Talk:Ottoman–Portuguese conflicts (1558–1566)

NOTE

The so-called Turkish-Portuguese Conflicts and Turkish-Portuguese Wars do not exist in Portuguese historiography. At a time when the Portuguese were engaging a multitude of enemies on various fronts - from Morocco (the "Moors") and Brazil (the French) to East Africa (the Omani) and India and South East Asia (a plethora of Indian and South East Asian kingdoms) - the Turks were merely yet another adversary, although the conquerors of Constantinople and Rhodes perhaps were perceived as worthier opponents than most. Thus, the conflicts that opposed them to the Portuguese were seen as part of a greater system of conflicts that involved a web of alliances along the Indian Ocean, where the Turks, the Persians, the Mughals, the Portuguese, and scores of lesser kingdoms all fought - some for hegemony, others for survival.

In his 8-volume work Batalhas e Combates da Marinha Portuguesa (Battles and combats of the Portuguese Navy (Lisbon, Livraria Sá da Costa Editora 1989-1994)), Capitão-de-Mar-e-Guerra (equivalent to a Royal Navy or USN Captain, NATO rank code OF-5) Saturnino Monteiro, a former teacher at the Escola Naval of the Portuguese Navy, describes more than three hundred combats in the Indian Ocean alone in vols. I-IV, which cover the period up to the 16th century. Of these, only a handful involve Turkish fleets - notably the Battle of Diu (1509), the expedition of viceroy Estêvão da Gama to the Red Sea (1541), the battle of the galleys in the Gulf of Oman (1552), and a couple more (the two sieges of Diu are not included, as they did not involve the navy). It follows that from the Portuguese perspective it makes no sense to speak of the periods 1538-1557, 1558-1563 and 1580-1589 in separate, as the Wikipedia articles do, since the fighting against the Turks was an ongoing, albeit very sporadic, conflict.

Generally speaking, the Turks were no serious threat to the Portuguese presence in the Indian Ocean, and to claim that the result of a so-called war was a draw - as is made in the article regarding the so-called "third Turkish-Portuguese war (1558-1566)" - is erroneous and utterly misleading. The Turks were never able to disrupt the Portuguese trade system in the Arabian Sea. In fact, after the Battle of Diu of 1509 their influence in the region was negligible for twenty years, and after the two sieges of Diu in 1538 and 1545 their influence was again quite modest. To state that the Ottoman fleet in the conflict mentioned above "attacked and plundered Portuguese ships, fortifications and settlements" exaggerates its importance; nearly every year, somewhere from Zanzibar to Malacca and beyond, the Portuguese had to face one or several enemy fleets belonging to old enemies or rebellious allies; the conflicts with the Turks were yet another, and were dealt with as such.

The Portuguese of the 16th century had a saying that they could not successfully venture into the Red Sea (alluding to a couple of failed expeditions), while the Turks similarly could not successfully sail into the Arabian Sea; the first was a Turkish lake, the second a Portuguese sea. As stated earlier, the so-called Turkish-Portuguese Conflicts have received no special treatment in Portuguese historiography, as they are part of a much larger and more complex series of conflicts from the Portuguese point of view. While not entirely fair to the two sieges of Diu, which posed a serious threat to that important port city, the above mentioned saying correctly sums up the situation regarding the Turkish presence in the Indian Ocean in the 16th century.Pedro de Quintanilha e Mendonça (talk) 12:42, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Same in Turkish historiography. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.108.126.44 (talk) 20:21, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Deletion

I have decided to take the initiative and flag this article for deletion. The reason for this is that there simply never existed anything that we could call an "Ottoman-Portuguese conflict" in the years of 1558-1566. There were no engagements between Turks or Portuguese anywhere, and the article itself is a reflection of that reality - it's vague, points at no specific battles (there weren't any) and fails to provide citations; one of the supposed Portuguese commanders had even long died at that point! I'm willing to believe such an article was created simply to bridge a gap between the Ottoman-Portuguese conflicts (1538-59) and maybe the Ottoman expedition to Aceh and the Ottoman-Portuguese conflicts (1580-89). In reality though, after the final Turkish attempt at seizing the island of Bahrain from the Portuguese in 1559 - which is already detailed in the page Ottoman-Portuguese conflicts (1538-59) - the Turks and Portuguese simply abstained from further action against eachother, until a Turkish privateer Mir Ali Bey raided the east African coast 21 years later, between 1580 and 1589. Thus, I am of the opinion that maintaining this article only serves to create further confusion. Crenelator (talk) 21:42, 22 December 2017 (UTC)