DURING THE HEIGHT of its power, the Ottoman Empire (1517-1924), which is largely recognized as the last Sunni caliphate, dominated much of Southeast Europe, Western Asia, the Caucasus, North Africa and the Horn of Africa for a period of almost seven-hundred years until it drew it’s last few breaths through a series of reforms to the extent that Mustafa Kemal (d. 1938) proudly proclaimed:

The situation now is that the Islamic Caliphate in Turkey is dead and will never rise again, because we have destroyed its moral strength, the Caliphate and Islam.

These reforms, usually referred to as the “Tanzimât,” (which meant “reorganization”) was a series of strategic reforms which laid the groundwork for Turkey to be the secular democratic state that it is today.