During this period, she briefly saw action again during the First Balkan War, when she provided fire support to beleaguered Ottoman defenders protecting Constantinople from the Bulgarian Army.

In the early 1860s, the Eyalet of Egypt, a province of the Ottoman Empire, ordered several ironclad warships for its fleet as part of a rearmament program to again challenge the power of the central government—the last having been the Second Egyptian–Ottoman War twenty years earlier.

[1][2] The design for the Asar-i Şevket was based on the preceding ironclad Asar-i Tevfik, albeit a much smaller version, though both designs shared the central battery arrangement coupled with a superimposed barbette mounting for additional heavy guns.

[3][4] Both ships of the class were stationed in Crete after they entered service, to assist in stabilizing the island in the aftermath of the Cretan Revolt of 1866–1869.

They were primarily occupied with bombarding Russian coastal positions in support of the Ottoman army in the Caucasus.

[4] At the start of the Greco-Turkish War in February 1897, the Ottomans inspected the fleet and found that almost all of the vessels, including both Asar-i Şevket-class ships, to be completely unfit for combat against the Greek Navy.

Following the end of the war with Greece, the government decided to begin a naval reconstruction program.

Bulgarian forces threatened to capture Constantinople, and so the Navy pressed the ship back into service to provide gunfire support to the Ottoman defenders.

After the threat passed, she returned to barracks ship duties, a role she filled until 1929, when she was decommissioned after nearly sixty years in service.