I've read a couple of texts, including on wikipedia, that claims that the Ottoman sultans kill or imprison their own brothers for life to remove rival claims for the throne.
In the Ottoman Empire a policy of judicial royal fratricide was introduced by Sultan Mehmet II whose grandfather Mehmed I had to fight a long and bloody civil war against his brothers (which brought the empire near to destruction) to take the throne. When a new Sultan ascended to the throne he would imprison all of his surviving brothers and kill them by strangulation with a silk cord as soon as he had produced his first male heir. The largest killing took place on the succession of Mehmed III when 19 of his brothers were killed and buried with their father.
That sounds too barbaric, even for the medieval age - I suppose this practice didn't actually make it until after WW I.
Is there any historically accurate evidence that this claim is correct? If it is true, is there any information as to what extent this was implemented, and what the other members of the family, the people, and the Islamic scholars said?