Flags of the Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire used various flags and naval ensigns during its history. The crescent and star came into use in the second half of the 18th century. A buyruldu from 1793 required that the ships of the Ottoman Navy were to use a red flag with the star and crescent in white. In 1844, a version of this flag, with a five-pointed star, was officially adopted as the Ottoman national flag. The decision to adopt a national flag was part of the Tanzimat reforms which aimed to modernize the Ottoman state in line with the laws and norms of contemporary European states and institutions.
The star and crescent design later became a common element in the national flags of Ottoman successor states in the 20th century.
The current flag of Turkey is essentially the same as the late Ottoman flag, but has more specific legal standardizations that were introduced with the Turkish Flag Law on 29 May 1936. Before the legal standardization, the star and crescent could have slightly varying slimness or positioning depending on the rendition.
Early flag
Pre-modern Ottoman armies used the horse-tail standard or tugh rather than flags.Such standards remained in use alongside flags until the 19th century. A depiction of a tugh appears in the Relation d'un voyage du Levant by Joseph Pitton de Tournefort.
War flags came into use by the 16th century. During the 16th and 17th centuries, Ottoman war flags often depicted the bifurcated Zulfiqar sword, often misinterpreted in Western literature as showing a pair of scissors.
The crescent symbol appears in flags attributed to Tunis from as early as the 14th century, long before Tunis fell under Ottoman rule in 1574. But the crescent as a symbol also had 14th-century associations with the Ottoman military
and millennium-long associations with the city of Istanbul,
which became the Ottoman capital after its conquest in 1453. The Spanish Navy Museum in Madrid shows two Ottoman naval flags dated 1613; both are swallow-tailed, one green with a white crescent near the hoist, the other white with two red stripes near the edges of the flag and a red crescent near the hoist.
Crescent flag
The simple crescent flag started to appear in the Ottoman Empire from its foundation in 1453, and was reported as late as 1780 in the Battle of Kagul, 1799 in the Siege of Acre (1799). or the 1853 Battle of Sinop.Naval standards
Numerous authors, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries reported on the variety of naval flags in the Ottoman Empire, starting with Bowles's "Universal display of the naval flags of all nations in the world". The designs of the flags depended on the rank or geographical base of their owners.Crescent and star flag
The star and crescent design is reported as early as 1526 at the Battle of Mohács,, or the Siege of Wien in 1683, and continues to appear more systematically after 1793, on Ottoman flags of the 19th century. The white star and crescent moon with a red background was introduced as the flag of the Ottoman Empire in 1844.Imperial standards
The imperial standard displayed the sultan's tughra, often on a pink or bright red background.The standard used by the last Caliph, Abdulmejid II consisted of a green flag with a star and crescent in white on a red oval background within a rayed ornament, all in white.