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

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 Ottoman Caliphate (Ottoman Turkish: خلافت مقامى, romanized: hilâfet makamı, lit. 'office of the caliphate') was the claim of the heads of the Turkish Ottoman dynasty, rulers of the Ottoman Empire, to be the caliphs of Islam during the late medieval and early modern era.

Ottoman rulers first assumed the style of caliph in the 14th century, though did at that point not claim religious authority beyond their own borders. After the conquest of Mamluk Egypt by Sultan Selim I in 1517 and the abolition of the Mamluk-controlled Abbasid Caliphate, Selim and his successors ruled one of the strongest states in the world and gained control of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem, the religious and cultural centers of Islam. The claim to be caliphs transitioned into a claim to universal caliphal authority, similar to that held by the Abbasid Caliphate prior to the sack of Baghdad in 1258. Further Ottoman victories, the dynasty's geopolitical dominance in the 16th–17th centuries, and the lack of rival claimants strengthened the Ottoman claim to be the leaders of the Muslim world.

Osmanoğlu family is a family belonging to the historical House of Osman, which was the ruling house of the Ottoman Empire from 1299 until the abolition of the Ottoman sultanate in 1922, and the Ottoman Caliphate from 1517 until the abolition of the caliphate in 1924. In 1924, members of the Osmanoğlu family were forced into exile. Their descendants now live in many countries throughout Europe, as well as in the United States, the Middle East, and since they have been permitted to return to their homeland, many now also live in Turkey. The female members of the dynasty were allowed to return after 1951, and the male members after 1973. The family adopted the surname of Osmanoğlu, meaning "son of Osman".

The Palace School (Enderun-i Hümayun Mektebi) was a special school inside of the innermost court of Topkapı Palace that provided the education for the servants (slaves) of the Ottoman dynasty, who went on to staff the administrative elite of the Ottoman Empire. These were converts to Islam, young males between 8 and 20 years old, who were mostly taken away from the rural Christian communities settled in Rumelia in an enslavement process known as devşirme.

The most promising of the latter were sent to the school located in the grounds of the imperial Topkapı Palace, where they studied law, linguistics, religion, music, art, and fighting, as well as performing functions as palace staff.

Neo-Ottomanism (Turkish: Yeni Osmanlıcılık or neo-Osmanlıcılık) is a reactionary, revisionist, monarchist, conservative and Islamist political ideology in Turkey that discredits the Turkish secular nationalist republic and its reforms, and glorifies the Ottoman dynasty and its traditionalist establishments like the caliphate. It is also an irredentist and imperialist ideology that, in its broadest sense, advocates to honor the Ottoman past of Turkey and promotes the greater political engagement of the Republic of Turkey within regions formerly under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor state that covered the territory of modern Turkey among others.

Neo-Ottomanism emerged at the end of the Cold War with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, forming two distinct waves of the ideology: the first, in the early 1990s, developed by the Turkish journalist and foreign policy advisor to President Turgut Özal, Cengiz Çandar; the second, associated with Ahmet Davutoğlu, former president of Turkey and founder of the Future Party. Davutoğlu's foreign policy goals include establishing Turkey as an influential power within the Balkans, Caucasia and the Middle East.