Mehmed II ascended the Ottoman throne for the second time at Edirne, succeeding his father Murad II. His new reign quickly centered on the long-standing strategic goal of taking Constantinople and consolidating imperial authority.
Mehmed II built Rumelihisarı (also called Boğazkesen) on the European shore of the Bosporus to tighten control of maritime traffic and help isolate Constantinople before the coming siege.
Ottoman forces opened the formal siege of Constantinople, combining land investment with naval pressure and heavy artillery bombardment—key elements of Mehmed II’s plan to breach the city’s famed defenses.
After a prolonged siege, Ottoman troops took Constantinople, ending the Byzantine Empire and establishing the city (later Istanbul) as the central prize and future capital of Mehmed II’s expanding empire.
Mehmed II restored the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Constantinople as part of a broader policy to stabilize and repopulate the city and to manage imperial governance through recognized communal institutions.
The Treaty of Constantinople (1454) formalized relations between Mehmed II and Venice after the conquest, granting Venice freedom to trade in the Eastern Mediterranean while acknowledging the new Ottoman reality.
Mehmed II attempted to take Belgrade—an important Danubian fortress guarding access into central Europe—but the siege ended in a major defeat for the Ottomans, temporarily checking further advance in that direction.
During Mehmed II’s campaign to eliminate remaining Byzantine successor states in Greece, Mystras—a major center of the Despotate of the Morea—was handed over to Ottoman authority, accelerating the peninsula’s collapse.
The Ottoman campaign against Trebizond culminated in the city’s surrender, extinguishing the last major Byzantine successor empire and strengthening Ottoman control along the Black Sea’s southern coast.
The Venetian Senate voted to declare war on the Ottoman Empire, beginning a long conflict across the Aegean, Greece, and the Adriatic frontier that would shape eastern Mediterranean power politics for years.
An Ottoman naval expedition seized key Genoese positions in Crimea and brought the Crimean Khanate into an Ottoman vassal relationship, reinforcing Ottoman influence around the Black Sea.
The Treaty of Constantinople (1479) ended the sixteen-year Ottoman–Venetian War, confirming Ottoman territorial gains while restoring Venetian trading privileges under agreed financial terms.
An Ottoman force under Gedik Ahmed Pasha seized Otranto, creating a short-lived bridgehead in Italy that alarmed European powers and reflected Mehmed II’s outward-reaching strategic ambitions late in his reign.
Mehmed II died near Constantinople, closing a reign marked by the conquest of Constantinople and sustained campaigns that reshaped Ottoman control in the Balkans, Anatolia, and the Black Sea region.
Mehmed II and the Conquest of Constantinople (1451–1481)
