Spanish–Ottoman wars


The Spanish–Ottoman wars were a series of wars fought between the Ottoman Empire and the Spanish Empire for Mediterranean and overseas influence, and specially for global religious dominance between the Catholic Church and Ottoman Caliphate. The peak of the conflict was in the 16th century, during the reigns of Charles V, Philip II of Spain, and Suleiman the Magnificent in the years 1515–1577, although it formally ended in 1782.

Prelude

Clash of interests in the Mediterranean and Europe

The Islamic rule in the Iberian Peninsula, which began in 711, experienced its last glorious period during the reign of Abd ar-Rahman III ; after his death, the Andalusian Umayyad State began to decline, and with the collapse of this state in 1031, the Tawaif-i Mulûk period, in which various Muslim emirates ruled together, took place between 1031 – 1090. Although Muslims tried to resist the attacks of the Christian kingdoms in the peninsula within the framework of the goal of Reconquista during the [Almoravid northern Portuguese India Armadas|expeditions (1112–1114)|Almoravid] and Almohad periods, the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, which took place in 1212, was an important turning point in Islamic history. After the decisive victory of the Christians, the Emirate of Granada continued its existence in the lands confined to the south of the peninsula as a dependency of Castile between 1232 and 1492, but with the unification of Castile and Aragon in 1469, it began to face a more aggressive Spanish policy. Having lost its lands one by one in the Granada War that began in 1482, the Emirate of Granada was wiped off the stage of history when its capital, Granada, fell on January 2, 1492, after an eight-month siege. The relations between the Ottoman Empire and Spain also began indirectly with the Granada War. Emir Abu Abdullah, who was in a difficult situation due to the serial land losses during the war, sent an ambassador to the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II and asked for help. However, Bayezid II was busy with his brother Cem on the one hand and fighting with the Mamluks on the other, so he could not send the requested help.
The Spanish Empire expanded its military operations to the North African coast and, with the help of its strengthened navy and the leadership of Cardinal Cisneros, they settled at Santa Cruz de la Mar Pequeña in 1478, then occupied Melilla on the Moroccan coast and the island of Djerba on the Tunisian coast in 1497, Mers El Kebir in 1505, Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera in 1508, Oran in 1509, and Béjaïa and Tripoli in 1510. It also built a fortress on the island opposite the city of Algiers and took the city indirectly under its control. Although were defeated on Djerba (1510). Simultaneously a new phase in the Moroccan–Portuguese conflicts started in which the Portuguese conquered the territories of Asilah and Tangier in 1471, Castelo Real in 1506, won the Azemmour in 1513, and the Tednest and the Boulaouane in 1514. Although failed at Graciosa in 1498, and at Mamora and Marrakesh in 1515, and at Doukkala in 1516. Corsair raids remained a prime aspect of Ottoman–Spanish conflict: for example, as one modern study notes, the fall of Granada and Iberian incursions into North Africa “triggered a corsair war,” with Ottoman-backed North African rulers licensing raids on Spanish shipping.
This Iberian expansion over North Africa had its formalization at 1509, when the Crown of Castile and Crown of Portugal signed the Capitulation of Cintra in which both Kingdoms partitioned the Maghreb into two spheres of influence, in which Morocco and Western Sahara were considered part of Portuguese Empire's projection of power and territorial expansionism, while Algeria, Tunisia and Libya were part of the Spanish Empire's one. The main objective was to establish cooperation between the Iberian kingdoms for the conquest of North Africa, which was considered a continuation of Reconquista to avoid further Berber-Islamic interventions in Iberia like in times of Marinid dynasty, so it was needed to avoid a Luso-Castilian war for the control of the Berber states, so it was agreed that the Portuguese would abandon the conquest of Vélez de la Gomera and the rest of the eastward territories, while the Castilians accepted Portuguese sovereignty over the North African territories between Vélez and Cape Bojador. Another important goal was the pacifical evangelization of Muslims through Vassalage of their rulers.
During this period, all of North Africa, except Egypt, was ruled by local emirates that lacked military power and were not strong enough to resist the Spanish invasions. Two developments changed this disadvantageous situation in the early 1500s. The first was that after the prohibition of Islam in Spain in 1502, tens of thousands of Muslims from Andalusia migrated to North Africa, creating a fresh and dynamic population. The second important development was that Turkish sailors from the western Anatolian coasts based themselves in the region and began resistance against the Spanish.
Within this framework, Oruç Reis and Kemal Reis, who were based on the island of Djerba in 1503, carried Muslims and Jews from Spain to North Africa and also started to clash with the Spanish. Oruç Reis and Hızır Reis, who joined him, made an agreement with the Hafsid Ruler of Tunisia, Muhammed El-Mutawakkil IV, and settled in La Goulette in 1504. From here until 1513, and from 1513 onwards, they began to struggle with the Spanish and their allies on land and sea from their new base in Cherchell. However, since they did not have enough power to cope with the Spanish Navy, in 1515 they sent gifts to the Ottoman Padishah Sultan Selim I by ship and showed their loyalty, and in return they were granted the authority to collect ships and soldiers from the Western Anatolian coasts. In this way, fighting began between the Ottoman Empire and the Spanish Empire over Algeria and Tunisia.

Clash of overseas interests and Globalization of War

Since both empires coincided in the development of a great naval power, they would begin to carry out large expeditions that would increase their diplomatic rank, which would involve more regional powers from very different territories into the Spanish–Ottoman and Catholic-Islamic conflict, being in some ways a World war in the long-term. Moreover, after Ottoman emperors got the tittle of Ottoman caliphs by overwhelming Abbasid Dynasty after the Ottoman–Mamluk War (1516–1517), they were considered heads of the Dar as-Islam and have the power to involve the rest of the Sunni Muslim states, despite that already having the possession of Ottoman Balkans, Levant and Egypt. Also, Habsburg Spain would be intimately bound with the Austrian branch of Habsburg monarchy and would be in possession of Habsburg Netherlands and Italian domains, of which the latter allowed for closer ties with the Papal States and restore the Gelasian political philosophy of Dominium Mundi to involve all Christendom against the Türkenkriege in Europe and also to start campaigns for Catholic Church's Potestas over Infidel societies outside Europe. This made the first stages of the Spanish–Ottoman struggle into a total global war between Muslim World and Christendom for the conquest of an Universal monarchy and suppress the existence of the other "False religion", while also Evangelizing the Pagans of Africa and Asia, adding also a maximalist goal for world domination, and a minimalist goal of being considered the Successor of the Roman Empire and have political preponderance on Europe.
The first contacts were carried with Safavid Iran through Petrus de Monte Libano, who developed a report to Shah Ismail I of the political situation in Europe and the greatness of Charles V, King of Spain and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, as well as brother-in-law of the King of Hungary Louis II of Hungary. This informs were done to reach a possible ally for Persia against the Ottomans after the Turkish conquest of Egypt. The Venetian republic was considered first, but they rejected the offers due to the Persian interests to include Portuguese Empire in the alliance after Afonso de Albuquerque on Goa stablished good relations with Safavids on 1513. Although Spanish envoy in the Mamluk Court, Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, heard about the Persian-Venetian conversations and communicated it to Pedro Fajardo with stories that the Shah was a powerful sovereign capable of challenging all the princes of the world, generating fascination among Spanish diplomacy, motivating Spain to send missions to Iran in 1516 to 1519. So it was developed a Habsburg–Persian alliance, and the Persians in 1524 proposed to Habsburg Spain the development of a Two-front war against Ottoman Empire with the condition to not conclude separate peaces. Also Charles V communicated to Persians about the French–Habsburg rivalry and the need of Persian support against a possible Franco-Ottoman alliance. However, the subsequent Shah Tahmasp I encountered logistical difficulties implementing the agreements reached due to delayed communications. However, the Iranians and the Spanish were de facto allies, and Ottoman war plans always included securing the border with Persia when campaigning against Spain, and vice versa, even Álvaro de Bazán, testified in his chronicles that Suleiman the Magnificent had fears of a two-front war against Spain and Persia simultaneously. To reinforce this project, Persians under Qadi Jahan Qazvini reinforced their contacts with the Portuguese, the Venetians, the Mughals, and the Shiite Deccan sultanates. Also influenced in this approach the Portuguese maritime exploration, which brought news of the Turkish-Iranian Wars and the testimonies of the travels of explorers, both foreigners such as the Italian Ludovico de Varthema, and those of Spaniards such as Martín Fernández de Figueroa and his work Tratado de la conquista de las Islas de Persia y Arabia, edited by Juan Agüero de Trasmiera. Even Ferdinand Columbus would tell King Charles I that Spain had the right to conquer Persia.
In turn, Spaniards such as Martín de Salinas became involved as intermediaries for embassies from other European powers to Persia, specially the ones which were favorable to the Habsburg Empire of Charles V, who in 1524 communicated that a Persian ambassador would appear in Burgos to communicate with Charles, in response to the proposals of alliance with the Holy Roman Empire that were sent by Ferdinand of Austria. Another Persian embassy arrived in Spain in late 1528, with ambassador imploring the Persians to expedite the conclusion of joint operations during 1529. Therefore, another ambassador, Jean de Balbi, was sent via Portuguese Goa. He was to report on the latest developments in Europe to commit the Persians to the alliance and ensure unity against the common enemy. Later, in the 1540s, another Persian emissary visited Charles V in Germany, and there was also a covert mission to Spain ; however, there is no precise information about the meeting. All of this Iberian-Italian-German-Hungarian-Persian communications revealed the existence of a formal anti-Ottoman coalition led by Spanish diplomacy.
Another involvement came from the Ethiopian Empire, an Eastern Christian nation that was under the king Alfonso V of Aragon's interests, who wanted to make an alliance with Yeshaq I and Zara Yaqob against Mamluks of Egypt and Ottoman Turks. The Ethiopian Monarchy increased its foreign relations with Europe with the main objective to get help against the Ottoman wars in Africa, which in turn made Ethiopia from 1500 to 1672 a part of the Kingdom of Portugal's Sphere of influence, and then of the Habsburg Spain's one through the Iberian Union since 1580, and before through Ignatian missionaries at service of John III of Portugal. The years of 1556 to 1632 were very important in due to the political influence of the Jesuits in the internal affairs of the Solomonic dynasty despite the logistical problems due to Turkish military, being relevant the influence of Spanish missionaries like Pedro Páez, who converted Emperor Susenyos I, who in turn desired the Catholicisation of his country despite the hostility from Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The Iberians believed that the alliance with the Ethiopians would facilitate their control of maritime traffic through the Red Sea, an objective that, with the rise of Ottoman power in the area, became one of the unresolved issues for the Portuguese crown during its expansion in the Eastern Hemisphere and the ambitious project of Manuel of Portugal and Philip II of Spain to destroy the centers of Islam in Arabia and Egypt.

Declared War

The struggle between Oruç Reis and Hayreddin Barbarrosa with Ottoman support (1515–1529)

The Barbarrosa brothers, who came under the protection of Sultan Selim in 1515, captured the city of Algiers in 1516 after a delegation from Algeria asked for their help against the Spanish Army. After Oruç Reis was declared the Sultan of Algeria in Cherchell, he captured Tenes and Tlemcen and expanded his territory to Morocco, but he lost his life in the Spanish counter-attack of May 1518. Tlemcen fell back into the hands of the Zayenids under Spanish protection.
On the other hand, the Ottoman conquest of Egypt finished in 1517, consolidating the Ottoman Naval presence in the Mediterranean Sea beyond the Balkans and Anatolia, while introducing them into the Red Sea, starting a new series of Ottoman wars in Africa and in Asia, which then would make them clash with the Spanish expansionist campaigns in the Maghreb and the Portuguese maritime exploration on the Indian Ocean. Another consequence was that the Ottoman dynasty got the Ottoman Caliphate, which made them Sultan of Sultans among all the Sunni Muslims and so were considered by the Muslim Barbary corsairs as their Natural Protectors, and by the Catholic societies as the Political Heads of a unified Muslim world that at any moment could threaten Christianity due to the bellicose policy of the Ottoman Empire.
Hayreddin Barbarossa replaced Oruç Reis and in October 1519, this time he sent a delegation of Algerian dignitaries and Muslim jurists to Sultan Selim with a petition of the Algerian people asking for help and be annexed to the Ottoman Empire. This solicitation, that generated initial hesitations from the Turks, would be answered positively by Suleiman the Magnificent, who then turned the Regency of Algiers into an Ottoman Eyalet in 1521.
Meanwhile, the Portuguese Empire, ally of Spain with the delegated task of fighting the Muslim states on the "Mar de África" according to the spheres of influence in the Treaty of Alcáçovas, started to develop factories on the Swahili coast and the Gulf of Aden to fight against Ottoman Corsairs on the Indian Ocean and to expand their economical and militar presence in the region while menacing the security of Egypt Eyalet and the Holiest sites in Islam. However, the admiral Selman Reis defeated them on Kamaran Island and later led an expedition into the interior of Yemen to subdue the area, which benefited Ottomans in consolidating their naval presence on the Red Sea and their land one over Southern Arabia, stopping the Portuguese raids since 1527 and increasing their international prestige among Asian states, like the Vizier of Hormuz or the Zamorin of Calicut.

Spanish counter-offensive (1529–1541)

The loss of the island of Algiers caused a major shock in Spain. In 1529, a Spanish fleet of 10 ships carrying reinforcements to the besieged island was destroyed by the skillful counter-attack of Hayreddin Barbarossa Pasha, who had already passed the island. In July 1531, the 50-man Spanish-Genoese fleet under the command of Genoese Admiral Andrea Doria suffered an even greater defeat in the Cherchell Campaign. Likewise, the Ottomans in 1534 were able to recapture the port of Koroni, which Andrea Doria had captured in 1532.
It was in these years that another war front opened for the Spanish Monarchy in Central Europe during the [Habsburg–Ottoman wars in Eastern Hungarian Kingdom|Hungary (1526–1568)|Little War in Hungary (1526–1568)], in which after the Battle of Mohács, Charles summoned the Spanish Cortes in Valladolid requesting that Spanish military assistance should be provided to the Holy Roman Empire, Austria and Habsburg Hungary to prevent the Turks from advancing into Hungary, Germany and Italy. So, since 1529, Charles V and Mary of Hungary sent a Spanish Expeditionary force composed of the Tercio of Flanders that fought along Germans, Flemish, Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Hungarians and Romanians in major battles of the 1529–1533 campaign like the 1st Siege of Vienna or 2nd Siege of Buda, in addition to participating in the battles of the Hungarian castles, in defense of the fortress of Visegrád, Szeged, Lippa and Timisoara for Ferdinand I of Hungary against the Ottoman puppet John Zápolya of Hungary with his Transylvanian, Moldavian, Serbian and Turkish troops. Some subjects of Habsburg Spain that resalted in the Austro-Hungarian theater were Luis de Ávalos, Luis de la Cueva y Toledo, Luis de Guevara, Juan de Salinas, Jaime García de Guzmán, Jorge Manrique, Cristóbal de Aranda, John of God, Bernaldo de Aldana, Hurtado de Mendoza, Gianbattista Castaido and Caste Lluvio. However, the year 1533 also witnessed important turning points in the Ottoman-Spanish War. Indeed, the Ottoman Empire signed a peace treaty for the first time with the Holy Roman Empire, which also included the Spanish Empire. With this treaty, the war between the Ottomans and the Austrian Archduchy on the Hungarian front ended, while the war with the other vassals of the Holy Roman Empire not covered by the treaty continued uninterruptedly in the Mediterranean. At the same year occurred the Siege of Agadir (1533) between Moroccans and Portuguese, winning the latter.
The second important development in 1533 was that the Ottoman fleet under the command of Kemankeş Ahmed Paşa, who wanted to retake Koroni, was ineffective against the Genoese fleet, and the Ottoman capital turned to Hayreddin Barbarossa and the Turkish leaders for a stronger fleet in the Mediterranean. Barbarossa, who was called to Istanbul in 1532, was appointed Kapudan Pasha in 1533. Hayreddin Barbarossa Pasha, who set sail for the Mediterranean with the strong fleet he had prepared in the winter of 1533–1534, devastated the coasts of the Kingdom of Naples and then conquered Tunis on August 16, 1534.
This strategic move by the Ottomans caused the attention of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to turn completely to the Mediterranean. In 1535, Charles V personally led an expedition and took back Tunis in June with the help of a Christian coalition between Spain, HRE, Italian States and Portugal. In response, Hayreddin Barbarossa Pasha, who managed to smuggle his fleet to Annabe, sailed to the Western Mediterranean and invaded Minorca, one of the Balearic Islands of the Spanish Empire. In September, the Spanish attack on Tlemcen was also repelled by the Ottomans.
In 1537, the Ottoman navy under the command of Barbarossa, and the Ottoman troops under the command of Lutfi Pasha, invaded Apulia, part of the Kingdom of Naples. The Ottoman-Venetian War with the Republic of Venice began in the same year. Thereupon, with the encouragement of Pope Paul III, the Holy League was formed with the participation of Venice, the Spanish Empire, the Papal States, the Republic of Genoa, and the Knights of Malta. However, at the Battle of Preveza on September 28, 1538, the Ottoman navy under the command of Barbarossa won a great victory over a Christian navy which also included 50 Spanish galleons and 61 Genoese-Papal warships.
Castelnouvo, which was captured by the Genoese Admiral Andrea Doria in the same year to be used as a base against the Ottomans in the future, was recaptured by Barbarossa in 1539 in a siege in which the 6,000-man Spanish garrison was annihilated. During the Spanish occupation of Herceg Novi, they made incursions into Dubrovnik to defend Habsburg Croatia and Republic of Ragusa interests. This was the last military operation of the Spanish Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean until the Battle of Lepanto. In particular, the hesitation of the Genoese Admiral Doria to include Genoese ships in the battle of Preveza, even though he was allied with Venice, Genoese's historical rival, led to criticism of the said person.
In 1540, an Ottoman fleet from Algeria invaded Gibraltar, but the Spanish Navy balanced the situation with its success in the Battle of Alborán, while the Spanish-Genoese fleet under the command of Giannettino Doria defeated another Ottoman fleet in the Battle of Girolata on June 15, 1540, and managed to capture Turgut Reis. Taking advantage of Turgut Reis' defeat, Andrea Doria set sail from Messina in the summer of 1540 with a fleet of over 80 ships and 14 Spanish infantry divisions led by Garcia de Toledo, the Governor General of Sicily of the Kingdom of Spain, and landed in Tunis, capturing the fortresses of Monastir, Sousse, Hammamet and Kelibia held by the Hafsids, thus expanding Spanish rule in Tunis.The year 1541 marked the peak of Spain's attacks, which had been ongoing since 1529. After Barbarossa rejected the offer to take command of the Holy Roman Empire's navy, Charles V gathered a large navy, and was devastated by a storm during the Algiers Naval Expedition of 1541, and suffered a great defeat in front of Algiers, which was defended by Hasan Ağa. Although 2 years later would be launched the Spanish expedition to Tlemcen (1543), in which Spanish force defeated Zayyanids from the Kingdom of Tlemcen and ended in a total success as Abu Abdallah VI was restored to the throne as a Spanish vassal.
On the Portuguese theater, the Ottomans became allies of Bahadur Shah's Gujarat Sultanate and Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi's Adal Sultanate with the main goal to continue the Mamluk Egypt–Portuguese conflicts and develop its naval and economic power on the recently conquered Suez Port. So, in 1538 an Ottoman-Egypt expeditionary force led by Hadım Suleiman Pasha was sent to Diu to help Guajarats and stablish Ottoman influence on Indian Ocean, but they were defeated by Portuguese India militia. Then the Portuguese sent Estêvão da Gama to lead a military expedition to Suez in 1541 with the main goal to crush the Red Sea's Ottoman fleet, although initially victory at the Battle of Suakin, however it ended that campaign in a militar Stalemate that was politically favorable for Ottomans but economically favorable for Portuguese as the Muslim trade in Red Sea was blocked from Gulf of Aden. Despite the recent failures, the corsair Piri Reis, famous for developing a very accurate Nautical Map of the World, was turned into Hind Kapudan-ı Derya to lead campaigns in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. Also at 1541 succeeded the Fall of Agadir, a big defeat in which the Saadians expelled Portuguese Empire from Agadir, and in consequence, king John III ordered the evacuation of Portuguese positions at Azemmour and Safi with the main goal to concentrate on building a more defensible position at Mazagão instead.

The Ottomans took the war to the Western Mediterranean (1542–1559)

The Holy Roman Empire's great defeat in Algeria temporarily ended the Spanish attacks on Ottoman lands, and the Ottomans carried the struggle to the Western Mediterranean, where the Spanish Empire was the dominant element. With the Ottoman Empire's involvement in the Italian Wars within the framework of its alliance with France, the Ottoman fleet under the command of Barbarossa invaded the ports held by the Kingdom of Naples, the Papal States, the Republic of Genoa and the Duchy of Savoy in 1543 and wintered in Toulon in the winter of 1543–1544, continuing its operations on these coasts in 1544. Also on 1543 was launched the Expedition to Mostaganem by Count Alcaudete, although they were defeated by the Ottoman-Algerian forces. In 1546, the great Turkish sailor Hayreddin Barbarossa Pasha died.
Meanwhile, due to the throne dispute in the Kingdom of Hungary, which was subject to the Ottomans, the Ottoman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire began a new war in 1540. In this context, the two empires continued their fierce struggle in the Mediterranean and Hungary. After the Ottomans emerged victorious from the war, the parties signed a ceasefire in 1545 and a peace treaty in 1547, and entered a period of relative calm in the Mediterranean. Despite it, another Spanish expeditionary force in Hungary was sent on 1548, composed this time by the Tercio Viejo de Nápoles under the leadership of Bernardo de Aldana and Giovanni Battista Castaldo, fighting on Transdanubia until 1554 against the oligarchs of Northern Hungary and Slovakia, as well as the Transylvanians, Romanians, French and Turks who supported them. Those Spaniards defended Habsburg Hungary on Csábrág, Léva, Murány, Szolnok and Temesvár. Their greatest successes were suppressing the robber knights on Hungarian Highlands, the rebuild of Szolnok and the occupation of Ottoman Transylvania that briefly deposed John Sigismund Zápolya from 1551 to 1556.
At the same time, on the Horn of Africa, there was a religious war between the Oriental Orthodox Christian Ethiopian Empire and the Sunni Islam Adal Sultanate since 1529 due to the expansionist ambitions of Ahmad ben Ibrahim Al Ghazi . On 1542 an ally of Habsburg Spain in the Ottoman War, the Portuguese Empire under Estêvão da Gama, answered those solicitations of help by sending a Portuguese Expeditionary Corp of 400 soldiers led by Cristóvão da Gama to assist the isolated Christian Negus Negust Gelawdewos. Then, they were victorious at the Battle of Baçente and the Battle of Jarte. In response, the Ottomans sent a new contingent of 1900 Turks, 2,000 Arabians and some Albanians, which were victorious at the Battle of Wofla, but then the Ethiopian-Portuguese troops won a decisive fight at the Battle of Wayna Daga in 1543, which ensured the independence of Ethiopia and the survival of Ethiopian Christianity in the Ethiopian Highlands. Also on the Portuguese front of war succeeded military engagements on the Indian subcontinent at the Siege of Diu (1546), which resulted in Portuguese victory against the Ottoman-Guajarati coalition, and on the Arabian Peninsula at the Capture of Aden (1548), which resulted in Ottoman victory against a Portuguese-Yemeni insurgents coalition.
Despite the other fronts, there was a brief peace from Ottoman military incursions in the Spanish Domains since 1545. However, the calm between the parties was short-lived, and the Spanish Empire sent a fleet in June 1550 to capture the Ottoman fortress of Mahdia in Tunisia, and Emperor Ferdinand's efforts to recapture Hungary and Transylvania through George Martinuzzi led to the start of a new war that would last until 1562. In this war, Turgut Reis, who took over the leadership of the Ottoman fleet, and Piyale Pasha, who was appointed Kapudan Pasha in 1553, brought the Ottoman military presence in the Western Mediterranean to its peak, in defiance of the Spanish Empire.
The Mediterranean was the scene of larger-scale operations and important victories for the Ottomans. The operations of the Ottoman Navy in the Mediterranean, in alliance with the Kingdom of France against the Holy Roman Empire, led to the start of an Italian War that lasted from 1551 until 1559.

Unsuccessful peace efforts (1558–1559)

While this struggle was ongoing in the Mediterranean, as a result of diplomatic negotiations between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire that had been ongoing since 1557, a permanent armistice was signed between the Ottomans and the Germans on January 31, 1559. On April 29, 1558, Emperor Ferdinand sent four drafts of the Ahidname to the Ottoman side. Although the German ambassador Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq appeared before Suleiman the Magnificent on June 8, he did not receive a positive response to the drafts of the Ahidname. However, it was agreed that the negotiations would continue. Because, in the Ottoman Empire, which had eliminated the Safavid Persian threat in the east with the Treaty of Amasya in 1555, the ongoing civil war based on succession among the princes had turned Suleiman's attention to the struggles between his sons. The period between Prince Bayezid's defeat by Selim in Konya in 1559, his subsequent refuge with the Safavids, and his strangulation by Ottoman executioners in Kazvin as a result of the Ottoman-Safavid reconciliation in 1561, occupied the Ottoman state mechanism considerably.
During the same period, the Spanish branch of the Habsburg Dynasty also sought peace with the Ottomans. So, in March 1558, both the King Philip II of Spain and Pope Pius IV decided to send an emissary to talk with Persian ambassadors via Michel Cernovic, the chief dragoman of the Venetians and agent of Ferdinand I of the HRE, as well as of Habsburg Spain, in Constantinople. However, he was more concerned with negotiating the Ottoman border treaties in Transylvania and Hungary with the Vienna-based Habsburgs, than with finalizing anything with Safavid Persia, which also which also made him neglect the negotiations concerning the Spanish–Ottoman conflict. In this context, the ambassadors sent to the Ottoman palace in November 1558 and June 1559 were unable to even conclude an armistice, unlike Busbecq, and the Ottoman-Spanish War, which had been going on since 1515, entered its most difficult period in 1560. In consecuence, Spain developed a network of spionage in the Ottoman court at Constantinople, having key people like the Genoese Juan María Renzo, the Neapolitan Juan Agostino Gilli, the Venetian Aurelio Santa Croce, and the Genoese Adam de Franchi; which were complement by a subsidiary network in Algiers led by the renegade Alí Bajá.

Total War (1560–1574): Djerba, Malta, Lepanto and Tunis

The Ottoman Empire's transfer of the war to the Western Mediterranean from 1542 onwards and the devastating attacks of the Ottoman navy on the lands of Spain and its dependencies every year caused the Spanish Empire to turn its attention entirely to the struggle there and appeal to Pope Paul IV. Upon the Pope's call, the Holy Alliance armada of approximately 200 ships, consisting of warships from the Papacy, Genoa, Malta, Naples-Sicily and Savoy, in addition to Spain, targeted Tripoli, the base of Turgut Reis, who had caused the greatest destruction to Spanish lands between 1551 and 1559. In response, the armada, which headed for the island of Djerba for logistical reasons, captured it and built a fortress, but was forced into battle with the Ottoman fleet under the joint command of Piyale Pasha and Turgut Reis, which reached the island on May 11. While the Ottoman navy won a great victory in the Battle of Djerba, the Crusader armada lost half of its ships and suffered between 9 and 18,000 deaths and 5,000 prisoners. Spanish Admiral D. Alvaro de Sande, who took over command of the Holy Alliance armada after Genoese Admiral Giovanni Andrea Doria withdrew from the battlefield, was among the prisoners.
While the victory at Djerba was in a sense the peak of the Ottoman navy, for the next 10 years there was no power left to oppose it in the Mediterranean. Indeed; it took a certain amount of time for Spain, which had lost 600 skilled sailors and 2,400 harquebusiers, to recover. However; the Ottomans were not able to reinforce this superiority with additional gains. Because; although during this period, Turgut Reis destroyed the Naples-Sicily fleet in the Battle of Lipari in 1561 and captured the remaining ships of the Kingdom in the, the Ottoman navy under the joint command of Piyale Pasha and Turgut Reis could not take Oran, which it besieged in 1563. In the same year, the Spanish fleet and troops under the command of suffered a heavy defeat in front of the Ottoman base of Peñon de Velez on the northern coast of Morocco, which they besieged, but the following year the Spanish fleet, commanded by García Álvarez de Toledo y Osorio, managed to recapture the base that the Ottomans had evacuated. Also in this period succeeded the Great Siege of Mazagan (1562) between Portuguese and Moroccan forces led by their prince Abdallah Mohammed, ending in a Portuguese crucial victory.
The year 1565 saw one of the largest operations of the Ottoman navy. The navy, carrying a force of approximately 25,000 men, reached Malta on May 18, 1565, and laid siege to the castles on the island defended by the Knights Hospitaller. The Ottoman forces, who had difficulty capturing the St. Elmo Castle, launched a heavy bombardment on August 7 of the island's main fortified positions, St. Michel and St. Angelo, but were unable to capture them with general attacks. The losses suffered and the necessity of the Ottoman navy returning to Istanbul for the winter led Serdar Lala Mustafa Pasha to decide to evacuate the island. When a rescue party of 8,000 men under the command of Don Garcia, sent by the Kingdom of Spain, landed in Malta on September 7, the Ottomans evacuated the island on September 8. In this way, the Knights Hospitaller, an important ally of Spain, and the island of Malta, which protected the Kingdom's lands in southern Italy, were saved. Although the Ottoman forces suffered losses in Malta, the Ottoman navy continued to maintain its power. Indeed, while the Ottoman army was marching to Hungary in 1566 for the Siege of Szigetvar, the last campaign of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman navy under the command of Piyale Pasha conquered Chios, which was ruled by the Genoese, an ally of Spain, in the same year. Then, sailing to the Mediterranean, they struck the Pula coast of the Kingdom of Naples, also an ally of Spain. Later, in 1566, Philip II ordered his ambassador to Portugal, Alonso de Tovar, to prepare an embassy to Persia and to inform him if the Persians were going to break the Peace of Amasya with the Ottomans after the death of Suleiman the Magnificent.
Also in the Portuguese theater will occur the Malacca (1568) in the Portuguese East Indies, which was instigated by the Ottoman expeditions to Aceh from 1564, whom also supplied cannonneers and mercenaries from all the Turkish Empire to the Aceh-Kalinyamat Sultanate alliance, although the Portuguese were triumphant in that engagement. Despite it, the Ottoman-Acehnese alliance still instigated further sieges to Malacca, and would support the offers from the Muslim Indian Deccan sultanates to develop an Anti-Portuguese League of the Indies to expel Catholic Church in India and instigate a war front in the Indian Ocean with the main goal to crush the India Armadas from Goa to Malacca.
During this period of armed peace with Ottomans, the Kingdom of Spain was busy with both the Granada Revolt and Dutch revolt. At the start of the Dutch war of independence, Jan van Nassau and William of Orange, desperate for allies and inspired by the anti-Catholic Turco-Calvinist approach, started to send envoys to the Ottoman court after the early stages of the rebellion in 1566, having a response of the Sephardic and Ottoman adviser, Joseph Nasi, in a positive way in a letter to Antwerp authorities claiming that "the forces of the Ottomans would soon hit Philip II's affairs so hard that he would not even have the time to think of Flanders", and even the Sultan Suleiman offered troops at the time they would request. On the other hand, after Felipe II further tightened his assimilation policy with the decree he issued in 1567, the Moriscos of Granada, who took advantage of the King's dealing with the rebellions launched by Protestants in Germany and Calvinists in the Netherlands, revolted in 1568 under the leadership of Aben Humeya and requested that the Ottoman navy organize an expedition to aid them in a letter they sent to the Beylerbeyi of Algeria, Kılıç Ali Pasha, on 20 April 1568. Ottoman Sultan Selim II, to whom the Moriscos conveyed their requests for aid, stated in a response letter he sent on 16 April 1569 that he was following the uprising closely and was doing his best to provide the necessary aid in a timely manner, but that it was not possible to send the Ottoman navy to the region immediately, as the navy was preparing for the Cyprus expedition. However, Selim II ordered Kılıç Ali Pasha to support the rebels. Although Kılıç Ali Pasha's attempt to send a fleet to Almería in 1569 to bring soldiers, provisions and weapons failed due to a storm, he managed to send 400-500 soldiers and provisions and weapons in the attempt in 1570. King Felipe II took action in the winter of 1570–71 against the danger of increasing this aid and the spread of the uprising and suppressed the uprising violently. In response, taking advantage of Spain's preoccupation with the uprising, Kılıç Ali Pasha captured Tunis, which was under the control of the Hafsids under Spanish protection, in his expedition at the end of 1569.
After suppressing the Granada Revolt, the Kingdom of Spain refocused on its direct struggle with the Ottoman Empire. During the Ottoman attacks on Cyprus in the early years of the 1570–1573 Ottoman-Venetian War, the Holy Alliance established between the Kingdom of Spain and its dependencies and Venice on 25 May 1571 could not prevent the Ottomans from capturing Famagusta and completing the conquest of Cyprus, but it did manage to inflict a major defeat on the Ottoman navy at the Battle of Lepanto on 7 October 1571. Then the Spanish-Venetian coallition develop contacts with Greek dissidence, planning a possible liberation of the Peloponnese. The Ottomans, who had completely rebuilt their navy, set out for the Mediterranean under the command of Kılıç Ali Pasha in the summer of 1572, but did not engage in a major battle with the Allied navy, to which the Spanish also contributed 55 galleys.
During these years, another attempt at rapprochement with the Persians was done, as the Holy League prepared an embassy in 1572 to inform Shah Tahmasp I about the defeat of the Ottoman army at the Battle of Lepanto and propose renewing the Habsburg-Persian alliance to fight against the Turks. Also, Íñigo López de Mendoza, viceroy of the Kingdom of Naples sent gifts to the Persian monarch on behalf of the King of Spain, with an offer of friendship. The Shah responded positively and sent John the Baptist himself and a Persian emissary with his reply, full of gifts for Philip II. However, after Tahmasp I fell seriously ill in 1574 and died two years later, such plans could not be realized when a civil war broke out in Persia.
The same year saw the first peace offer of the Kingdom of Spain, but it did not bring any results. In contrast, the peace negotiations of the Ottomans with Venice were concluded positively and the Holy Alliance was effectively ended as a result of the agreement signed between the parties on March 7, 1573. With Venice's withdrawal from the war, the Ottoman Empire and the Spanish Empire were left alone in the struggle. Indeed, in the summer of 1573, while the Ottoman navy under the command of Piyale Pasha and Kapudan Pasha Kılıç Ali Pasha targeted the Apulia lands of the Kingdom of Naples, which was affiliated with Spain, the Spanish navy under the command of Juan de Austria took advantage of this and targeted the city of Tunis and captured it on October 10, 1573.
Thereupon, the main objective of the Ottoman navy in the following campaign season was to liberate Tunis from occupation. The Ottoman navy under the command of Kılıç Ali Pasha and the Ottoman forces under the command of Ciğalazade Yusuf Sinan Pasha, as a result of the successful military operations between 12 July and 13 September 1574, finally annexed Tunisia to the Ottoman lands, being the final direct confrontation between Crown of Castile forces against the Turks for a long time.
Also another goal of the Ottoman campaigns of 1574 was to help the Dutch Revolters in the Spanish Netherlands and consolidate a Turco-Calvinist aliance by reducing Spanish-Catholic pressure over the Dutch Reformed through making another war front for Habsburg Spain, which finally led to the 1575 Spanish-Dutch and the establishment of an Ottoman Consulate in Antwerp shortly after to improve Netherlands–Turkey relations in the context of Ottoman–Habsburg wars.
Despite Philip II of Spain, in the name of prudence due to economical problems, quit from the development of further big military operations against the Ottomans, he still supported the military operations from other allied rulers to have indirect conflicts against the Turks, like the project of Sebastian I of Portugal to help Abu Abdallah Mohammed II Saadi in reconquer Saadi Morocco against the Ottoman-Algerian capture of Fez (1576). This led in 1578 to the Battle of Alcácer Quibir, in which Habsburg Spain financed and give permission to Portuguese and Moroccans to recruit auxiliary forces in his territory fearing the menaces of an Ottoman Suzerainty so close to Iberian peninsula. However, it ended in a Pyrrhic victory for the Ottoman-Algerian-Moroccan coalition against the European coalition.

Changing priorities and the search for peace

Following the conquest of Tunisia by the Ottomans, the Ottoman Empire and the Spanish Empire realized that their borders in the Mediterranean had come to an end. Although the Ottomans continued to gain territory with Tunisia, the expedition, which required the equipping of a large Ottoman fleet and the transportation of a significant landing force over a long distance, caused great expenses.. In addition, the internal unrest in Persia following the death of Shah Tahmasb I of Iran on 25 May 1576 began to draw the Ottomans' attention to the eastern front. In this context, the Ottomans, who had made peace with Venice in 1573, established a supportive administration in the north by placing the Voivode of Transylvania, Stephen Báthory, on the throne of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1575, and after Rudolf II ascended to the throne on 25 December 1576, they renewed the 1568 treaty with the Holy Roman Empire, so Ottomans were in a position to close other fronts in the west.
The problems in the Spanish Empire were much greater. In addition to the large sums spent on the struggle against the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean, the Dutch Revolt that began in 1568 began to strain the budget of King Felipe II, who pursued an economic policy focused on excessive debt, and in November 1575 the King declared the treasury bankrupt. Following these developments, King Felipe II secretly offered a ceasefire/peace to the Ottomans.
Essentially, an ambassador named Martin de Acuña ensured that a five-year armistice agreement was signed between the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Naples in February 1577. The same ambassador also offered mediation to the Crown of Castile and, after King Philip II found it appropriate, he began making efforts at the Ottoman Palace in the same year. A draft text emerged on March 18, 1577.
In this way, an unofficial ceasefire environment was established between the parties. The parties did not allow their navies to attack each other's lands, and Philip II did not send the troops he had withdrawn from the Spanish Netherlands against the Ottomans. As a result of the negotiations provided by this environment, the Spanish ambassadors Giovanni Margliani and Bruti, who delivered the letter of the Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha to Philip II, ensured that the draft ceasefire agreement was signed on 18 March 1578.
The agreement was written to include the states clustered around the two powers' sphere of influence at either end of the Mediterranean. Within this framework; the Kingdom of France, which was allied with the Ottomans, and the Holy Roman Empire, the Kingdom of Poland-Lithuania, the Republic of Venice and the Sultanate of Morocco, were included in the armistice on the Ottoman Empire side of influence, while the Papal States, the Kingdom of Portugal, the Knights Hospitaller of Malta, the Republic of Genoa, the Republic of Lucca, the Duchy of Savoy, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchy of Ferrara, the Duchy of Mantua, the Duchy of Parma, the Duchy of Urbino and the Principality of Piombino were included in the armistice on the Spanish Empire side of influence. The Portuguese Empire and Spanish were included in the armistice only in the context of the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean war zone, while in the Red Sea and the Indo-Pacific were excluded of the truce. Ottomans and Iberians initially agreed not to harm their colonial interests in Persia as a condition of the truce in the Mediterranean.
Following this first agreement, which foresaw a ceasefire between the parties for a period of three years, a one-year ceasefire agreement was signed between March 21, 1580, and January 1581, and then a three-year ceasefire agreement was signed on February 4, 1581. The 1581 agreement was renewed in 1584, 1587 and 1591. In between the total war of 1515-1575 and the peace treaty of 1782 succeeded some Ottoman-Spanish conflicts of minor impact, like the 3rd Duke of Osuna corsair war during 1620s, the Ottoman–Venetian War (1714–1718) or the Spanish–Algerian War (1775–1785), among others. The next time that Spanish-Ottoman hostilities would resume will be in 1594 due to the support of Philip II to the Holy League (1594), without reaching the magnitude of yesteryear.

Continuation of war in oversea

The Spanish-Ottoman truce did not involve the oversea possessions of both empires, and after the War of the Portuguese Succession and the consolidation of the Iberian Union, the Portuguese Empire was directly involved in the global conflict between Habsburg Spain and Ottoman Caliphate. The conflict was spread to the Indian Ocean through Portuguese India and Portuguese Indonesia, and to the Pacific Ocean through the Spanish Philippines.

East Indies theater

In southeast Asia, Spanish rule had been consolidated in the archipelago of the Philippines and developing a sphere of influence over adjacent islands, founding the Captaincy General of the Philippines as the center of the Spanish East Indies to protect Catholic and Iberian interests in Asia and Oceania, seeking both to develop China-Spain relations for commercial benefits, and mainly to evangelize to Catholicism not only the local pagan populations, but also those of several nearby Muslim sultanates of the Malay Archipelago, which then caused the Moro Conflict with local Muslims in the Philippines. This latter, together with the development of the Portuguese Empire in the Indonesian archipelago, attracted the attention of the Turkish Caliphate, which had already sent the Ottoman Expedition to Aceh in the 1560s to help the Sultanate of Aceh and through them nearby Muslim states in the Indo-Pacific such as Malacca, Johor, Patani, Gujarat, Ahmednagar, Bijapur, Jolo, Maguindanao, Tidore, Ternate, the Bruneian Empire, etc. that were potentially hostile to Portuguese and Spanish Empires, in addition to bringing the Habsburg-Ottoman Wars to the Iberian Union colonial territories in the East Indies and threatening their dominance of the spice trade.
In 1578, after a series of naval skirmishes since 1565 and increasingly hostile relations, the Spaniards from Jolo declared war over the Sultanate of Brunei, so starting the Castilian War. The Ottomans and Muslim Lascars sent an expeditionary force to assist the Bruneians that included Turks, Egyptians, Berbers, Swahilis, Somalis, Arabs, Iranians, Muslim Indians, Malays, Indonesians and even Moriscos. The reaction from Spanish authorities to the arrival of Ottoman soldiers to support Brunei and the Moros was the recruitment of troops from New Spain and Peru, which increased into the 1630s.
The Bruneian-Spanish war ended in a stalemate in which the Spaniards occupied Brunei and installed Pengiran Seri Lela as Sultan of Brunei and Pengiran Seri Ratna as Bendahara, but due to an epidemic of cholera and dysentery, they were forced to withdraw and Pengiran Bendahara Sakam Ibni Sultan Abdul Kahar was restored, although the Bruneians never recovered the status of a regional great power.

Red Sea-Indian Ocean Theater

The first military engagement was a Spanish militar expedition against Ottoman Egypt, in response of the Capture of Muscat (1581), through a series of raids in the Red Sea by occupying one of the castles of Yemen and Aden located on an strategic island 160 miles far away from the Aden Castle, and then reinforced the island while began to build ships by founding a shipyard, with the main objective of obstructing trade route from India to the port of Jeddah, and seek potential allies by taking advantage of Yemeni–Ottoman conflicts. Consequently, the Governor of Ottoman Yemen, Hasan Pasha reacted through a great raid against the Spaniards in October 1586, in which the Ottomans captured 4 Spanish Galleys with lots of goods as spoils that were sent to the Sublime Porte as a tribute. Simultaneously, started a new Ottoman-Portuguese conflict in East Africa as a consequence of the arrest of a Spanish spy in 1583 by Hassan Pasha, which used it as an excuse to make pressure to the Sultan Murad III for an increase in the defenses on the Arabian coastal plain to protect the Muslim Indian Ocean trade, and so on were sent two galleots from Suez to Mokha, which then were delivered to the Ottoman corsair Mir Ali Beg to raid the Portuguese colonies in the Swahili coast, with the main goals to block Iberians from crossing the Gulf of Aden through the creation of a new naval base for the Ottoman Navy in the Horn of Africa to make raids against Spaniards and Portuguese, and also to contact the local Muslim population for a future Vassalization of them to conquer the Horn of Africa and expel Christians from there.
The perfect excuse for a Turkish intervention was the appearance of an envoy from Ajuran Sultanate vassals to the Ottoman corsair Mir Ali Bey who invited him to intervene in the region and to develop a Somali-Turkish joint expedition against the Portuguese Mozambique. After the Ottomans arrived at Mogadishu in 1586, the local population recognised submission to the Sultan of Sultans and with enthusiasm helped the Turks by contributing with resources and mans to the Ottoman expedition, and the same support was given by a lot of coastal territories until stablishing at Lamu, while the Portuguese led by Ruy Lopes Salgado withdraw and hide themselves on Malindi, while a ship from Portuguese India commanded by Roque de Brito Falcão was captured and plundered by the corsairs. The Turks returned with 24 ships, a treasure of 150000 gold cruzados, and 60 Portuguese captives. Despite the lack of preparation from the Portuguese Navy that caused those initial defeats, the response was the sending of a big fleet of 26 vessels commanded by Ruy Gonçalves da Câmara with the serious goal to block the Red Sea, although the Portuguese failed in catch the Turkish Corsairs and due to economical problems, they quit to Portuguese Oman and their results discouraged the King Philip I of Portugal from further aggressive strategies, who then pleaded prudence to the Viceroy of Goa, D. Duarte de Menezes, advising him to be less bellicose with the Ottomans in what he considered was a minor theater of war for the Iberian Empire.
However, Duarte de Menezes was not satisfied with the status quo, so he ordered in January 1587 another big fleet to expel the Ottomans and restore Portuguese suzerainty, this time composed of 2 galleons, 3 galleys, 13 light-galleys, and 650 soldiers under the command of Martim Afonso de Melo, who then subjected Faza and Mombasa, and then arrived at Malindi to restore the Colonial pacts in the Zanzibar Channel and improve the diplomatic relations of Portuguese with the locals. Then he returned to Goa via Socotra and Ormus after not being capable to capture Mir Ali Beg. After that, started to collapse the Ottoman project to seize the Portuguese Sphere of influence on modern Somalia, Kenya and Tanzania, being the Turks defeated like 4 times during 1586 in their attempts failing to conquer Pate, Mombasa and other cities, while did not help that Mir Ali Beg started to extract a heavy tribute to cities still in his control like Mogadishu or attempted to sack the cities loyal to Portuguese like Malindi, which now made him alienate his former allies in a critical moment that a network of spies and informants within the Red Sea was developed by the Portuguese to anticipate the Ottoman movements. Finally, the governor of Portuguese India, Manuel de Sousa Coutinho, sent in 1589 an armada of 2 galleons, 5 galleys, 6 half-galleys, and 6 light-galleys with 900 Portuguese soldiers, commanded by his brother Tomé de Sousa Coutinho, which would be joined by the troops of Mateus de Vasconcelos at Malindi on February, and then they would have a definitive clash with Mir Ali Beg on March 5–7, 1589, at the Battle of Mombasa (1589), crushing his small fort by the shoreline, sacking 3 Turkish galleys with 30 guns, and capturing Mir Ali Beg, while evacuating Mombasa inhabitants from the cannibalistic tribe incursion. Later, the Portuguese managed to re-take most of the lost cities in South East Africa and began punishing their leaders, although Mogadishu seized its independence and the Ottomans remained as major economic partners of Ajuran Sultanate.
Another late engagement between Portuguese and Ottomans was the Capture of Mombasa (1631–32), in which the Turks sent minor aid to the Sultanate of Mombasa leaded by Yusuf ibn al-Hasan, in which the Portuguese were briefly expelled from the region of modern Kenya due to piracy acts.

Proxy Wars after 1578 Truce

Although the signed armistice was renewed several times, it could not be converted into a formal peace treaty and the state of war between the two parties continued until the signing of a definitive Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Commerce of 1782. Despite it, both empires diplomatically were conspiring against the other and preparing for a possible renewal of the total war, being relevant the espionage network developed by Philip II of Spain in Constantinople.

Ottoman-Spanish conflicts at the [European wars of religion]

For example, Selim II in 1574 accepted solicitations of help against Spain from a Franco-Dutch embassy, represented by the Huguenot François de Noailles in the name of Charles IX of France and William of Orange, so he developed an espionage network among Calvinists to put them in contact with the rebellious Moriscos of Spain and the Corsairs of Algiers, which also led to a tacit pirate alliance between Ottoman Barbary corsairs and the Dutch Sea Beggars against Spanish Navy supported by Dunkirkers and Stratioti privateers. Also, Murad III increased the Turkey–United Kingdom relations since the start of the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604), responding positively to the proposals of Elizabeth I of England to develop a Islamic-Protestant coalition with the Dutch Empire, French Huguenots, Moriscos and Saadi Morocco against Philip II of Spain, which would lead to the Anglo-Turkish piracy against Iberian Union, Spanish Italy, Catholic League (French), Venice, Papal States and Habsburg Croatia. This Anglo-Dutch approach to Maghreb Muslims, the Turco-Calvinist conspiracy, will reach its peak in the early XVII Century, fusing it with the Eighty Years' War and then the Thirty Years' War global conflicts, as also the Saadi Sultanate's Civil War in Morocco and the Portuguese Restoration War. Another approachment was the one of Venice and Henry IV of France against the Iberian Union, and in so, an informal Venetian-Ottoman alliance through Bourbon France, which was consolidated when the Venetians sabotaged Pope Clement VIII's plans to develop a new Holy League in 1594, while also approaching to the 1596 Greenwich coallition that supported Turkish piracy against Spanish Empire until the Twelve Years' Truce, trying to impede a Spanish naval presence in the Eastern Mediterranean under Venetian Sphere of influence and dismish Spanish influence in the Italian states. By late XVI century, the navies of France, England and Netherlands dominated the Mediterranean commerce and became the main threat of Habsburg Spain, which lead to the switch of Spanish priorities in the Low Countries over the Ottomans.

Spanish-Eastern Catholic intrigues against [Ottoman rule]

On the other hand, Habsburg Spain developed a network of spionage among Eastern Christians of the Ottoman Balkans and Caucasus, with the main goal to secretly convert anti-Ottoman Eastern Orthodox dissidence into Eastern Catholics, or at least into vassals of Hispanic Monarchy or HRE, and then prepare future revolts against Ottoman Caliphate among Albanians, Serbo-Croatians, Greeks, Cypriots, Armenians, Georgians, Maronite Lebanese and Arab Christians, or at least to be informed of Ottoman military and counter Barbary corsairs through hiring exiled Stratioti Rums to serve as privateers for Naples and Sicily.
Some Anti-Ottoman projects that resulted from this Spanish intrigues were the Anti-Ottoman revolts of 1565–1572, Albanian revolt of 1566–1571, Convention of Mat, Himara Revolt of 1596, Thessaly rebellion (1600), Convention of Dukagjin, Epirus revolt of 1611, Convention of Kuçi.

Spanish-Ottoman Corsair War and Colonization attempts in Morocco">Saadi Sultanate">Morocco

From the XVII and XVIII Century, the Spanish Empire and the Ottoman Empire continued their centuries-long rivalry for Indo-Mediterranean supremacy, albeit mostly through indirect campaigns and proxy forces. Although the Mediterranean Sea or Indian Ocean was not a war zone like in the peak of Ottoman-Spanish War, still was a relevant militar region due to the constant Raids and Skirmish between Ottomans and Spanish through Privateering, mainly the Ottoman-backed Barbary corsairs and the Spanish-backed Uskoks. The two empires largely avoided a formal war, as both were more phocused in the Eighty Years' War and Ottoman–Persian Wars, but fought in recurring naval battles, raids and sieges, often using allies like the Knights Hospitaller/Malta, Genoa and Venice or through local proxies. Also, during the reign of Philip III of Spain were developed some conquers in Morocco, like Larache and Mehdya, although Spain failed in its attempts to conquer Algiers, Tunis and Alexandria or to put an end to Barbary corsairs, Jewish pirates and Anglo-Dutch-Turkish piracy. In response of Moroccan-Ottoman support of Morisco renegades, Spain became a refugee of renegade Berber Emirs and Sultans that disliked Moroccan and Ottoman rule in the region.
Spain held enclaves in North Africa and a large navy in the western Mediterranean, while the Ottomans controlled North African regencies and the eastern Mediterranean and were allies of Saadi Morocco and briefly of Venice. Throughout the 17th century succeeded the Golden Age of Piracy in which the Barbary corsairs raided Christian shipping and coasts. As naval historian Alan Jamieson observes, until 1800 the Barbary pirates “captured and enslaved more than a million Christians". This Ottoman-backed corsairs ussually raided the Spanish Levant and southern Italy, so this prompted a militar response from Habsburg Spain against them on early 1600s, as the Algerian corsairs had become the greatest maritime threat to Spain and Christendom. Under viceroys such as the Duke of Osuna in Sicily and Naples and Emanuel Filibert of Savoy, Spain's Armada del Mar Océano waged periodic Mediterranean campaigns against Ottoman-allied ports, while also Spanish officers and soldiers served as defensive troops in Malta and Italy:1600–1610: In 1600, the conflict shifted from the eastern Mediterranean to northwest Africa. On 1601 was launched a Spanish-Genoese campaign against Ottoman Tunisia, then on 1601-1608 was launched a big campaign against Algiers in an attempt to conquer it with the help of the Kingdom of Kuku and Kabylians leaded by Amar ben Amar. On 1604 succeeded the Battle of the Gulf of Cadiz, also were done Naval actions in the Longo Island. On 1605 succeeded the Battle of Hammamet, also on 1605-06 the Spaniards raided the City of Durazzo in an attempt to ruin the improvement of Venetian-Ottoman relations. The Anglo-Dutch-French-Barbary alliance diluded in 1609 when was reached the Twelve Years' Truce, as also started the Franco-Algerian war (1609–1628), in which sometimes Spain and France developed militar cooperation in the Mediterranean, like in the Raid on La Goulette (1609) under Luis Fajardo leadership. Also, in the early 1600s Spain landed forces on Morocco’s Atlantic coast as a consecuence of Mohammed esh Sheikh el Mamun's solicitation of help on 1608 against Zidan Abu Maali, so, by November 1610, the Spanish captured the Moroccan port of Larache after al-Ma'mun ceded the city to Spain in return for their help in the Moroccan dynastic struggle after the 1603 death of Ahmad al-Mansur, although there was no significative battle –as the Marquis of San Germán simply took possession on 20 Nov 1610–, the main goal of Spain was to preserve the independence of Morocco from a possible Ottoman occupation or the development of hostile European enclaves, as also to end the Salé-Mamora-Larache axis of Barbary slave trade.1611–1615: Iberian, Sicilian and Neapolitan fleets struck Tunisian ports: e.g. the Raid on Kerkennah by Alvaro de Bazán’s squadron overran the corsair base in the Kerkennah Islands, killing hundreds of Turkish-Tunisians defenders and freeing scores of Christian captives. A few months later, on 23 May 1612, Spanish galley-captain Antonio Pimentel led six galleys into the harbor of La Goulette and burned seven pirate ships, capturing the remaining three. Spanish chronicles emphasize that these raids destroyed newly built Ottoman-style ships intended for Atlantic raids and possible Muslim colonization of the Americas. These actions illustrate how Spain struck into Ottoman Tunis to suppress piracy. On August 1613 happened the Battle of Cape Corvo in which Ottavio d'Aragona successfully raided the Karaburun Peninsula in modern Turkey. Also, at the Moroccan front, started in 1611 the rebellion of the self-proclaimed Mahdi, Ahmed ibn Abi Mahalli, against the Saadi sultans, which led indirectly to the Spanish capture of the Zaydani Library in 1612 after being intercepted by the Spanish Navy at Andalusia a French corsair navy with the Royal treasures of the Saadis. Then, in 1614, Admiral Luis Fajardo led a large fleet to seize La Mámora, then a pirate haven near Rabat where Muley Zidan provided a base for Dutch corsairs; such Capture of La Mámora in August 1614 was virtually uncontested: as Spanish accounts note, Fajardo’s 20-ship squadron arrived after most corsairs had fled, sank two blocking vessels and occupied the fortress with little resistance, then renamed it San Miguel de Ultramar and held it until Moroccan forces retook it in 1681. On the other hand, a many Moriscos renegades living in Salé turned into piracy and expanded their area of operations to the Atlantic Ocean by 1614, thanks to the leadership of the corsair Ibrahim Vargas, who was rewarded by Moroccan sultans with an autonomous Republic of Salé, which later joined forces with the Corsairs of Algiers leaded by the Dutch Jan Janszoon.1616–1619: In the eastern Mediterranean, Spanish warships occasionally crossed into Ottoman waters to support Christian allies. One noted naval engagement was the Battle of Cape Gelidonya, when six Spanish galleons intercepted an Ottoman fleet off the south coast of Anatolia. The Spaniards fought off a much larger Ottoman force, inflicting heavy losses in a “little Lepanto” of sorts. However, the following year saw a Spanish defeat: on 4 August 1617 a Spanish convoy of troops from Cartagena was ambushed at Cape Palos by 16 Algerine galleys, as the Dutch-Algerian admiral Sulayman Reis overwhelmed the Spanish, which lost two ships and about 700 men. Also in Venice, the Giovanni faction, that rose to power in late 1500s, started to increase it's approachment to the Franco-Ottoman alliance, the Dutch Republic and the Protestant Union in 1617 against the domination of Spain-HRE among Italian states, so helping Anti-Habsburg war efforts in the Adriatic Sea and being a prelude to the Thirty Years' War. During 1618-1620 there was a brief Dutch-Spanish cooperation under Mooy Lambert and Miguel de Vidazábal against the Corsairs of Algiers at the Dutch–Barbary war, which ended when the Eighty Years' War re-started.1620–1625: Throughout the 1620s the conflict blended formal battles with corsair warfare and the arrival of Anti-Habsburg european navies. During 1622, the Dutch Republic develop alliances with numerous north African countries against Spain at the start of the Thirty Years' War in Oversea, concluding a treaty of peace and friendship with Ottoman Algeirs and ending a Dutch–Barbary war. The same did the Kingdom of England after ending the English expedition to Algiers (1620–1621), thus re-starting the Anglo-Turkish piracy against Habsburg Spain. By March 1621 happened the Battle of Chios in which a Spanish-Italian-Flemish force leaded by Carlo Doria triumphed over Ottomans in the Aegean Sea, then Fadrique de Toledo defeated a Dutch-Danish navy in the Battle of Gibraltar (1621) before combining their forces with Corsairs of Algiers. When Philip IV of Spain and Count-duke of Olivares rose to power in 1621, the Spanish Navy was sent to the Atlantic Ocean and northern Europe to aid Ibero-America and the Catholic League (Germany), becoming the Mediterranean a minor theater in the geopolitics of Habsburg Spain, although 12 reinforced galleys leaded by Carlo Doria were stationed in Monaco and Finale Ligure to patrol the region against Ottomans and other hostile European navies. In June 1624 a combined Spanish–Maltese fleet under the Marquess of Santa Cruz defeated the Tunisians off the Gulf of Tunis, capturing all fourteen enemy galleys. Three weeks later Bazán’s fleet met a Barbary armada at Palermo. Despite being outnumbered, the Christians sank seven and captured six corsair ships, freeing 400 Christian galley-slaves. In July 1624 another Spanish-led force defeated an Algerine-Tunisian fleet in the Battle of the Dalmatian Coast, seizing seven galleys – a clear blow to Ottoman naval power. In October 1624, Spanish, Neapolitan and allied galleys under Diego Pimentel defeated six Algerine corsairs in the Battle of San Pietro island, destroying the flagship and capturing four ships. These victories reflect Spain’s effective use of combined Catholic squadrons to contain Ottoman-privateer fleets in the western Mediterranean.
After 1625 the fighting with the Ottomans tapered off, as Spain’s attention shifted to European wars and internal crises, as also the Spanish Mediterranean fleet entered in decadence due to the economical effects of Spanish bankruptucy and internal struggles among Genoese bankers, and since 1635 the Mediterranean fleet phocused on the Franco-Spanish War (1635–1659). Nonetheless, corsair raids continued both ways, although in lesser extent. Barbary pirates from Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli harassed Spanish shipping and raided coastal towns. The Spanish also cooperated with Venice and the Knights of Malta in later decades to fight Ottoman fleets –notably aiding Venice in the Cretan War (1645–1669) and the Morean War (1684–1699)– although the Crusading movement declined in favour of Raison d'Stat since the arrival of Westphalian system. During this late years, the Spanish Sicily was the main base of operation for the Spaniards against Ottoman raids in the Mediterranean Sea until the War of the Spanish Succession.