After the end of the Ottoman Empire and the declaration of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, the Navy's tradition was continued under the modern Turkish Naval Forces.

The first Turkish naval fleet in Anatolia, which consisted of 33 sail ships and 17 oar ships, was formed at the port of Smyrna (İzmir) by Tzachas in 1081, following his conquest of Smyrna, Vourla (Urla), Kysos (Çeşme), Phocaea (Foça) and Teos (Sığacık) on the Aegean coast of Anatolia in that same year.

In 1091 Tzachas's fleet raided the islands of Samos and Rhodes in the Aegean Sea, but was then defeated and driven out by the Byzantine admirals Constantine Dalassenos and John Doukas.

[citation needed] Seljuq sultan of Rûm Kayqubad I conquered Alaiye (Alanya) and formed a naval arsenal there.

According to Kâtip Çelebi a typical Ottoman fleet in the mid-17th century consisted of 46 vessels (40 galleys and 6 maona's) whose crew was 15,800 men, roughly two-thirds (10,500) were oarsmen, and the remainder (5,300) fighters.

This was followed by the first conquest of Tunisia from Spain and the reconquest of Morea by the forces of Hayreddin Barbarossa, whose fleet later conquered the islands belonging to the Duchy of Naxos in 1537.

The Holy League and the Ottoman fleet under the command of Hayreddin Barbarossa met in September 1538 at the Battle of Preveza, which is often considered the greatest Turkish naval victory in history.

[citation needed] In 1541, 1544, 1552 and 1555, the Spanish-Italian fleet of Charles V under the command of Andrea Doria was defeated in Algiers, Naples, Ponza, and Piombino, respectively.

[5] In 1617 the Ottoman fleet captured Madeira in the Atlantic Ocean, before raiding Sussex, Plymouth, Devon, Hartland Point, Cornwall and the other counties of western England in August 1625.

[5][9][10] Ottoman ships later appeared off the eastern coasts of North America, particularly being sighted at the English colonies like Newfoundland and Virginia.

In 1475, the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II employed 380 galleys under the command of Gedik Ahmet Pasha, whose fleet conquered the Greek Principality of Theodoro together with the Genoese-administered Crimean port towns of Cembalo, Soldaia, and Caffa ("Kefe" in Turkic languages.

[14] For over a hundred years Ottoman naval supremacy in the Black Sea rested on three pillars: the Ottoman Turks controlled the Turkish Straits and the mouth of the Danube; none of the states in the region could muster an effective naval force; and the virtual absence of piracy on the Black Sea.

[14] However, after the 1550s, it was the start of frequent naval raids by Zaporozhian Cossacks that marked a major change in control of the Black Sea.

[15] Guillaume Levasseur de Beauplan, a French military engineer, provided a first-hand account of the Cossack operations and their tactics against the Turkish ships and towns on the Black Sea Coast.

[14] The Ottoman Navy also engaged in blockades of Georgia's western coast during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in order to coerce local kingdoms into submission.

The long lasting Ottoman-Venetian War of 1645–1669 ended with Ottoman victory and the completion of the conquest of Crete, marking the Empire's territorial zenith.

For most of the 18th century, during a period of time in the eastern Mediterranean known by some as the Pax Ottomana, the focus of the Ottoman Navy was both on defining and defending its territorial waters from rival states and enforcing its authority over them as well as increasingly on protecting international trade routes and defending its maritime commerce from the constant problem of piracy.

The next Russo-Turkish War (1787–1792) again saw numerous naval defeats at the hands of the Russian Black Sea Fleet under Admiral Fyodor Ushakov.

The size of the Danube fleet of the Ottoman Navy at the time of the Great Turkish War in the late 17th century was 52 vessels (4 galliots, 28 frigates and 20 flat-bottomed river boats) manned by 4,070 crew.

Following the defeat against the combined British-French-Russian fleet at the Battle of Navarino in 1827, Sultan Mahmud II gave priority to develop a strong and modern Ottoman naval force.

The Ottoman Navy was rapidly becoming obsolete, and needed to replace all her warships once a decade to keep up with the pace in technological progress – which, given the dismal state of the economy, was clearly not an option.

They were built in pieces by Des Vignes (Chertsey) and Vickers (Sheffield) in England, and assembled at the Taşkızak Naval Shipyard in Constantinople (Istanbul).

However, it was quickly realized that – like the other Nordenfelt submarines ordered by Russia – they suffered from stability problems and were too easy to swamp on the surface.

[26] Following the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, the Committee of Union and Progress which effectively took control of the country sought to develop a strong Ottoman naval force.

The only Ottoman naval successes during the Balkan Wars were the raiding actions of the light cruiser Hamidiye under the command of Rauf Orbay.

In the aftermath of the Balkan Wars, the Ottomans remained engaged in a dispute over the sovereignty of the North Aegean islands with Greece.

This caused considerable ill-feeling towards Britain among the Ottoman public, and the German Empire took advantage of the situation when the battlecruiser SMS Goeben and light cruiser SMS Breslau arrived at the Dardanelles and entered service in the Ottoman Navy as Yavuz Sultan Selim and Midilli, respectively.

The naval raid prompted Russia and its allies, Britain and France, to declare war on the Ottoman Empire in November 1914.

The battlecruiser Yavuz Sultan Selim became one of the most active Ottoman warships throughout the First World War; she bombarded numerous ports on the Black Sea and Aegean Sea, while engaging with Russian dreadnought battleships of the Imperatritsa Mariya class and sinking a number of Russian and British warships and transport vessels.

Many exhibition items underwent special restoration and conservation works due to deformation of the raw materials caused by heat, light, humidity, atmospheric conditions, vandalism and other factors.