians and Slavic Muslims.

The Tanzimat (Ottoman Turkish: تنظيمات, Turkish: Tanzimât, lit. 'Reorganization') was a period of reforms in the Ottoman Empire that began with the Edict of Gülhane of 1839 and ended with the First Constitutional Era in 1876. Driven by reformist statesmen such as Mustafa Reşid Pasha, Mehmed Emin Âli Pasha, and Fuad Pasha, under Sultans Abdul Mejid and Abdul Aziz, the reforms sought to reverse the empire's decline by modernizing legal, military, and administrative systems while promoting Ottomanism (equality for all subjects). Though secular courts, modern education, and infrastructure like railways, were introduced, the reforms faced resistance from conservative clerics, exacerbated ethnic tensions in the Balkans, and saddled the empire with crippling foreign debt. The Tanzimat’s legacy remains contested: some historians credit it with establishing a powerful national government, while others argue it accelerated imperial fragmentation.

Different functions of government received reform, were completely reorganized, or started from scratch. Among institutions that received significant attention throughout this period included legislative functions, trade policy, secularization and codification of the legal system, crackdowns on the slave trade, education, property law, law enforcement, and the military. Ottoman statesmen also worked with reformers of the many confessional communities of the empire, millets, to codify — and in some cases democratize — their confessional governments.

The Turkish War of Independence (15 May 1919 – 24 July 1923) was a series of military campaigns and a revolution waged by the Turkish National Movement, after the Ottoman Empire was occupied and partitioned following its defeat in World War I. The conflict was between the Turkish Nationalists against Allied and separatist forces over the application of Wilsonian principles, especially self-determination, in post-World War I Anatolia and eastern Thrace. The revolution concluded the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the Eastern question, ending the Ottoman sultanate and the Ottoman caliphate, and establishing the Republic of Turkey. This resulted in the transfer of sovereignty from the sultan-caliph to the nation, setting the stage for nationalist revolutionary reform in Republican Turkey.

While World War I ended for the Ottomans with the Armistice of Mudros, the Allies continued occupying land per the Sykes–Picot Agreement, and to facilitate the prosecution of former members of the Committee of Union and Progress and those involved in the Armenian genocide. Ottoman commanders therefore refused orders from the Allies and Ottoman government to disband their forces. In an atmosphere of turmoil, Sultan Mehmed VI dispatched general Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk), to restore order; however, he became an enabler and leader of Turkish Nationalist resistance. In an attempt to establish control over the power vacuum in Anatolia, the Allies agreed to launch a Greek peacekeeping force and occupy Smyrna (İzmir), inflaming sectarian tensions and beginning the Turkish War of Independence. A nationalist counter government led by Mustafa Kemal was established in Ankara when it became clear the Ottoman government was appeasing the Allies. The Allies pressured the Ottoman "Istanbul government" to suspend the Constitution, Parliament, and sign the Treaty of Sèvres, a treaty unfavorable to Turkish interests that the "Ankara government" declared illegal.

The Ottoman Turks (Turkish: Osmanlı Türkleri) were a Turkic ethnic group in Anatolia. Originally from Central Asia, they migrated to Anatolia in the 13th century and founded the Ottoman Empire, in which they remained socio-politically dominant for the entirety of the six centuries that it existed. Their descendants are the present-day Turkish people, who comprise the majority of the population in the Republic of Turkey, which was established shortly after the end of World War I.

Reliable information about the early history of the Ottoman Turks remains scarce, but they take their Turkish name Osmanlı from Osman I, who founded the House of Osman alongside the Ottoman Empire; the name "Osman" was altered to "Ottoman" when it was transliterated into some European languages over time. The Ottoman principality, expanding from Söğüt, gradually began incorporating other Turkish-speaking Muslims and non-Turkish Christians into their realm. By the 1350s, they had begun crossing into Europe and eventually came to dominate the Mediterranean Sea. In 1453, the fall of Constantinople, which had served as the capital city of the Byzantine Empire, enabled the Ottoman Turks to control all major land routes between Asia and Europe. This development forced Western Europeans to find other ways to trade with Asians. Following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman Turkish identity ceased to exist; the Ottoman Turkish language, which was written using the Perso-Arabic script, developed into the modern Latinized Turkish language.

The Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774 was a major armed conflict that saw Russian arms victorious against the Ottoman Empire. Russia's victory brought the Yedisan between the rivers Bug and Dnieper, and Crimea into the Russian sphere of influence. Though a series of victories accrued by the Russian Empire led to substantial territorial conquests, including direct conquest over much of the Pontic–Caspian steppe, less Ottoman territory was directly annexed than might otherwise be expected due to a complex struggle within the European diplomatic system to maintain a balance of power that was acceptable to other European states and avoided direct Russian hegemony over Eastern Europe.

Nonetheless, Russia took advantage of the weakened Ottoman Empire, the end of the Seven Years' War, and the withdrawal of France from Polish affairs to assert itself as one of the continent's primary military powers. The war left the Russian Empire in a strengthened position to expand its territory and maintain hegemony over the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, eventually leading to the First Partition of Poland. Turkish losses included diplomatic defeats which led to its decline as a threat to Europe, the loss of its exclusive control over the Orthodox millet, and the beginning of European bickering over the Eastern Question that would feature in European diplomacy until the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I.