When Mehmet the Conqueror arrived in Constantinople, now Istanbul, he turned the main cathedral into a mosque and threatened to move much further west. Christian Europe was terrified. Misha Glenny travels to Istanbul to reveal how Mehmet's empire expanded over the next 100 years - to Iran, to Egypt, right up to the gates of Vienna too. This was the age of mighty sultans, Selim the Grim and Suleiman the Magnificent, who was happy to take the challenge to the catholic Habsburgs. But as modern Turkey prepares to celebrate a hundred years without the Ottomans, how is this period remembered under the government of President Erdogan?
This is the fiftieth episode of Misha Glenny and Miles Warde's How to Invent a Country series, which sets out to explain where nations come from, who decides their borders, and what stories the people tell themselves. These programmes are recorded on location in Istanbul, Belgrade and Vienna.
"All these sultans, they were mythical creatures for us. I really thought they were part of a fictional world because the real history for us was about Ataturk, and in primary school Ottoman history was a foreign country for us." Kaya Genc, novelist and author of The Lion and Nightingale.
Other contributors to the series include Judith Herrin, author of Byzantium; Professor Marc David Baer, author of The Ottomans; senior lecturer at Kadir Has University Soli Ozel; Christopher de Bellaigue, author of The Lion House; and Hannah Lucinda Smith whose most recent book is Erdogan Rising: The Battle for the Soul of Turkey
Presenter Misha Glenny is the author of McMafia and a former Central Europe correspondent for the BBC. The producer in Bristol is Miles Warde
Further reading:
Suzy Hansen, Notes on a Foreign Country
Norman Stone, Turkey (a short history)
Elif Shafak, The Bastard of Istanbul
Martyn Rady, The Middle Kingdoms
Christopher de Bellaigue, The Lion House
Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans
Soli Ozel, The History of Turkey's Future (in progress)
Kaya Genc, The Lion and the Nightingale
Hannah Lucinda Smith, Erdogan Rising
Mark Mazower, Salonica, city of ghosts
