The collapse and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire was a long and bitter affair, comprising revolutions, a disastrous world war and infighting.

The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (1908–1922) began with the Young Turk Revolution which restored the constitution of 1876 and brought in multi-party politics with a two-stage electoral system for the Ottoman parliament. At the same time, a nascent movement called Ottomanism was promoted in an attempt to maintain the unity of the Empire, emphasising a collective Ottoman nationalism regardless of religion or ethnicity. Within the empire, the new constitution was initially seen positively, as an opportunity to modernize state institutions and resolve inter-communal tensions between different ethnic groups.

Instead, this period became the story of the twilight struggle of the Empire. Despite military reforms, the Ottoman Army met with disastrous defeat in the Italo-Turkish War (1911–1912) and the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), resulting in the Ottomans being driven out of North Africa and nearly out of Europe. Continuous unrest leading up to World War I resulted in the 31 March Incident, the 1912 Ottoman coup d'état and the 1913 Ottoman coup d'état. The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) government became increasingly radicalised during this period, and conducted ethnic cleansing and genocide against the empire's Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek citizens, events collectively referred to as the Late Ottoman genocides. Ottoman participation in World War I ended with defeat and the partition of the empire's remaining territories under the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres. The treaty, formulated at the conference of London, allocated nominal land to the Ottoman state and allowed it to retain the designation of "Ottoman Caliphate" (similar to the Vatican, a sacerdotal-monarchical state ruled by the Catholic Pope), leaving it severely weakened. One factor behind this arrangement was Britain's desire to thwart the Khilafat Movement.

The occupation of Istanbul, along with the occupation of Smyrna (Izmir), mobilized the Turkish national movement, which ultimately won the Turkish War of Independence. The formal abolition of the Ottoman Sultanate was performed by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey on 1 November 1922. The Sultan was declared persona non grata from the lands the Ottoman Dynasty had ruled since 1299.

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