The Treaty of Bakhchisarai, signed in 1681, became one of the many treaties in the history of complicated relations between Russia and Turkey. This document consolidated the new political order in Eastern Europe and predetermined the inevitability of future conflicts between the two great powers.
Prerequisites for signing
On January 23, 1681, the Treaty of Bakhchisaray was signed between Russia, Turkey and the Crimean Khanate. He completed a long nine-year war in the Northern Black Sea region. The first attempts to stop the bloodshed were made by the Russian kingdom in 1678. Then the nobleman Vasily Daudov went to Istanbul. He was supposed to persuade the Turkish sultan to put pressure on the Crimean Khan, who was dependent on the Ottoman Empire, and persuade him to start peace negotiations with the Russian and Ukrainian Cossacks.
Not least of all, the peace of Bakhchisaray was postponed over and over again due to the huge distances that the ambassadors had to overcome. Complicated tripartite diplomacy also had an effect. First, in 1679, the Turkish vizier Mehmed IV gave the green light to the world. Only after that, the new Russian embassy went to the Crimea to Murad Girey.
Longnegotiations
In the summer of 1680, the clerk Nikita Zotov and the steward Vasily Tyapkin arrived in Bakhchisaray. A serious obstacle to the settlement of relations between the warring countries was Ivan Samoylovich, the hetman of the Zaporozhye Host. Before leaving, Vasily Tyapkin hardly persuaded him to agree to new borders along the Dnieper. After the Cossacks accepted the conditions, it became a matter of time to accept the Bakhchisaray peace.
In December, a draft treaty was sent to Istanbul. The Turkish sultan agreed on the terms and made it clear to the Crimean Khan that it was necessary to accept the Russian proposal. According to the Bakhchisaray peace, a 20-year truce began. The parties also agreed to exchange prisoners.
Document Terms
The agreement signed in Bakhchisaray also had serious political consequences. The Russian delegation for a long time tried to persuade the opposite side to finally transfer the Zaporizhzhya Sich to the tsar. However, the Turks refused to make concessions on this issue. Thus, Russia had only Kyiv and its surroundings on the right bank of the Dnieper.
Now, after years of war, the status of Right-Bank Ukraine has become clear and certain. The Turks began an active economic development of this region, although the Russian ambassadors sought recognition of the region as a neutral zone. Tyapkin's exhortations were in vain. Ottoman fortresses and settlements began to appear on the Right Bank.
Consequences of Peace
Already shortly after the signing of an important documentit became clear that the war between the restless neighbors had stopped for a very short time. At the end of 1681, the Polish authorities informed the Russian Tsar that the Turkish Sultan was preparing for another attack on Austria. A new coalition began to take shape in Europe. It included all the Christian powers that neighbored the Ottoman Empire and were afraid of its ongoing onslaught on the Old World.
Although Turkey managed to conquer the Right-Bank Ukraine, the policy of its local authorities led to the weakening of the position of the Port in this region. The new order affected the Christian inhabitants immediately after the Treaty of Bakhchisaray was signed. The terms of the agreement allowed the Sultan to start a policy of Islamization in Right-Bank Ukraine. The local population fled en masse from the power of Turkey and its vassal Moldavia. The excessive rigidity with which the Ottomans tried to gain a foothold on the Right Bank played a cruel joke on them. Although at the end of the 17th century Turkey reached the maximum of its territorial expansion, it was after the Peace of Bakhchisaray that its gradual decline began. The growing strength of Russia encroached on the Ottoman dominant status in the Black Sea region.
