The Iskander Prophecy

The Historical Context

How precarious was the Ottoman Sultan’s rule?

In 1896, Sultan Abdul Hamid II was navigating one of the most perilous periods in Ottoman history. His regime faced internal fragmentation, imminent bankruptcy, and hostile pressure from European powers, earning the Empire its title as the “Sick Man of Europe.” Abdul Hamid II’s survival strategy relied on playing European powers against one another, but his position was hanging by a thread.

Following default in 1875, the Ottoman Public Debt Administration (OPDA)—managed directly by European creditors—controlled significant portions of Ottoman state revenues. The Sultan could barely finance state infrastructure or military modernization without Western capital.

The Hamidian Massacres (1894–1896), in which an estimated 100,000 to 300,000 Armenians were killed, outraged European public opinion. This severely restricted Western leaders (particularly in Britain) from openly allying with or protecting the Sublime Porte.

The August 1896 takeover of the Ottoman Bank in Constantinople by Armenian revolutionaries was a desperate bid to force European intervention during the ongoing Hamidian Massacres. By seizing the central financial nerve center of the empire — which was largely funded by British and French capital — the revolutionaries targeted the exact lever they knew European powers cared about: money. But the incident only highlighted the moral hypocrisy of the Great Powers. While European public opinion was horrified by the massacres, no nation was willing to take military action or risk altering the regional balance of power.

Theodor Herzl’s 1896 publication of Der Judenstaat and his subsequent diplomatic overtures to offer Ottoman debt relief in exchange for a Jewish charter in Palestine signaled a new dimension of pressure: non-state actors using the Empire’s financial desperation to carve out autonomous zones.

Russia continued to push south toward Constantinople and the Turkish Straits, while Britain tightened its grip on Egypt and the Suez Canal, neutralizing the Ottoman Empire’s strategic leverage in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The convergence of these events set off a chain reaction that reshaped world politics leading into the 20th century:

Britain’s traditional policy was to maintain Ottoman territorial integrity to block Russian expansion into the Mediterranean. However, public backlash over the massacres made supporting the Sultan politically untenable in London. This shift allowed Russia to assert stronger influence in the Balkans and brought Britain and Russia closer to resolving their rivalry, culminating in the Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907.

Isolated by France, Britain, and Russia, Abdul Hamid II turned toward Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Germany, which remained indifferent to internal Ottoman human rights abuses. This birthed the strategic German-Ottoman alliance, highlighted by massive German infrastructure investments like the Berlin-Baghdad Railway, effectively drawing the lines for World War I’s Central Powers.

Herzl’s initial offers were rejected by Abdul Hamid II, who feared further religious and ethnic fragmentation. However, these early negotiations organized Political Zionism into a global movement, laying the groundwork for the eventual British takeover of Palestine (1917) and the modern Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Sultan’s autocratic rule, economic submission to foreign powers, and failure to prevent European intervention alienated young Ottoman military officers. This discontent culminated in the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, which stripped Abdul Hamid II of absolute power, deposed him in 1909, and pushed the empire toward radical nationalism in its final years.

The Great Powers’ weak response to the Hamidian massacres taught the Ottoman rulers that Great Power geopolitical self-interest consistently trumped humanitarian concern. Tragically this would lead to the much larger massacres of 1915.