Why are there so many French loanwords in Turkish?

Once upon a time French was much dominant than English. :)

In all the world.

Other than that, there were capitulations.

A capitulation is a treaty or unilateral contract by which a sovereign state relinquishes jurisdiction within its borders over the subjects of a foreign state. As a result, the foreign subjects are immune, for most civil and criminal purposes, from actions by courts and other governmental institutions in the state that makes the capitulation.

Capitulations of the Ottoman Empire were contracts between the Ottoman Empire and European powers, particularly France. Turkish capitulations, or ahdnames, were generally bilateral acts whereby definite arrangements were entered into by each contracting party towards the other, not mere concessions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitulation_(treaty)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitulations_of_the_...

France and Italy were the two *big* powers right there in the Mediterranean basin -- right where Turkey is too. When the Ottoman Empire began to pay a little more attention to the West (it took a while), those were the two big powers (although Italy was not yet a unified country...) that the Turks paid most attention to, in terms of commerce, warfare, and *some* kind of attempt to come to grips with the West and its civilizations. French used to be much more important, internationally, as a language than it is nowadays as well. French was generally known (everywhere) as 'the language of diplomacy.'