<P> The pre-modern Ottoman armies used the horse - tail standard or tugh rather than flags . Such standards remained in use alongside flags until the 19th century . A depiction of a tugh is found in the Relation d'un voyage du Levant by Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1718). War flags came into use by the 16th century . During the 16th and 17th centuries, Ottoman war flags often depicted the bifurcated Zulfiqar sword, often misinterpreted in Western literature as showing a pair of scissors . A Zulfiqar flag claimed to have been used by Selim I (d . 1520) is on exhibit in the Topkapı Museum . Two Zulfiqar flags are also depicted in a plate dedicated to Turkish flags in vol. 7 of Bernard Picart's Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde (1737), attributed to the Janissaries and the Ottoman cavalry . The crescent symbol appears in flags attributed to Tunis from as early as the 14th century (Libro de conoscimiento), long before Tunis fell under Ottoman rule in 1574 . The Spanish Navy Museum in Madrid shows two Ottoman naval flags dated 1613; both are swallow - tailed, one green with a white crescent near the hoist, the other white with two red stripes near the edges of the flag and a red crescent near the hoist . </P> <P> The adoption of star and crescent as the state symbol started during the reign of Mustafa III (1757--1774) and its use became well - established during Abdul Hamid I (1774--1789) and Selim III (1789--1807) periods . According to Znamierowski, the red flag with white crescent and star was adopted in 1793 . A buyruldu from that year states that the ships in the Ottoman navy have that flag, and various other documents from earlier and later years mention its use . The number of points in the star was initially not fixed . The white crescent with an eight - pointed star on a red field is depicted as the flag of a "Turkish Man of War" in Colton's Delineation of Flags of All Nations (1862). Steenbergen's Vlaggen van alle Natiën of the same year shows a six - pointed star . A plate in Webster's Unabridged of 1882 shows the flag with an eight - pointed star labelled "Turkey, Man of war". The five - pointed star seems to have been present alongside these variants from at least 1857 . With the Tanzimat reforms in the 19th century, flags were redesigned in the style of the European armies of the day . The flag of the Ottoman Navy was made red, as red was to be the flag of secular institutions and green of religious ones . As the reforms abolished all the various flags (standards) of the Ottoman pashaliks, beyliks and emirates, a single new Ottoman national flag was designed to replace them . The result was the red flag with the white crescent moon and star, which is the precursor to the modern flag . A plain red flag was introduced as the civil ensign for all Ottoman subjects . </P> <P> In accounting for the crescent and star symbol, Ottomans sometimes referred to a legendary dream of the eponymous founder of the Ottoman house, Osman I, in which he is reported to have seen a moon rising from the breast of a qadi whose daughter he sought to marry . "When full, it descended into his own breast . Then from his loins there sprang a tree, which as it grew came to cover the whole world with the shadow of its green and beautiful branches ." Beneath it Osman saw the world spread out before him, surmounted by the crescent . </P> <Ul> <Li> <P> The Turkish army marching on Sofia in the war with Austria in 1788 . </P> </Li> <Li> <P> Declaration of the Young Turk Revolution in 1908 by the leaders of the Ottoman millets, with a pair of Ottoman flags . </P> </Li> <Li> <P> Declaration of war against the Allies in 1914, with Turkish flags placed in front of the podium . </P> </Li> <Li> <P> The Ottoman Navy on a postcard from World War I, with an image of Sultan Mehmed V . </P> </Li> <Li> <P> Ottoman troops with a variant of the flag during the Balkan Wars . </P> </Li> </Ul>

What is the meaning of the turkish flag