They clearly succeeded. It's very French. Veeeeery French. Also kind of gaudy. The whole thing cost 35 tons of gold. 14 tons of that went into gold leaf on the ceilings. The rest went into a whole bunch of clocks and unnecessary marble scrollwork.
Walking through the palace I couldn't help but think of all the better uses to which the Ottomans could have put that money. The Janissary corps had just been disbanded about 20 years before the palace was built, and the military was still in shambles and in no way capable of competing with the Europeans. With the benefit of hindsight, we can say that the sultans should have spent their money preparing for WWI. Yet even without hindsight, it shouldn't have been hard to realize that there was going to be a major military shakeup in Europe. There were all kinds of ways the Ottoman Empire could have gotten itself ready to take advantage of that - industrialization, military modernization, encouraging the growth of a populace above the level of peasant, whatever. All of these are legitimate ways the Ottomans could have imitated European grandeur in a constructive manner. Just about the only investment that wouldn't help was building a giant palace. In the history of the world no one has ever won a war by outpalacing their opponent.
This frustrating train of thought brought to mind the stupid Byzantine wall renovation that's going on right now. They're still doing it! Forget the cool-looking but useless gestures and build yourself some bloody infrastructure, Turkey!
Of course, Dr. Shields pointed out that the U.S. is doing pretty much the same thing right now, ignoring the extremely obvious looming crises of tomorrow - a mounting need for alternative energy, brain (and, well, everything else) drain to other countries, etc - and wasting its time and money on really badly-thought-out wars and whatnot. So enough about the Ottoman obsession with useless monuments.
Specks of sand and planks, you know.
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