41. The Rise of Ataturk

**Binge the entire series ad-free by joining the Empire Club at empirepoduk.com** In November 1977, Egyptian President Sadat shocked the entire Arab world by boarding a flight to Israel. After refusing to acknowledge its existence, Egypt was seeking to make peace with its neighbo ...  Show more

**Binge the entire series ad-free by joining the Empire Club at empirepoduk.com** How did the oil crisis totally transform the wealth of the Gulf states and alter the power balance of the Middle East? Who was Egypt’s underrated president, Sadat? How did water cannons destroy Isra ...  Show more

On the 19th of May, 1919, an Ottoman general stepped ashore at the Black Sea port city of Samsun. This marked the beginning of the Turkish War of Independence, and ultimately the end of the Ottoman Empire. The man's name was Mustafa Kemal, the soldier, statesman and reformer w ...

Defeat in the First World War dealt the Ottoman empire a terrible blow, but it wasn’t terminal. Ryan Gingeras tells Spencer Mizen that it was what happened next – between 1918 and 1922 – that condemned the empire to its fate. (Ad) Ryan Gingeras is the author of The Last Days of ...  Show more

A Sultan in Autumn: Erdogan Faces Turkey's Uncontainable Forces (I. B. Tauris, 2021) is a primer for anybody who wants to understand modern Turkish politics and its central player Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who, for better or worse, has shaped Turkish politics and society for the last ...  Show more

In 972AD a princess of the Byzantine Empire was sent by her uncle, the Roman emperor in Constantinople, to marry the son of Otto the Great - Emperor of the Latin West. A tantalising and formidable figure, Theophanu became a major player in one of the most tumultuous and mysteriou ...  Show more