A town in northwestern Anatolia near where Mehmed II died while on campaign in 1481.
Gebze lay in the corridor between Constantinople and the Anatolian interior. In the later fifteenth century that made the town and its surroundings part of the Ottoman strategic landscape around the Marmara region.
Mehmed II died near Gebze in 1481 while on campaign. The exact purpose of the campaign is debated, but his death immediately triggered Ottoman succession politics between Bayezid II and Cem.
Gebze matters in IronCodex less as a capital than as the place attached to the death of the ruler who captured Constantinople and reshaped the eastern Mediterranean.