Sultanate of Rum in the context of "House of Mengüjek"

Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran to the east; Iraq, Syria, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south; and the Aegean Sea, Greece, and Bulgaria to the west. Turkey is home to over 85 million people; most are ethnic Turks, while Kurds are the largest ethnic minority. Officially a secular state, Turkey has a Muslim-majority population. Ankara is Turkey's capital and second-largest city. Istanbul is its largest city and economic center. Other major cities include İzmir, Bursa, and Antalya.

First inhabited by modern humans during the Late Paleolithic, present-day Turkey was home to various ancient peoples. The Hattians were assimilated by the Hittites and other Anatolian peoples. Classical Anatolia transitioned into cultural Hellenization after Alexander the Great's conquests, and later Romanization during the Roman and Byzantine eras. The Seljuk Turks began migrating into Anatolia in the 11th century, starting the Turkification process. The Seljuk Sultanate of Rum ruled Anatolia until the Mongol invasion in 1243, when it disintegrated into Turkish principalities. Beginning in 1299, the Ottomans united the principalities and expanded. Mehmed II conquered Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) in 1453. During the reigns of Selim I and Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire became a global power. From 1789 onwards, the empire saw major changes, reforms, centralization, and rising nationalism while its territory declined.

The Pontic Greeks (Pontic: Ρωμαίοι, Ρωμιοί; Turkish: Pontus Rumları or Karadeniz Rumları; Greek: Πόντιοι, Ελληνοπόντιοι), also Pontian Greeks or simply Pontians, are an ethnically Greek group indigenous to the region of Pontus, in northeastern Anatolia (modern-day Turkey). They share a common Pontic Greek culture that is distinguished by its music, dances, cuisine, and clothing. Folk dances, such as the Serra (also known as Pyrrhichios), and traditional musical instruments, like the Pontic lyra, remain important to Pontian diaspora communities. Pontians traditionally speak Pontic Greek, a modern Greek variety, that has developed remotely in the region of Pontus. Commonly known as Pontiaka, it is traditionally called Romeika by its native speakers.

The earliest Greek colonies in the region of Pontus begin in 700 BC, including Sinope, Trapezus, and Amisos. Greek colonies continued to expand on the coast of the Black Sea (Euxeinos Pontos) between the Archaic and Classical periods. The Hellenistic Kingdom of Pontus was annexed by Rome in 63 BC becoming Roman and later Byzantine territory. During the 11th century AD, Pontus was largely isolated from the rest of the Greek–speaking world, following the Seljuk conquest of Anatolia. After the 1203 siege of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade, the Empire of Trebizond was established on the Black Sea coast by a branch of the Komnenos dynasty, later known as 'Grand Komnenos'. Anatolia, including Trebizond, was eventually conquered by the Ottomans entirely by the 15th century AD. Greek presence in Pontus remained vibrant during the early modern period up until the 20th century, when, following the Pontic Greek genocide and the 1923 population exchange with Turkey, Pontic Greeks migrated primarily to Greece and around the Caucasus, including in the country of Georgia. Although the vast majority of Pontic Greeks are Orthodox Christians, those who remained in Northeastern Turkey's Black Sea region following the population exchange are Muslim; their ancestors having converted to Islam during the Ottoman period, like thousands of other Greek Muslims.

The Byzantine–Ottoman wars were a series of decisive conflicts between the Byzantine Greeks and Ottoman Turks and their allies that led to the final destruction of the Byzantine Empire and the rise of the Ottoman Empire. The Byzantines, already having been in a weak state even before the partitioning of their Empire following the 4th Crusade, failed to recover fully under the rule of the Palaiologos dynasty. Thus, the Byzantines faced increasingly disastrous defeats at the hands of the Ottomans. Ultimately, they lost Constantinople in 1453, formally ending the conflicts (however, several Byzantine Holdouts lasted until 1479).

Taking advantage of the situation, the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum began seizing territory in western Anatolia, until the Nicaean Empire was able to repulse the Seljuk Turks from the remaining territories still under Byzantine rule. Eventually Constantinople was re-taken from the Latin Empire in 1261 by the Nicaean Empire. The position of the Byzantine Empire in Europe remained uncertain due to the presence of the rivals in Epirus, Serbia and Bulgaria. This, combined with the declining power of the Sultanate of Rum (Byzantium's chief rival in Asia Minor) led to the removal of troops from Anatolia to maintain Byzantium's grip on Thrace.

The Seljuk dynasty, or Seljukids (/ˈsɛldʒʊk/ SEL-juuk; Turkish: Selçuklular, Persian: سلجوقیان Saljuqian,) alternatively spelled as Saljuqids or Seljuk Turks, was an Oghuz Turkic, Sunni Muslim dynasty that culturally became Persianate and contributed to Turco-Persian culture.

The founder of the Seljuk dynasty, Seljuk Beg, was a descendant of a royal Khazar chief Tuqaq who served as advisor to the King of the Khazars, in West Asia and Central Asia. The Seljuks established the Seljuk Empire (1037–1194), the Sultanate of Kermân (1041–1186) and the Sultanate of Rum (1074–1308), which stretched from Iran to Anatolia and were the prime targets of the First Crusade.

Suleiman Shah I ibn Qutalmish (Turkish: Kutalmışoğlu Süleyman Şah; Old Anatolian Turkish: سُلَیمانشاہ بن قُتَلمِش; Persian: سلیمان بن قتلمش) founded an independent Seljuk Turkish state in Anatolia and ruled as Seljuk Sultan of Rûm from 1077 until his death in 1086.

Konya is a major city in central Turkey, on the southwestern edge of the Central Anatolian Plateau, and is the capital of Konya Province. During antiquity and into Seljuk times it was known as Iconium. In 19th-century accounts of the city in English its name is usually spelt Konia or Koniah. In the late medieval period, Konya was the capital of the Seljuk Turks' Sultanate of Rum, from where the sultans ruled over Anatolia.

As of 2024, the population of the Metropolitan Province was 2,330,024. 1,433,861 live in the three urban districts (Karatay, Selcuklu, Meram), making it the sixth most populous city in Turkey, and second most populous of the Central Anatolia Region, after Ankara. City has Konya is served by TCDD high-speed train (YHT) services from Istanbul, Ankara and Karaman. The local airport (Konya Havalimanı, KYA) is served by frequent flights from Istanbul whereas flights to and from İzmir are offered few times a week.

The Battle of Köse Dağ took place in eastern Anatolia on 26 June 1243 when an army of the Sultanate of Rum, led by Sultan Kaykhusraw II, confronted an invading Mongol army under the general Baiju and was decisively defeated. The battle was the pivotal event of the Mongol conquest of Anatolia: Rum, previously a significant independent power in the eastern Mediterranean, was reduced to the status of a client kingdom, and its territories were later absorbed into the Mongol Ilkhanate.

The Mongol Empire first achieved territorial contact with Rum in the early 1230s by conquering a large swathe of western Iran, but largely left it alone over the next decade. Instead, under their general Chormaqan, Mongol armies subjugated Transcaucasia and reduced the Kingdom of Georgia to a vassal state. Relations deteriorated after the accession of Kaykhusraw II to the Rum throne in 1237, and Mongol raids on Rum territory began in 1240. Two years later, Baiju, who had replaced Chormaqan after the latter became disabled, captured and pillaged the city of Erzurum, escalating hostilities into open war. He again invaded Rum in 1243, with an army of 30,000 Mongol troops accompanied by Georgian and Armenian auxiliaries.