Turkey celebrates 1453 Constantinople fall
File photo. [AP]
Turkish political leaders and citizens commemorated on Wednesday the 571st anniversary of the fall of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) to Ottoman Turk forces on May 29 in 1453.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hailed the conquest as a historic triumph in a post on social media, describing it as “one of the magnificent victories in world history.”
Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu paid homage by visiting Mehmed II’s tomb, the 21-year-old Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, whose army breached the walls of the once-impregnable Christian city and capital of the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire for more than a millennium.
