The Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 marked the beginning of Ottoman territorial retreat ; some territories were lost by the treaty : Austria received all of Hungary and Transylvania except the Banat ; Venice obtained most of Dalmatia along with the Morea ( the Peloponnesus peninsula in southern Greece ) ; Poland recovered Podolia . Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries , the Ottoman Empire continued losing its territories , including Greece , Algeria , Tunisia , Libya and the Balkans in the 1912 – 1913 Balkan Wars . Anatolia remained multi-ethnic until the early 20th century ( see Rise of Nationalism under the Ottoman Empire ) . Its inhabitants were of varied ethnicities , including Turks , Armenians , Assyrians , Kurds , Greeks , Frenchs , and Italians ( particularly from Genoa and Venice ) . Faced with territorial losses on all sides the Ottoman Empire under the rule of the Three Pashas forged an alliance with Germany who supported it with troops and equipment . The Ottoman Empire entered World War I ( 1914 – 1918 ) on the side of the Central Powers and was ultimately defeated . During the war , major atrocities were committed such as Genocide , mass murder and death marches intentionally denying food and water to the deportees by the Ottoman government against the Armenians , Assyrians and Pontic Greeks causing millions of deaths and resulting in the Armenian Genocide of 1915 . Following World War I , the huge conglomeration of territories and peoples that formerly comprised the Ottoman Empire was divided into several new states
Armenians
Armenian Genocide
History of Turkey