The Ottoman Empire`s failure to keep up with the technological and scientific development of the western states, the balance of power (in Europe), and the longstanding tensions with the West -all these factors made it a matter of urgent necessity that the empire introduce reforms, and adopt the institutions and methods which had rendered the countries of Europe so powerful.
From as early as the end of the 18th century, the Ottoman political leadership had begun to realize the urgent need for reform, as the only way to halt the advancing decline and dissolution of the empire brought about by continual losses of territory and military defeats. After the failed attempts by Selim III, mainly intended to modernize the Ottoman army, Sultan Mahmud II initiated a more wide-ranging programme of modernization -based on western models- of institutions and society. The ultimate objective was the creation of an efficient and robust central government. [...]
The reforms, which embraced the whole of Ottoman society -the organization of the administration and the economy, the institutional, judicial, military and social framework- were designed to modernize the machinery of the state, to westernize Ottoman society and to free legislation and education from the constraints of religious law. This secularization of the institutional framework of the empire as a whole was mirrored in the institutions of the individual millets. This process of secularization of the local level had considerable influence on Greek Orthodox education, which now inevitably saught inspiration and guidance from the national centre. [...]

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