The Safavids, not Lepanto, halted Ottoman westward expansion

Evidence

The Spanish view of how things turned out is that eventually, in 1571, at the Battle of Lepanto, Spain and its allies heroically stemmed the tide that had been flowing westward. Is that the right way to look at these events? Both fleets suffered grievous losses in that battle. Lepanto was a disaster for both sides, although the Christian naval forces claimed the victory. But the Turks were able to replace their losses within a relatively short space of time, whereas the concentration of Spain on the Enterprise of England meant that its buildup of ships in the Mediterranean was not as rapid. What caused the westward progress of the Ottomans to falter was rather that, unexpectedly to the east of Turkey, on the land frontiers of Anatolia itself, the Ottomans had to direct their attention to the Safavid threat. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1550

Categorization

• XREF: Parallel to the earlier deconstruction of the Armada as a decisive victory in The Defeat of the Spanish Armada — both treat famous naval ‘triumphs’ as less decisive than presented.
• SEED: Article angle: how the traditional telling of Lepanto as a heroic Christian check mirrors Spain’s propagandistic retelling of the Armada — a pattern of empire-building nations manufacturing decisive-victory narratives over defeats that were actually mutual disasters.