Young Turks

Young Turks, coalition of various reform groups that led a revolutionary movement against the authoritarian regime of Ottoman sultan Abdülhamid II, which culminated in the establishment of a constitutional government. After their rise to power, the Young Turks introduced programs that promoted the modernization of the Ottoman Empire and a new spirit of Turkish nationalism. Their handling of foreign affairs, however, resulted in the dissolution of the Ottoman state.

In 1889 a group of students in the Imperial Medical Academy in Istanbul initiated a conspiracy against Abdülhamid that spread rapidly to other colleges in the city. When the plot was uncovered, many of its leaders fled abroad, mainly to Paris, where they prepared the groundwork for a future revolution against Abdülhamid. Among the most notable of the liberal émigrés was Ahmed Rıza, who became a key spokesman for the influential Young Turk organization known as the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which advocated a program of orderly reform under a strong central government and the exclusion of all foreign influence. A major rival faction was formed by Prince Sabaheddin. His group, called the League of Private Initiative and Decentralization, espoused many of the same liberal principles as those propounded by the CUP, but, unlike the latter, it favoured administrative decentralization and European assistance to implement reforms.

Although the CUP and the League played a significant role in disseminating and stimulating liberal thought, the actual impetus for the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 came from groups within the empire, particularly from discontented members of the III Army Corps in Macedonia. Many young officers of the corps garrisoned at Salonika (now Thessaloníka, Greece) organized to form the Ottoman Liberty Society in 1906. This secret revolutionary group merged with the CUP in Paris the following year, bringing to the Young Turk ideologists the command of the III Army Corps. Later in 1907 the CUP and the League of Private Initiative and Decentralization agreed, though reluctantly, to work together to achieve their common goal.

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On July 3, 1908, Maj. Ahmed Niyazi of the 3rd Corps led a revolt against the provincial authorities in Resna. Other conspirators soon followed his example, and the rebellion rapidly spread throughout the empire. Unable to rely on government troops, Abdülhamid announced on July 23 the restoration of the 1876 constitution and recalled parliament. The Young Turks had succeeded in establishing a constitutional government, but their deep-seated ideological differences resurfaced and prevented them from taking effective control of that government until 1913, when the CUP under new leaders—the triumvirate of Talât Paşa, Cemal Paşa, and Enver Paşa—set itself up as the real arbiter of Ottoman politics.

While in power, the Young Turks carried out administrative reforms, especially of provincial administration, that led to more centralization. They were also the first Ottoman reformers to promote industrialization. In addition, the programs of the Young Turk regime effectuated greater secularization of the legal system and provided for the education of women and better state-operated primary schools. Such positive developments in domestic affairs, however, were largely overshadowed by the disastrous consequences of the regime’s foreign policy decisions. An overly hasty appraisal of Germany’s military capability by the Young Turk leaders led them to break neutrality and enter World War I (1914–18) on the side of the Central Powers. Ottoman troops made an important contribution to the Central Powers’ war effort, fighting on multiple fronts. In 1915, members of the Young Turk government directed Ottoman soldiers and their proxies in Eastern Anatolia, near the Russian front, to deport or execute millions of Armenians in an event that later came to be known as the Armenian Genocide.

Upon the end of the war, with defeat imminent, the CUP cabinet resigned on October 9, 1918, less than a month before the Ottomans signed the Armistice of Mudros.