Andrew Wheatcroft knows the Middle East and has written several accounts on the history and tumultuous past of the Turkish people and the other ethnic groups that lived in the Ottomon empire. Wheatcroft wrote a book simply called "Ottomans" and he covers some of the big events and transgressions of the ottoman Empire and how it eventual was slowly broken apart. The Central Asian steppe warriors conquered Constantinople in 1453 and this basically Mr Wheaetcroft begins his adventure and explains how the Ottomans continued the Roman dynasty in a political sense and ruled in their own type of way quickly becoming urbanized and civilized given their nomad orgins. Wheatcroft dispels much of the savagery image Western historian s long placed on the Ottomans based on the repression of their brutal insurgencies from the Balkan Christians. However, the author also looks at the reform Sultans attempted to move the Ottomans and the eventually the Turks into a more modern rule and modern era.
The Ottomans had various challenges to their rule including Arabian extremism uprisings not too different than the rap we see of the extremists of today and in many ways the ottoman empire was much more tolerant and accepting of people of other faiths than the dirty Wahhabis and rulers of todays Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and few make this connection. the major challenge of the ottomans through their four centuries of power was changing their armies and fighting as a unit and it took several generations for the Ottomans to make this important transformation. Wheatcroft compares how the Turk has been portrayed in Western eyes through the centuries and tries to take another path in dissecting the rulers and society of the ottoman empire and how it compared to the various European monarchs of the time period. The main focus of this mans work that he concentrates his academic career is looking at the unique quality of ottoman society. 
Wheat croft makes the assertion that what transformed Istanbul from a Christian city into a Muslim one was the various Balkan wars where these new nations drove out various Muslims out of the area as refugees and many moved to the city formerly known as Constantinople turning the city into a majority Muslim country and this conjuncture in evidence that the ottoman Empire was a melting pot but when other areas boiled and gained their independence the Muslim character of the Turk became more extreme. key elements of the Ottoman history are studies including the purging of the janissaries, which was a centuries old system where Christians had to give up a son to be Islamized and become a fighting force mercenary into the ottoman military. The Turks were a bad empire but then again was expansive empire isn't a bad empire and why has the Turk been given such negative press through the years. This is an extremely informative book giving an authors insight of the misconceptions of the Turk during the Ottoman era as he basically describes it not different and possible more tolerant than the feudal monarchs of Europe whose own history and treatment of its own people and co-religionists can be seen in much more barbaric terms and fashions as the West often described the Eastern empire on their border.
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