The collapse and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire was a long and bitter affair, comprising revolutions, a disastrous world war and infighting.
Mehmed VI became the sultan just prior to the end of World War I and while the Ottomans were in the middle of exterminating the Armenian population. He would not last long. Months after his reign was proclaimed, Allied forces occupied Constantinople at the end of the war, and this awoke a Turkish national uprising led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
On 1 November 1922 the sultanate was abolished and Mehmed was expelled from the country - he is photographed above leaving his palace through the back door - where he would begin an exile in Italy that lasted until his death in 1926. Ataturk took over and formed the modern Turkish republic.
Ottoman Empire, empire created by Turkish tribes in Anatolia (Asia Minor) that grew to be one of the most powerful states in the world during the 15th and 16th centuries. The Ottoman period spanned more than 600 years and came to an end only in 1922, when it was replaced by the Turkish Republic and various successor states in southeastern Europe and the Middle East.
At its height the empire encompassed most of southeastern Europe to the gates of Vienna, including present-day Hungary, the Balkan region, Greece, and parts of Ukraine; portions of the Middle East now occupied by Iraq, Syria, Israel, and Egypt; North Africa as far west as Algeria; and large parts of the Arabian Peninsula. The term Ottoman is a dynastic appellation derived from Osman I (Arabic: ʿUthmān), the nomadic Turkmen chief who founded both the dynasty and the empire about 1300.
