Origins under the chairmanship of
Prince Sabahattin between 4–9 February 1902 Inspired by the
Young Italy political movement, the Young Turks had their origins in
secret societies of "progressive medical university students and military cadets," namely the
Young Ottomans, driven underground along with all political dissent after the
Constitution of 1876 was abolished and the
First Constitutional Era brought to a close by Sultan
Abdul Hamid II in 1878 after only two years. The Young Turks favoured a reinstatement of the
Ottoman Parliament and the 1876 constitution, written by the reformist
Midhat Pasha. Despite working with the Young Ottomans to promulgate a constitution, Abdul Hamid II dissolved the parliament by 1878 and returned to an absolutist regime, marked by extensive use of secret police to silence dissent, and
massacres against minorities. Constitutionalist opponents of his regime, came to be known as Young Turks. The Young Turks were a heterodox group of secular liberal intellectuals and revolutionaries, united by their opposition to the absolutist regime of Abdul Hamid and desire to reinstate the constitution. Despite the name
Young Turks, members were diverse in their religious and ethnic origins, with many Albanians, Arabs, Armenians, Circassians, Greeks, Kurds, and Jews being members.
Opposition To organize the opposition, forward-thinking medical students
Ibrahim Temo,
Abdullah Cevdet and others formed a secret organization named the
Committee of Ottoman Union, which grew in size and included exiles, civil servants, and army officers. In 1894,
Ahmed Rıza joined Ottoman Union, and requested it change its name to Order and Progress to reflect his
Positivism. They compromised with Union and Progress. Rıza being based in Paris, the organization was organized around
Meşveret and its French supplemental.'''' The CUP became the preeminent faction of the Young Turks once as absorbed other opposition groups and established contact with exiled intelligentsia, Freemasons, and cabinet ministers, to the point where European observers started calling them the "Young Turk Party". The society attempted several coup attempts against the government, much to the anti-revolutionary in Rıza's chagrin. Due to the danger in speaking out against absolutism, Young Turk activity shifted abroad. Turkish colonies were established in Paris, London, Geneva, Bucharest, and Cairo. The several ideological currents in the moment meant unity was hard to come by. Ahmet Rıza advocated for a
Turkish nationalist and secularist agenda. Even though he denounced revolution, he had a more conservative and Islamist rival in
Mehmet Murat Bey of
Mizan fame. Rıza also had to deal with the "
Activist" faction of the CUP that did push for a revolution. Other CUP branches often acted autonomously with their own ideological currents, to the point where the committee resembled more of an umbrella organization.
Meşveret (Rıza) called for the reinstatement of the constitution but without revolution, as well as a more centralized Turkish-dominated Ottoman Empire sovereign of
European influence. The CUP supported
Kâmil Pasha's call for responsible government to return to the
Sublime Porte during the diplomatic crisis caused by the
Hamidian massacres. In August 1896, cabinet ministers aligned with the CUP conspired
a coup d'état to overthrow the sultan, but the plot was leaked to the palace before its execution. Prominent statesmen were exiled to
Ottoman Tripolitania and
Acre. The year after, Unionist cadets of the
Military Academy schemed to assassinate the Minister of Military Schools, and this plot was also leaked to authorities. In became known as the "
Sacrifices of the Şeref" (Şeref
Kurbanları) the largest single crackdown of the Hamidian era resulted in more than 630 high-profile arrests and exiles. Under pressure from Yıldız Palace, French authorities banned
Meşveret, though not the French supplemental, and deported Rıza and his Unionists in 1896. After settling in
Brussels, the Belgian government was also pressured to deport the group a couple years later. The Belgian parliament denounced the decision and held a demonstration supporting the Young Turks against Hamidian tyranny. A congress in December 1896 saw Murat elected as chairman over Rıza and the headquarters moved to Geneva, sparking a schism between Rıza's supporters in Paris and Murat's supporters in Geneva. After the
Ottoman Empire's triumph over Greece in 1897 Sultan Abdul Hamid used the prestige he gained from the victory to coax the exiled Young Turks network back into his fold. After expelling Rıza from the CUP, Murat defected to the government, including Cevdet and
Sükuti. A wave of extraditions, more amnesties, and buy-outs, weakened an opposition organization already operating in exile. With trials organized in 1897 and 1899 against enemies of Abdul Hamid II, the Ottoman Empire was under his secure control. Though moral was low, Ahmet Rıza, who returned to Paris, was the sole leader of the exiled Young Turks network. In 1899, members of the Ottoman dynasty
Damat Mahmud Pasha and his sons
Sabahaddin and Lütfullah fled to Europe to join the Young Turks. However, Prince Sabahaddin believed that embracing the Anglo-Saxon values of
capitalism and
liberalism would alleviate the Empire's problems such as separatism from non-Muslim minorities such as the
Armenians, alienating himself from the CUP.
Schism over foreign intervention , on 4 February 1902, and was closed to the public, with the participation of 47 delegates the Young Turk Committee The was held on 4 February 1902, at the house of Germain Antoin Lefevre-Pontalis a member of the
Institut de France. The opposition was performed in compliance with the French government. Closed to the public, there were 47 delegates present. It included Rıza's Unionists, Sabahaddin's supporters, Armenian
Dashnaks and
Vergazmiya Hunchaks, and other Greek and Bulgarian groups. It was defined by the question of whether to invite foreign intervention for regime change in Constantinople to better minority rights; a majority which included Sabahaddin and his followers as well as the Armenians argued for foreign intervention, a minority which included Rıza's Unionists and the Activist Unionists were against violent change and especially foreign intervention. The Ottoman Freedom Lover's Committee, named after the eponymous 1902 congress, was founded by Prince Sabahaddin and
Ismail Kemal in the name of the majority mandate. However the organization was contentious and a coup plot in 1903 went nowhere. They later founded the , which called for a more decentralized and federalized Ottoman state in opposition to Rıza's centralist vision. After the congress, Rıza formed a coalition with the Activists and founded the Committee of Progress and Union (CPU). This unsuccessful attempt to bridge the divide amongst the Young Turks instead deepened the rivalry between Sabahaddin's group and Rıza's CPU. The 20th century began with Abdul Hamid II's rule secure and his opposition scattered and divided. Beyond this ideological rift, the Young Turk movement had three main ideological currents on what the state ideology of the Ottoman Empire should be: old-school multicultural
Ottomanism, incumbent
pan-Islamism, and vogue
pan-Turkism. After the revolution, non-Turkish and non-Muslim Young Turks ascribed themselves to their respective nationalist movements. For the Unionists that stayed with the CUP, the question of embracing (Anatolian) Turkism and then Westernization were on the docket.
Unionist homecoming in Macedonia The Young Turks became a truly organized movement with the CUP as an organizational umbrella. They recruited individuals hoping for the establishment of a
constitutional monarchy in the Ottoman Empire. In 1906, the
Ottoman Freedom Society was established in
Thessalonica by
Mehmed Talaat. The OFS actively recruited members from the
Third Army base, among them Major
Ismail Enver. The took place in Paris, France, on 22 December 1907. Opposition leaders including
Ahmed Rıza,
Sabahaddin Bey, and
Khachatur Malumian of the
Dashnak Committee were in attendance. The goal was to unite all the Young Turks and minority nationalist movements, in order to bring about a revolution to reinstate the constitution. They decided to put their differences aside and signed an alliance, declaring that Abdul Hamid had to be deposed and the regime replaced with a representative and constitutional government by any means necessary, without foreign interference. In September 1907, OFS announced they would be working with other organizations under the umbrella of the CUP. In reality, the leadership of the OFS would exert significant control over the CUP. Finally, in 1908 in the
Young Turk Revolution, pro-CUP officers marched on Istanbul, forcing Abdulhamid to restore the constitution. An
attempted countercoup resulted in his deposition.
Young Turk Revolution In 1908, the
Macedonian Question was facing the
Ottoman Empire. Tsar
Nicholas II and
Franz Joseph, who were both interested in the Balkans, started implementing policies, beginning in 1897, which brought on the last stages of the
Balkanization process. By 1903, there were discussions on establishing administrative control by Russian and Austrian advisory boards in the Macedonian provinces. Abdul Hamid was forced to accept
this reform package, although for quite a while he was able to subvert its implementation. However, eventually, signs were showing that this policy game was coming to an end. On 13 May 1908, the leadership of the CUP, with the newly gained power of its organization, was able to communicate to Sultan Abdul Hamid II the unveiled threat that "the [Ottoman]
dynasty would be in danger" if he were not to bring back the
Ottoman constitution that he had previously suspended since 1878. By June, Unionist officers of the Third Army mutinied and threatened to march on Constantinople. Although initially resistant to the idea of giving up absolute power, Abdul Hamid was forced on 24 July 1908, to restore the constitution, beginning the
Second Constitutional Era of the Ottoman Empire.
Aftermath by the leaders of the Ottoman
millets in 1908 forces entering
Istanbul in 1909 After the revolution, the Young Turks formalized their differences in ideology by forming political clubs. Two main parties formed: more liberal and pro-decentralization Young Turks formed the
Liberty Party and later the
Freedom and Accord Party. The Turkish nationalist and pro-centralization wing among the Young Turks remained in the CUP. The groups' power struggle continued until 1913, after the CUP took over following
Mahmud Shevket Pasha's assassination. They brought the Ottoman Empire into
World War I on the side of the
Central Powers during the war. During the parliamentary recess of this era, the Young Turks held their first open congress at Salonica, on September–October 1911. There, they proclaimed a series of policies involving the disarming of Christians and preventing them from buying property, Muslim settlements in Christian territories, and the complete Ottomanization of all Turkish subjects, either by persuasion or by the force of arms. By 1913, the CUP banned all other political parties, creating a one party state. The Ottoman Parliament became a
rubber stamp and real policy debate was held within the
CUP's Central Committee.
World War I On 2 November 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers. The
Middle Eastern theatre of World War I became the scene of action. The combatants were the Ottoman Empire, with some assistance from the other Central Powers, against primarily the British and the Russians among the
Allies. Rebuffed elsewhere by the major European powers, the CUP, through highly secret diplomatic negotiations, led the Ottoman Empire to ally itself with Germany.
Armenian genocide was the CUP government's systematic extermination of its Armenian subjects. The conflicts at the
Caucasus Campaign, the
Persian Campaign, and the
Gallipoli Campaign affected places where
Armenians lived in significant numbers. Before the declaration of war, Unionist emissaries asked
Ottoman Armenians at the
Armenian congress at Erzurum to facilitate the conquest of Transcaucasia by inciting an anti-Tsarist rebellion among the
Russian Armenians in the event of a Caucasian Front. Scholars trace the genocide to
long-standing discrimination and land conflicts against Armenians in the Ottoman east, radicalizing after the
1890s massacres and especially the Balkan Wars, when CUP leaders embraced ethnonationalist '
Turkification' and came to see the large
Christian minority in
strategic provinces as a threat to imperial survival. In World War I, military defeats, paranoia about alleged Armenian rebellion or collusion with Russia, and the goal of
demographic engineering and economic plunder led Young Turk leaders to portray Armenians as collectively guilty (a
fifth column) and to order mass deportations and annihilation to prevent
Armenian autonomy or independence. Around 300,000 Armenians were forced to move southwards to
Urfa and then westwards to
Aintab and
Marash. In the summer of 1917, Armenians were moved to the
Konya region in central Anatolia. By the end of World War I, up to 1,200,000 Armenians were forcibly deported from
their home vilayets. As a result, about half of the displaced died of exposure, hunger, and disease, or were victims of banditry and forced labour. In 2005, the
International Association of Genocide Scholars stated that scholarly evidence revealed the CUP "government of the Ottoman Empire began a systematic genocide of its Armenian citizens and unarmed Christian minority population. More than a million Armenians were exterminated through direct killing, starvation, torture, and forced death marches."
Assyrian genocide The genocide of Assyrian civilians began during the
Ottoman occupation of Azerbaijan from January to May 1915, during which massacres were committed by Ottoman forces and pro-Ottoman
Kurds. Previously, many Assyrians were killed in the 1895
massacres of Diyarbekir. However the violence worsened after the 1908
Young Turk Revolution, despite Assyrian hopes that the new government would stop promoting anti-Christian Islamism. The Sayfo occurred concurrently with and was closely related to the Armenian genocide. Motives for killing included a perceived lack of loyalty among some Assyrian communities to the Ottoman Empire and the desire to appropriate their land. At the
1919 Paris Peace Conference, the Assyro-Chaldean delegation said that its losses were 250,000 (about half the prewar population); they later revised their estimate to 275,000 dead at the
Lausanne Conference of 1922–1923.
Turkish War of Independence At the end of the War, with the collapse of Bulgaria and
Germany's capitulation, Talaat Pasha and the CUP ministry resigned on 13 October 1918, and the
Armistice of Mudros was signed aboard a British battleship in the Aegean Sea. On 2 November, Enver, Talaat and Cemal fled from Istanbul into exile. Following the war, the Freedom and Accord Party regained control over the Ottoman government and conducting a purge of Unionists. Freedom and Accord rule was short-lived, and with
Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) stirring up nationalist sentiment in Anatolia, the Empire soon collapsed. == Ideology ==