The Ottoman Foreign Service was well aware of Europe's taste for tulips. In 1651, nearly on the centennial of the bulb's introduction in the West, the Turks sent another Austrian ambassador back to Vienna with gifts, the most prized of which were 10 new varieties of the flower. In Europe they were promptly given names like Maximilianus, Roses of Leiden, Herzog Max, Van den Vilde and Belle Voir.


But although tulips were still special in Turkey, in the 17th century they werecertainly not considered something to throw one's fortune away on, as the foolish foreigners had. Not, that is, until the early 1700's, when what had happened in Amsterdam 100 years earlier occurred again in Istanbul: tulip madness.
Sultan Ahmet III, who ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1703 until 1730, liked flowers. More than that, he liked garden parties. It wasn't long before his reign began that the final Turkish seige of Vienna had failed, and the empire was forced into the humiliating Treaty of Karlowitz (1699). By the terms of this treaty the Empire was obliged to sign away to European powers large pieces of territory in the Balkans. Istanbul was anxious to forget about war and defeat. A peace party was in power and in the palace, and it was glad to encourage the Sultan in his taste for entertaining. Better flowers than battles, certainly. Society was ready to be diverted by a harmless fad, and the fad that appeared was the tulip.

http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/197703/turbans.and.tulips.htm