The man who conquered Vonitsa for the Ottoman empire was Gedik Ahmed Pasha. He may have been of Serbian, Albanian, or Greek descent. Sultan Mehmed II entrusted him with some of the era’s most challenging campaigns. He defeated the Karamanids, one of the strongest dynasties in Anatolia (present day Turkey) and conquered numerous Genoese strongholds in the Crimea. Mehmed II considered himself the inheritor of the Roman Empire and planned the conquest of Italy. Gedik Ahmed Pasha was sent to the heel of Italy and besieged the city of Otranto. When the Ottomans breached the walls, more than 12,000 citizens were massacred. The admiral was executed in 1482, on the orders of the new sultan, Bayezid II, on the suspicion that he was conspiring against him.