I am writing a paper for a class about the battle of Lepanto and why it is considered a turning point in the major cultural and political developments of the near and middle east. I was wondering if anyone could offer some broad insights that I may use to guide further research than what I already have. I have learned that the Ottoman empire continued to engage in thorough maritime trade in the Indian ocean and compete with portugal for dominance in the "theater" of India. What I am confused about is that though it seems the Ottomans continued to have success and interactions with outside cultures and a simmering foment of intellectual development, why is it that the Levant and most of the middle east is considered to have "missed out" on the political developments of the Enlightenment and the state building that occured in it's wake? Was it that Western Europe had to wrest an independent state from the Church, and under the Ottomans the state and church were actually one and the same? I have delved into a lot of Ottoman history in an attempt to answer this question but have yet to develop a decent answer as to why Lepanto is considered the turning point. Thanks guys!
I think you might be a bit confused. The Battle of Lepanto took place in the Ionian Sea, which itself is part of the Mediterranean Sea (nowhere near the Indian Ocean). Further, loss of the battle was certainly a major setback, but did not stop the Ottomans from ultimately occupying the island of Cyprus and winning the Fourth Venetian-Ottoman War. The Venetian diplomatic machine had been able to assemble an improbable Italo-Iberian alliance which might have defeated the Ottoman war fleet at Lepanto, but the unwieldy alliance was unable to organize relief for the besieged venetian forces on Cyprus, and the Republic was forced to cede the possession in order to end the war.
The Ottoman Empire continued to be militarily active in the Mediterranean long after Lepanto, going to war with the Venetians again in 1645 over yet another island: Crete. This war, which was astoundingly long (lasting until 1669), saw the Venetians generally victorious at sea but unable to combat the buildup of Ottoman forces on the island. The war would end with Crete's ultimate devastation and cession. Yet another Ottoman-Venetian War took place in 1689, and was part of a wider conflict between the Ottoman Empire and the Austrian Empire. The Venetians, intervening alongside the Austrians, were able to seize the whole of the Peloponnesus Peninsula (at the time called Morea). However, by 1714 the Ottoman Empire had re-gained the diplomatic upper hand, and retook the territories the Venetians had gained in Greece.
So what I'm saying is that while you can certainly construct a narrative of a general Ottoman decline, the Empire's power projection in the mediterranean ebbed and flowed within that general decline. Tactically, Lepanto was insignificant; the growing strength of Austria and Russia in the Balkans and in the Black Sea had a much greater impact limiting Ottoman power projection in the long term. Even in the short term, Lepanto didn't really hamper Ottoman ability to supply forces on Cyprus, the major theater of the war (although it did hamper Ottoman power projection in the Central and Western Mediterranean). What Lepanto certainly did was shatter the myth of Ottoman military might, although Europe's powers would have probably figured it out before long anyway.
Unfortunately, I'm woefully unprepared on the Ottoman trade links to India, but that's a distinct and separate aspect of Ottoman politics and economics.
For the Venetian perspective on the impact of the battle of Lepanto (that is to say, the perspective of the immediate beneficiaries and the perspective I'm most familiar with) John Julius Norwich examines it in his History of Venice.
But regarding the economic and political development of the Ottoman Empire and its perceived lagging behind western notions of development and state capacity, you might want to look at Institutional Development Theory. This is the crux of what I came here to say, and I recall there's a section on the Ottoman Empire in A. Greif's Institutions and the path to the modern economy which you might want to look at.