Sultan Mehmet II, the conqueror of Byzantium and with it the last vestige of the Roman Empire, declared himself a caesar. He was trying to claim to the world that the Ottomans were the inheritors of the might and prestige of the once-great Roman Empire. In many ways he was right: the Ottoman Empire now controlled the wealthiest Roman city. With the Italian trading states (Venice and Genoa) the Ottoman Empire shared control of the Mediterranean, the “Roman Lake.”
And for the next four hundred plus years, the Ottomans honored the founder of the Second Rome with the name of their capital city. On all official correspondence, coinage, and postage stamps, “Konstantiniyye” reminded all who would forget it that the Ottoman Empire ruled where the Romans once had.
source: The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922 by Donald Quataert
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