World War I did not merely redraw borders—it extinguished the Ottoman Empire after six centuries of rule. This show, hosted by Lucas and Luna, traces the empire’s final decades from the Tanzimat reforms and the Young Turk Revolution to the disastrous alliances with Germany, the Armenian Genocide, the Arab Revolt led by T.E. Lawrence, and the decisive battles at Gallipoli and Megiddo. We explore how wartime famine, British intelligence, and the Sykes-Picot Agreement carved up Ottoman lands into mandates, setting the stage for modern Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine. Through the fall of Baghdad, Jerusalem, and Damascus, we examine the sultan’s caliphate, the rise of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and the Treaty of Lausanne that finally buried the ‘Sick Man of Europe.’ A century later, the legacies of those collapsed borders still fuel conflicts from Mosul to Aleppo. This is the story of how one war ended an empire—and launched a century of upheaval.
