TheYoung Turks (Ottoman Turkish:ژون تركلر,romanized: Jön Türkler, alsoكنج تركلرGenç Türkler) formed as aconstitutionalist broad opposition-movement in thelateOttoman Empire against theabsolutist régime of SultanAbdul Hamid II (r. 1876–1909). The most powerful organisation within the movement, and the most conflated,[clarification needed] was theCommittee of Union and Progress (CUP, founded in 1889), though its ideology, strategies, and membership continuously changed. By the 1890s, the Young Turks were mainly a loose and contentious network of exiled intelligentsia who made a living by selling their newspapers to secret subscribers. Beyond opposition, exiled writers andsociologists debated Turkey's place in theEast–West dichotomy.
Included in the opposition movement was a mosaic of ideologies, represented by democrats, liberals, decentralists,secularists,social Darwinists, technocrats, constitutional monarchists, and nationalists. Despite being called "the Young Turks", the group was of an ethnically diverse background; including Turks, Albanian,Aromanian, Arab, Armenian, Azeri, Circassian, Greek, Kurdish, and Jewish members.[a][1][2][3][4] Besides membership in outlawed political committees, other avenues of opposition existed in theulama,Sufi lodges, andmasonic lodges. By and large, Young Turks favored taking power away fromYıldız Palace in favour of constitutional governance. The movement was popular especially among young, educated Ottomans and military officers that wanted reforms. They believed that a social contract in the form of a constitution would fix the empire's problems with nationalist movements and foreign intervention by instillingOttomanism, or multi-cultural Ottoman nationalism.
In 1906, the Paris-based CUP fused with the Macedonia-basedOttoman Freedom Society under its own banner. The Macedonian Unionists prevailed against Sultan Abdul Hamid II in the 1908Young Turk Revolution.[5] With this revolution, the Young Turks helped to inaugurate theSecond Constitutional Era in the same year, ushering inan era of multi-party democracy for the first time in the country's history.[6] In power, the CUP implemented many secularizing and centralizing reforms, but was criticized for pursuing apro–Turkish ideology. In the wake of events which proved disastrous for the Ottoman Empire as a body-politic (such as the31 March Incident of April 1909, the1912 coup, and theBalkan Wars of 1912–1913), the country fell under the domination of a radicalized CUP following the 1913Raid on the Sublime Porte. With the strength of the constitution and of parliament broken, the CUP ruled the Ottoman Empire in a dictatorship, and orchestrated the entrance of the empire intoWorld War I in October 1914 on the side of theCentral Powers. Thegenocides of 1915 to 1917 against Ottoman Christians were masterminded within the CUP, principally byTalat Pasha,Enver Pasha,Bahaeddin Şakir, and others.
The termYoung Turk is now used to characterize an insurgent impatiently advocating reform within an organization,[7] andvarious groups in different countries have been designated "Young Turks" because of their rebellious or revolutionary nature.
The term "Young Turks" comes from the FrenchJeunes Turcs, which international observers tagged various Ottoman reformers of the 19th century. HistorianRoderic Davison states that there was not a consistent ideological application of the term; statesmen which wished to resurrect theJanissary corp andderebeys, conservative reformers ofMahmud II, and pro-Western reformers ofAbdul Mejid, are all referred to as the party ofJeunes Turcs by different observers. Davison concludes that a Young Turk party was identified in situations where an amorphous "Old Turk" faction was being confronted.[8]
TheYoung Ottomans, the liberal and Islamist opposition movement toFuad andAali Pasha's regime, were also known asJeunes Turcs, though they called themselvesYeni Osmanlılar, or New Ottomans. Historiographically, the group which became definitively known as the Young Turks was the opposition to SultanAbdul Hamid II which surfaced after 1889, theCommittee of Union and Progress being its standard bearer.
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, andmassacres against minorities. Constitutionalist opponents of his regime, came to be known as Young Turks.[11] 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.[12] Despite the nameYoung Turks, members were diverse in their religious and ethnic origins,[13][14][15] with many Albanians, Arabs, Armenians, Circassians, Greeks, Kurds, and Jews being members.[b][1][2][3][4]
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To organize the opposition, forward-thinking medical studentsIbrahim Temo,Abdullah Cevdet and others formed a secret organization named theCommittee 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 hisPositivism. They compromised with Union and Progress. Rıza being based in Paris, the organization was organized aroundMeşveret and its French supplemental.[16][17][18] 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.[19] The several ideological currents in the moment meant unity was hard to come by. Ahmet Rıza advocated for aTurkish nationalist and secularist agenda. Even though he denounced revolution, he had a more conservative and Islamist rival inMehmet Murat Bey ofMizan 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 ofEuropean influence.[20]
The CUP supportedKâmil Pasha's call for responsible government to return to theSublime Porte during the diplomatic crisis caused by theHamidian massacres.[21] In August 1896, cabinet ministers aligned with the CUP conspireda coup d'état to overthrow the sultan, but the plot was leaked to the palace before its execution. Prominent statesmen were exiled toOttoman Tripolitania andAcre. The year after, Unionist cadets of theMilitary Academy schemed to assassinate the Minister of Military Schools, and this plot was also leaked to authorities. In became known as the "Sacrifices of theŞeref" (ŞerefKurbanları) the largest single crackdown of the Hamidian era resulted in more than 630 high-profile arrests and exiles.[22]
Under pressure from Yıldız Palace, French authorities bannedMeşveret, though not the French supplemental, and deported Rıza and his Unionists in 1896. After settling inBrussels, 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.[23] After theOttoman 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 andSükuti. 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.[19][24]
In 1899, members of the Ottoman dynastyDamat Mahmud Pasha and his sonsSabahaddin and Lütfullah fled to Europe to join the Young Turks. However, Prince Sabahaddin believed that embracing the Anglo-Saxon values ofcapitalism andliberalism would alleviate the Empire's problems such as separatism from non-Muslim minorities such as theArmenians, alienating himself from the CUP.
Before the Ottoman opposition congress, which was held in the house ofGermain Antoin Lefevre-Pontalis [fr;sv] a member of theInstitut de France, on 4 February 1902, and was closed to the public, with the participation of 47 delegates the Young Turk Committee
TheFirst Congress of Ottoman Opposition [tr] was held on 4 February 1902, at the house of Germain Antoin Lefevre-Pontalis a member of theInstitut 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, ArmenianDashnaks andVergazmiya 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 andIsmail Kemal in the name of the majority mandate. However the organization was contentious and a coup plot in 1903 went nowhere. They later founded thePrivate Enterprise and Decentralization League [tr], 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.[citation needed]
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 multiculturalOttomanism, incumbentpan-Islamism, and voguepan-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.[25]
TheSecond Congress of Ottoman Opposition [tr] took place in Paris, France, on 22 December 1907. Opposition leaders includingAhmed Rıza,Sabahaddin Bey, andKhachatur Malumian of theDashnak 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.[27][28]
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.[citation needed] Finally, in 1908 in theYoung Turk Revolution, pro-CUP officers marched on Istanbul, forcing Abdulhamid to restore the constitution. Anattempted countercoup resulted in his deposition.
Young Turks flyer with the sloganLong live the fatherland, long live the nation, long live liberty written in Ottoman Turkish and French
In 1908, theMacedonian Question was facing theOttoman Empire.Tsar Nicholas II andFranz Joseph, who were both interested in the Balkans, started implementing policies, beginning in 1897, which brought on the last stages of theBalkanization 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 acceptthis 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 theOttoman 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 theSecond Constitutional Era of the Ottoman Empire.
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 theLiberty Party and later theFreedom and Accord Party.[29] 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 followingMahmud Shevket Pasha's assassination. They brought the Ottoman Empire intoWorld War I on the side of theCentral 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.[30] By 1913, the CUP banned all other political parties, creating a one party state. The Ottoman Parliament became arubber stamp and real policy debate was held within theCUP's Central Committee.
On 2 November 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers. TheMiddle 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 theAllies. Rebuffed elsewhere by the major European powers, the CUP, through highly secret diplomatic negotiations, led the Ottoman Empire to ally itself with Germany.
Scholars trace the genocide tolong-standing discrimination and land conflicts against Armenians in the Ottoman east, radicalizing after the1890s massacres and especially the Balkan Wars, when CUP leaders embraced ethnonationalist 'Turkification' and came to see the largeChristian minority instrategic 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 ofdemographic engineering and economic plunder led Young Turk leaders to portray Armenians as collectively guilty (afifth column) and to order mass deportations and annihilation to preventArmenian autonomy or independence.
Around 300,000 Armenians were forced to move southwards toUrfa and then westwards toAintab andMarash. In the summer of 1917, Armenians were moved to theKonya region in central Anatolia. By the end of World War I, up to 1,200,000 Armenians were forcibly deported fromtheir home vilayets. As a result, about half of the displaced died of exposure, hunger, and disease, or were victims of banditry and forced labor.[31]
In 2005, theInternational 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."[32][non-tertiary source needed]
The genocide of Assyrian civilians began during theOttoman occupation of Azerbaijan from January to May 1915, during which massacres were committed by Ottoman forces and pro-OttomanKurds.[33] Previously, many Assyrians were killed in the 1895massacres of Diyarbekir.[34] However the violence worsened after the 1908Young Turk Revolution, despite Assyrian hopes that the new government would stop promoting anti-Christian Islamism.[35][36]
The Sayfo occurred concurrently with and was closely related to the Armenian genocide.[37] Motives for killing included a perceived lack of loyalty among some Assyrian communities to the Ottoman Empire and the desire to appropriate their land.[35][36][33][38][39] At the1919 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 theLausanne Conference of 1922–1923.[39]
At the end of the War, with the collapse of Bulgaria andGermany's capitulation, Talaat Pasha and the CUP ministry resigned on 13 October 1918, and theArmistice of Mudros was signed aboard a British battleship in the Aegean Sea.[40] 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 withMustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk)stirring up nationalist sentiment in Anatolia, the Empire soon collapsed.
A guiding principle for the Young Turks was the transformation of their society into one in which religion played no consequential role, a stark contrast from the theocracy that had ruled the Ottoman Empire since its inception. However, the Young Turks soon recognized the difficulty of spreading this idea among the deeply religious Ottoman peasantry and even much of the elite. The Young Turks thus began suggesting that Islam itself was materialistic. As compared with later efforts by Muslim intellectuals, such as the attempt to reconcile Islam and socialism, this was an extremely difficult endeavor. Although some former members of the CUP continued to make efforts in this field after the revolution of 1908, they were severely denounced by theulema, who accused them of "trying to change Islam into another form and create a new religion while calling it Islam".[41][page needed]
Positivism, with its claim of being a religion of science, deeply impressed the Young Turks, who believed it could be more easily reconciled with Islam than could popular materialistic theories. The name of the society, Committee of Union and Progress, was inspired by leading positivistAuguste Comte's mottoOrder and Progress. Positivism also served as a base for the desired strong government.[41]
After the CUP took power in the1913 coup andMahmud Şevket Pasha's assassination, it embarked on a series of reforms in order to increase centralization in the Empire, an effort that had been ongoing since the last century'sTanzimat reforms under sultanMahmud II.[42] Many of the original Young Turks rejected this idea, especially those that had formed the Freedom and Accord Party against the CUP.[43] Other opposition parties against the CUP like Prince Sabahaddin'sPrivate Enterprise and Decentralization League [tr] and the ArabOttoman Party for Administrative Decentralization, both of which made opposition to the CUP's centralization their main agenda.
The Young Turks wished to modernize the Empire's communications and transportation networks without putting themselves in the hands of European bankers. Europeans already owned much of the country's railroad system,[citation needed] and since 1881, the administration of the defaulted Ottoman foreign debt had been in European hands. During the World War I, the empire under the CUP was "virtually an economic colony on the verge of total collapse."[9]
Regardingnationalism, the Young Turks underwent a gradual transformation. Beginning with the Tanzimat with ethnically non-Turkish members participating at the outset, the Young Turks embraced the official state ideology:Ottomanism. However, Ottoman patriotism failed to strike root during the First Constitutional Era and the following years. Many ethnically non-Turkish Ottoman intellectuals rejected the idea because of its exclusive use of Turkish symbols. Turkish nationalists gradually gained the upper hand in politics, and following the 1902 Congress, a stronger focus on nationalism developed. It was at this time that Ahmed Rıza chose to replace the term "Ottoman" with "Turk," shifting the focus from Ottoman nationalism toTurkish nationalism.[citation needed]
Marcel Samuel Raphael Cohen (akaTekin Alp), born to a Jewish family in Salonica under Ottoman control (nowThessaloniki, Greece), became one of the founding fathers ofTurkish nationalism and an ideologue ofPan-Turkism.
Agah Efendi, founded the first Turkish newspaper and, aspostmaster, brought the postage stamp to the Ottoman Empire (although he died in 1885, he was honored for founding the first Turkish newspaper).
These left-overs from the former [Committee of Union and Progress] Young Turk Party, who should have been made to account for the millions of our Christian subjects who were ruthlessly driven en masse from their homes and massacred, have been restive under the Republican rule. […] They have hitherto lived on plunder, robbery and bribery and become inimical to any idea, or suggestion to enlist in useful labor and earn their living by the honest sweat of their brow… Under the cloak of the [Progressive Republican Party] opposition party, this element, who forced our country into the Great War against the will of the people, who caused the shedding of rivers of blood of the Turkish youth to satisfy the criminal ambition of Enver Pasha, has, in a cowardly fashion, intrigued against my life, as well as the lives of the members of my cabinet.
HistorianUğur Ümit Üngör, in his bookThe Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, has claimed that the "Republican People's Party, which was founded by Mustafa Kemal, was the successor of CUP and continued ethnic cleansing policies of its predecessor in Eastern Anatolia until the year 1950. Thus, Turkey was transformed into an ethnically homogenous state."[46]: vii
^"young turk".Dictionary.com (10th ed.). HarperCollins Publishers. Retrieved27 January 2017.[...] an insurgent in a political party, especially one belonging to a group or faction that supports liberal or progressive policies [...] any person aggressively or impatiently advocating reform within an organization.
^Davison, Roderic (1965).Reform in the Ottoman Empire: 1856–1876. pp. 173–174.
^Ebüzziya, Ziyad."Ahmed Rıza"(PDF). Türk Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi 1989 Cilt 2.Archived(PDF) from the original on 6 December 2015. Retrieved1 December 2015.
Fisk, R (13 February 2007),The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, Vintage,ISBN978-1-4000-7517-1.
Gaunt, David; Atto, Naures; Barthoma, Soner O. (2017). "Introduction: Contextualizing the Sayfo in the First World War".Let Them Not Return: Sayfo – The Genocide Against the Assyrian, Syriac, and Chaldean Christians in the Ottoman Empire.Berghahn Books.ISBN978-1-78533-499-3.
Gaunt, David (2013). "Failed Identity and the Assyrian Genocide".Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands (illustrated ed.).Indiana University Press.ISBN978-0-253-00631-8.
Gaunt, David (2017). "Sayfo Genocide: The Culmination of an Anatolian Culture of Violence".Let Them Not Return: Sayfo – The Genocide Against the Assyrian, Syriac, and Chaldean Christians in the Ottoman Empire.Berghahn Books.ISBN978-1-78533-499-3.
Gaunt, David (2020). "The Long Assyrian Genocide".Collective and State Violence in Turkey: The Construction of a National Identity from Empire to Nation-State.Berghahn Books.ISBN978-1-78920-451-3.
Kieser, Hans-Lukas (26 June 2018),Talaat Pasha: Father of Modern Turkey, Architect of Genocide, Princeton University Press (published 2018),ISBN978-0-691-15762-7
Necati Alkan, "The Eternal Enemy of Islam: Abdullah Cevdet and the Baha'i Religion",Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Volume 68/1, pp. 1–20; online atBulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
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