Traditional historiography explains the rise of the Ottomans as a world power mainly on the basis of two factors: the so-called Turkish and Muslim imperial tradition and military might of the dynasty. This paper aims to develop a critique of this ethno-centric and militarist view of Ottoman history through an examination of the wider political, social, and cultural processes and developments that played a role in the making of the Ottoman Empire. More specifically, the paper focuses on the Ottoman debate on universal monarchy that first emerged after the conquest of Constantinople and examines the different parties, positions, and discourses of this debate as well as its evolution in time, from the second half of the fifteenth through the first decades of the sixteenth centuries. Through contextualizing the debate within the wider international political conjuncture in which the Ottomans vied with their Safavid and Habsburg neighbors for imperial supremacy and analyzing it against the background of the broader political and ideological currents of the time, imbued with expectations of renewal and reform, the paper establishes that the Ottoman critics of monarchy eventually lost their power and voice during the period under consideration. Those who believed in a stronger monarchy, which granted the ruler a wider control over the divine law and lives of his subjects, came to power in the 1520s and pushed for a political and military program which aimed to create a universal empire under the leadership of the Ottoman sultan. The paper argues that the rise of new political community in Istanbul--itself an outcome of the rapid urban growth and expansion of the state power in the city after the conquest--which came to identify its welfare and survival with the well-being of the Ottoman monarchy, was the key factor in this transformation.