The Russian struggles against the Turks, oddly enough, included the participation of John Paul Jones, in the 1780s, but reach back a couple more centuries, the culmination of Ivan IV (the Terrible)’s campaign against the Tatars (a Turkish people), destruction of their capital Kazan, and conquest of the Crimea. The Tatars who survived were brought under nominal Russian rule, but were permitted to operate their own traditional courts. And the Tatars had been extracting tribute from the Russian kingdoms for a few hundred years prior to that.
In the 19th c Otto von Bismarck assembled the modern German nation-state, and created a treaty system that diplomatically isolated France and kept the peace in western Europe for more than forty years (no UN, no satellite verification), and in the east created an alliance which cooperated in the dismantling of the crumbling Ottoman Empire.
http://www.xenophon-mil.org/ruscity/volga/kazan/kazsiege.htm
http://www.history.navy.mil/bios/jones_jp_conrad.htm
[snip] While in Denmark, he was offered a commission in the Imperial Russian Navy. Attracted by the opportunity to command a fleet and hoping that his new title would impress Congress enough to award him with an admiral’s rank, and attracted by the prospect of adventure and glory, Jones accepted the offer and set out for St. Petersburg. Sent to the Black Sea, the new rear admiral believed he would command all the naval forces in that theater in their operations against the Turks, but quickly learned that three other rear admirals served in the command and each jealously guarded his powers and privileges. Jones was instrumental in the Russian navy victory at Liman, but another admiral, Prince Nassau-Siegen, a friend of Empress Catherine II’s key advisor, Gregorii Aleksandrovich, Prince Potemkin, successfully usurped all the credit for the victory. Jones was recalled to Moscow and spent several months making plans until a trumped-up sex charge linking Jones and a young girl scandalized the empress and ended any chances for his restoration to command. [/snip]