The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774)

In the Russo-Turkish war that began in 1768 the Ottomans suffered heavy defeats on land and at sea, including at Çeşme in 1770. After another defeat near Kozludzha in June 1774, the grand vizier Muhsinzade Mehmed Pasha asked for peace.

The treaty was signed on 21 July 1774 south of the Danube, in the village of Küçük Kaynarca (today Kaynardzha in Bulgaria), in the camp of Field Marshal Rumyantsev. The Crimean Khanate was separated from the Ottomans and declared independent, with the sultan remaining only the religious head of Crimean Muslims as caliph. Kerch, Yenikale and Kinburn passed to Russia, Russian merchant ships gained passage through the Straits, and Russia won the right to build an Orthodox church in Istanbul and to act as protector of the Orthodox in the empire. The Ottomans had to pay an indemnity of 4.5 million roubles.

Küçük Kaynarca is seen as a turning point in Ottoman history: for the first time a land with a Muslim majority, the Crimea, left Ottoman rule. In 1783 Catherine II annexed the Crimea, ending the three and a half centuries of the Crimean Khanate. The treaty is also the first international agreement to refer to the sultan's title of caliph.