Franco-Ottoman alliance

The Franco-Ottoman alliance, also Franco-Turkish alliance, was an alliance established in 1536 between the king of France Francis I and the Turkish sultan of the Ottoman Empire Suleiman the Magnificent. The alliance has been called "the first non-ideological diplomatic alliance of its kind between a Christian and non-Christian empire". It caused a scandal in the Christian world, and was designated as "the impious alliance", or "the sacrilegious union of the Lily and the Crescent"; nevertheless, it endured since it served the interests of both parties. The strategic and sometimes tactical alliance was one of the most important foreign alliances of France and lasted for more than two and a half centuries, until the Napoleonic Campaign in Egypt, an Ottoman territory, in 1798–1801. The Franco-Ottoman alliance was also an important chapter of Franco-Asian relations.

Background

Following the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmet II and the unification of swaths of the Middle East under Selim I, Suleiman, the son of Selim, managed to expand Ottoman rule to Serbia in 1522. The Habsburg Empire thus entered in direct conflict with the Ottomans.