This document provides a chronological overview of key events related to Turkey from 1453 to 2005. Some of the major events and developments included: - In 1453, the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II conquered Constantinople, establishing Ottoman control over the city (now Istanbul). Over subsequent centuries, the Ottoman Empire expanded its territory and reached the height of its power under Sultan Suleiman in the 1600s. - Throughout the 1500s-1700s, the Ottoman Empire engaged in military conflicts with neighboring powers like Austria and Russia. It also maintained a slave trade, capturing Christians from places like Russia and Ukraine to sell in Ottoman markets. - The Ottoman Empire began declining in the 1800s and collapsed after

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TURKEY
1453 – The Ottoman sultan Mehmed II first overran Constantinople (Istanbul)
1453. (The great upheavel ©2007 Jay Winik US)
1500’s – In the 1500’s the Tartars were among Europe’s most important states.
Thousands of Russians were seized and sold in Ottoman slave markets. Tartars
stormed entire Russian and Ukrainian villages. (The great upheaval ©2007 Jay
Winik US).
1529 – The Turks attacked Vienna and threatened Germany.
1600’s – By the 16th century the country under the Sultan Suleiman the
Ottoman empire was at its height. Constantinople (Istanbul) Ottoman
government. The sultans harem held several hundred female sex slaves. Sultan
Mehmet III murdered all 19 of his brothers. But in 1603 there was a new sultan
Ahmed I. (The great upheaval ©2007 Jay Winik US).
1662 – 20,000 prisoners were chained whipped and confined to bondage, slavery.
In 1688 Tartar Khan plundered Ukraine and took 60,000 prisoners. (The great
upheaval © 2007 Jay Winik US).
1683 – The soldiers of Islam, the Ottoman Turks moved up the Danube and
stormed the gates of Vienna Austria. Catholic France and Muslim Ottomans
were allies. (The great upheaval ©2007 Jay Winik US).
20 August 1787 – Ottoman ships attacked the Russian frigates. A six hour
battle, called an Ottoman holy war. (The great upheaval ©2007 Jay Winik
US_)>
1823 – Samuel Russell established Russell and company in 1823. He made a
fortune with opium in Turkey smuggling it into China. (Who really runs the world
©2005 UK T.Burnett and A.Games)

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1854 – UK and France were concerned about a Russian threat in Turkey and
the Black sea. In 1854 the two countries declared war on Russia and the Crimean
war began. (Practical family history mag August 2003 UK).
3 Feb 1913 – Adrianopole II, first Balkan war between Bulgaria’s King
Feroinano and Turkish Nationalists, led by Enver Pasha, for the possession of
Adrianopole (Edirne), ceded to Bulgaria in the armistice of Decemeber 1912.
The Bulgarians captured the city on March 26, and a treaty was signed in
London on May 30. Re-occupied and kept by Turkey in the second Balkan war.
1919 – Mustafa Kemel began takeover.
1922-24 – In 1924 the Turkish Parliament abolished the Caliph of Islam. Ending
an office which existed on and off since the death of Muhammad in 632, nearly
1,300 years earlier. The Ottoman empire was abolished in 1922. (The Middle
East ©2006 C.Catherwood)
1923 – Modern Turkey was founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923,
following the collapse of the Ottoman empire. An Islamic institution. Kemal, a
military commander, established the Turkish Republic, as a “secular” entity, along
the lines of other European states. (Stratfor morning intel brief 29 august 2007,
Geopolitical diary Turkey)
1929 –Saudi spy chief Kamal Adham was born in Turkey in 1929, of a Turkish
mother and Albanian father. A year later he was taken to Saudi Arabia and
educated in Egypt.
1939 – Constantine C Menges was born in Turkey of German parents on 1
September 1939, the day world war II began. His father was a scholar specialising
in the languages and peoples of the southern Iran and Turkey and had been with
the academy of sciences in Berlin. The Gestapo arrested and interrogated him in
1936. He then fled to Czech. In 1937 his father moved to Turkey where his
mother joined him. In 1967 he moved to California and joined the staff at the Rand
corp. A foreign policy think tank. During his four years at Rand he wrote on a
range of global issues including counter-insurgency in Vietnam etc ---

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1949-51 – The CIA had active operations going into Albania, the Baltic,
Ukraine and from Turkey into southern Russia. Agents parachuting in, walking in,
boating in, but, most of these operations failed. Philby played a part in
compromising CIA agents in eastern Europe.
1970’s – BCCI established offices in every country it was allowed to., including
Turkey. Rep offices which were not allowed to collect deposits or make loans. It
also set up joint venture banks in partnership with other foreign banks or local
investors.
28 May 1971 – Israeli Consul Efraim Elrom was assassinated in Istanbul. The
Turkish Liberation Army in alliance with Palestinians claimed responsibility.
1973 – In Turkey Lockheed were more involved, paying commissions of $876,000
over a few years. In 1973 their agent in Ankara, Nezih M Dural, asked for his fee
to be increased to $5,000 a month, but Lockheed said that in future he must buy
influence not just intelligence. Dural’s great opportunity came after the Turks
invaded Cyprus, when the US imposed an embargo on arms to Turkey. It was
circumvented with the secret approval of the State Department, when Turkey
brought two squadrons of Starfighters, produced in Italy. For one squadron
Dural received a commission of $240,000. Three years later he was arrested on
charges of currency fraud.
1976 – By 1976 the Turks were spending more than $2 billion a year on defence,
or more than 30% of their budget. Turkey brought arms wherever they could.
Including Northrop Tigers via Libya and Iran and submarines and torpedo boats
from West Germany. A proposed tank factory was to be built by the West
Germans in Turkey.
11 August 1976 – Attack on terminal at Istanbul airport. PFLP, Japanese Red
army terrorists killed four people including an American, Harold Rosenthal, and
injured 20 others.
11 August 1976 – Istanbul machine gun grenade attack killed four people and
wounded 17.

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29 May 1977 – Istanbul baggage area explosion killed five people and inured 24.
1978 – The PKK was formed as a Marxist Leninist group in 1978, by political
science student Abdullah Ocalan.
13 October 1980 – Turkish Boeing 72 Istanbul to Ankara was hijacked to Iran.
It landed in Diyarbakir Turkey. The plane was stormed and four hijackers
arrested.
7 August 1982 – Ankara machine gun attack killed nine people and wounded 71.
15 August 1984 – The first time the PKK elements launched an attack against
Turkish government installations.
15 August 1984 – The PKK began an armed struggle against Turkey. During
the conflict with Turkey 40,000 people were killed and more than 5,000 Kurdish
villages destroyed and two million Kurdish refugees fled their homes.
1985 – Turkish embroidery. Pauline Johnson. Victoria and Albert museum.
ISBN 0-9481-0702-2
July 1986 – An article by Judith Miller in the New York Times magazine
described a terrorist attack in Ankara Turkey, a synagogue bombing. Clearly
marked communist weapons the direct sponsors of the attack were Syria, Libya
and Iran.
27 January 1989 – Three simultaneous bombings of US businesses in Istanbul
and Ankara. The Dev sol revolutionary left claimed responsibility.
12 June 1989 – US Consul boat bombed in Bosphorus straits, no injuries. The
Warriors of June 16th movement claimed responsibility.
11 October 1989 – Bombing outside a US military px. Dev sol claimed
responsibility.

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7 February 191 – A US civilian contractor was killed at his car at Incirlik air base.
Dev sol claimed responsibility.
28 February 1991 –A US air force officer was shot and wounded in Izmir.
28 October 1991 – A car bomb kills one American serviceman and wounds his
wife. Islamic Jihad responsible.
28 October 1991 – Two car bombs kill one American in Ankara. Islamic Jihad
responsible.
1995 – About 80% of the drugs that enter Europe transit through Turkey. In the
late 1990’s the annual drug budget of the Turkish mafia was slightly higher than
the annual budget for the Turkish government. (Modern Jihad ©2003 L
Napoleoni)
3 November 1996 – A car crashed near Susurluk in Turkey. The passengers
were all involved in smuggling drugs to Europe. Between 70 to 80% of the drugs
that enter Europe transit through Turkey. High ranking politicians are also
involved in this illegal trade and the Turkish mafia.
20 November 1998 – Italian authorities last week arrested Turkey’s most wanted
fugitive, the leader of the Kurdistan workers party PKK and waged a guerrilla war
against Turkey from Syria. Until Damascus cut ties with the group last month.
PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan was caught in Rome 13 November after arriving
from Moscow carrying a false passport. The Turkish ambassador to the US
Bakiilkin said the Kurdistan workers party PKK has killed more than 30,000
people since Abdullah Ocalan formed it in 1978. Mr Ilkin urged Italy to extradite
the rebel leader to Turkey to stand trial on charges of terrorism and treason.
(VOA)
7 December 1999 – Sardan Tolga, Bin Lardin activities in Turkey reported.
Istanbul Milliyet/internet news translated from Turkish –

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19 October 1999 – Egypt air flight 838 Istanbul to Cairo was hijacked over
Turkey. It flew to Hamburg and the hijacker was arrested after a promise of
asylum.
15 March 2001 – Airliner hijacking in Istanbul. Three Chechens hijacked a
Russian airliner during a flight from Istanbul to Moscow and forced it to fly to
Medina Saudi Arabia. The plane carried 162 passengers and a crew of 12.
After a 22 hour seige during which more than 40 passengers were released. Saudi
security forces stormed the plane, killing a hijacker, a passenger and a flight
attendant.
1 November 2001 – Turkey announced it would send 90 troops to northern
Afghanistan to train northern alliance forces.
29 April 2002 – Turkey officially agrees to assume command of the
peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan. The Turkish government plans to take
control of the 4,500 member 18 nation force from the UK in six months. Turkey
currently has 270 peacekeepers in Afghanistan and is the only Muslim country
that has contributed to the peacekeeping mission.
2003 – The bulk of the drug money enters Turkey in suitcases carried by
couriers.
November 2003 – A Turkish man admitted receiving $50,000 from an Iranian
source and sent it to Turkey to fund last months suicide bombings in Istanbul.
(Iranfilter 21 Dec 2003)
15 November 2003 – Synagogue bombing in Istanbul. Two suicide truck bombs
exploded outside the Neve Shalom and Beth Israel synagogues in Istanbul killing
25 people and wounding at least 300 more. A Turkish militant group, the great
eastern Islamic raiders, claimed responsibility. An al-Qaeda connection was
suspected. An al-Qaeda branch called, the brigades of the martyr Abu Hafz alMasri, claimed responsibility.
20 November 2003 – Two more suicide truck bombings in Istanbul, devastated
the British HSBC bank and the British consulate general in Istanbul, killing 27

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people and wounding at least 450. The dead included consul general Roger short.
Al-Qaeda was suspected. The great eastern Islamic raiders front claimed
responsibility.
17 May 2004 – Four small bombs exploded outside branches of HSBC in
Ankara and Istanbul before Tony Blair’s visit to Turkey.
20 May 2004 – In the Acibadem district of Istanbul a bomb exploded in the
parking lot of a McDonalds restaurant, breaking windows, destroying one car and
damaging several other vehicles. No group claimed responsibility.
3 August 2005 – A blast in Istanbul killed two people.
5 August 2005 – Five Turkish soldiers died in aq bomb attack blamed on the
PKK in Hakkari province.
To be continued …

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