August 28: Today is the anniversary of the occupation of Belgrade, capital of Serbia, during the Ottoman Turkish invasion in 1521.

Ottoman soldiers in the territory of present-day Hungary.

After weakening the Byzantine Empire and capturing Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Turks continued their expansion through Europe.

Suleiman I's conquests were followed by continuous territorial expansion until the Empire's peak in 1590.

Greece was occupied in 1460 and the Turks continued invading the Balkan Peninsula: Thrace, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Herzegovina ... until they came to Belgrade on August 28, 1521 and occupied. Belgrade surrendered and with it much of the kingdom of Hungary.

Suleiman in a portrait attributed to Titian c.1530

Turks continued to seek the European conquest and approached Vienna. There they crashed into the Holy Roman Empire.

King John Sigismund of Hungary with Suleiman in 1556.

Suleiman "The Magnificent" had ascended the throne in 1520, and demanded that the King of Hungary undergoes and pay taxes. Louis II of Hungary and most of the Hungarian nobility perished in battle.

The Ottoman Empire was the last of a series of Turkish Muslim empires. It spread from Asia minor beginning about 1300, eventually encompassing most of the Middle East, most of North Africa, and parts of Europe, including modern Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Rumania and Yugoslavia. In the Middle East, the Ottomans ruled Syria, Palestine, Egypt, parts of Arabia and Iraq. Only Persia (Iran) and the Eastern part of the Arabian peninsula remained free of Ottoman rule.  The empire reached around the Black sea and into the Caucasus in Central Asia, including Aremenia. The Ottoman armies reached as far as the gates of Vienna, where they were repulsed for a second time in 1683, the height of their expansion on land. The map above shows the extent of the Ottoman Empire in 1683.

Archduke Ferdinand of Austria and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire territories claimed rights of his wife and failed to halt the Turkish advance due to war high costs, and surrendered definitively.

The Turks were looking to embrace Europe and almost succeeded!