After a half-century long Ottoman-Safavid rivalry in the sixteenth century, a peace agreement signed in Amasya in 1555 suspended warfare and ideological competition for more than three decades. Although Ottoman and Safavid forces fought each other later, the Amasya Treaty became the reference point for later diplomatic negotiations and transactions. In short, the Amasya Treaty was a formative in determining the boundaries between the Ottoman and Safavid Empires and later between Turkey and Iran. This paper focuses on why the Ottoman and Safavid empires made this treaty despite a long-standing ideological and politico-religious divide between the two. In the literature, it has been held that the Safavids could not afford such a costly rivalry and pleaded the Ottomans to make peace, because the former were tired of the military campaigns of the latter. On te basis of my extensive and comparative research in Ottoman, Persian and European sources, I find that this narrative misses many essential points and omits certain historical facts just before the treaty was signed. I argue that it was rather the Ottomans who wished, hoped for and in once instance requested peace with the Safavids. As the Ottoman armies were not able to destroy the Safavid state, every Ottoman expedition proved to be a fruitless, futile and hollow victory, mainly due to the the Safavids’ scorched-earth tactics and their evacuation of cities in war zones. Using correspondence, ambassadorial reports, and narrative sources, I will show from various kinds of historical sources that although the Ottoman army had left Istanbul to fight with the Safavids before the agreement was signed, the primary Ottoman motive was to force the Safavids to ask for peace. Moreover, at some point the Ottoman rulers had even secretly asked the Safavid rulers to make peace.