Young Turks

International Ataturk-Alatoo University

• The Young Turks (Turkish: Jön Türkler ) were a coalition of various groups favouring reformation of administration of the Ottoman Empire. The movement was against an absolute power of the Ottoman monarch. They were in favour with short lived constitution-Kanun-i-Esasi. Culmination of their success was along with Young Turk Revolution and the second constitutional era in 1908.• The Young Turks were members of progressive society.

They were not only politicians, but also artists, scientists and etc.• They were modernists, liberals and westernizers.

Background• Like other revolutionary societies, 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 1976 was abolished and the First constitutional era brought to a close by Abdul Hamid II in 1878 after only two years. The Young Turks favoured a re-instatement of the Ottoman Parliament and the 1876 constitution, written by the progressive Midhat Pasha

In 1889…• 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 Riza, who became a key spokesman for the Committee of Union and Progress influential Young Turk organization known as the (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 Initiatives 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.

Opposition congresses• The First Congress of Ottoman Opposition was held on 4 February

1902, at 20:00, at the house of Germain Antoin Lefevre-Pontalis, member of the Intitut de France. The opposition was performed in compliance with the French government. Closed to the public, there were 47 delegates present. The Armenians wanted to have the conversations held in French, but other delegates rejected this proposition.• The Second Congress of Ottoman Opposition took place in Paris,

France, in 1907. Opposition leaders including Ahmed Riza, Sabahaddin bey, and Khachatur Malumian of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation were in attendance. The goal was to unite all the parties, including the Young Turks' Committee of Union and Progress, in order to bring about the revolution.

Pre-revolution• 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 (OFS) was established in Thesolonica by Mehmed Talaat. The OFS actively recruited members from the Third Army base, among them Major Ismail Enver. 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.

YTRevolution• 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. The ruling House of Osman was forced to accept this idea, although for quite a while they were able to subvert its implementation.

• However, eventually, signs were showing that this policy game was coming to an end. On May 13, 1908, the leadership of the Committee of Union and Progress, 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. On June 12, 1908, the Third Army, which was in Macedonia, began its march towards the Palace in Constantinople. Although initially resistant to the idea of giving up absolute power, Abdul Hamid was forced on July 24, 1908, to restore the constitution, beginning the Second

Second constitutional era• The unity among the Young Turks that originated from

the Young Turk Revolution began to splinter in face of the realities of the ongoing dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, especially with the onset of the Balkan Wars in 1912.

Middle East theatre of war• On November 2, 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered WWIon the side of the Central

Powers. The Middle Eastern Theatre of WWI 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 Young Turks, through highly secret diplomatic negotiations, led the Ottoman Empire to ally itself with Germany. The Young Turks needed 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, and since 1881, the administration of the defaulted Ottoman foreign debt had been in European hands. During the War, the Young Turk empire was "virtually an economic colony on the verge of total collapse."

• At the end of the War, with the collapse of Bulgaria and Germany’s capitulation• Talaat Pasha and the CUP ministry resigned on October 13, 1918, and the Armistice of

Mudros, was signed aboard a British battleship in the Aegean Sea. On November 2, Enver, Talaat and Djemal, along with their German allies, fled from Istanbul into exile.

Ideologies• Liberalism

• Materialism and positivism• Another 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, as the Ottoman Empire had not experienced the Enlightenment in the same way that Western Europe had. 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 rrevolution of 1908, they were severely denounced by the Ulema, who accused them of "trying to change Islam into another form and create a new religion while calling it Islam".

• 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, CUP, is believed to be inspired by leading positivist Auguste Compte's motto Order and Progress. Positivism also served as a base for the desired strong government.[

• Centralized government• After the Committee of Union and Progress grabbed power in the 1913 coup, 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’s Tanzimat reforms under sultan Mahmud II. Many of the original Young Turks rejected this idea, especially those that had formed the Freedom and Accord party against the CUP.[5] Other opposition parties against the CUP like Private Enterprize and Decentralization Association and the Arab Ottoman Party for Administrative Decentralization, both of which made opposition to the CUP’s centralization their main agenda.

• Nationalism• In regards to nationalism, 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 Riza chose to replace the term "Ottoman" with "Turk", shifting the focus from Ottoman nationalism to Turkish nationalism.

Prominent Young Turks• The prominent leaders and ideologists included:• Pamphleteers and activists

• Yusuf Akchura, a Tatar journalist with a secular national ideology, who was against Ottomanism and supported separation of church and state

• Ayetullah Bey• Osman Hamdi bey, an Ottoman-Greek painter and owner of the first specialized art school in Istanbul

(founded 1883)• Emmanuel Carrassi Efendi, a lawyer and a member of the prominent Sephardic Jewish Carrassi family• Mehmet Cavit bey, a Donmen from Thessolonica, Jewish by ancestry but Muslim by religion since the

17th century, who was Minister of Finance; he was hanged for treason in 1926• Abdulah Cevdet, a supporter of biological materialism and secularism• Marcel Samuel Raphael Cohen (aka Tekin Alp), born to a Jewish family in Salonica under Ottoman control

(now Thesalonici, Greece), became one of the founding fathers of Turkish nationalism and an ideologue of Pan-Turkism

• Agah Efendi, founded the first Turkish newspaper and, as postmaster, brought the postage stamp to the Ottoman Empire

• Ziya Gokalp, a Turkish nationalist from Diyarbakir, publicist and pioneer sociologist, influenced by modern Western European culture

• Talaat Pasha , whose role before the revolution is not clear• Ahmed Riza, worked to improve the condition of the Ottoman peasantry; he served as agricultural

minister, and later as education minister

• Military officers • Ahmed Niyazi Bey• Enver pasha• Subhi Bey Abaza • Resat Bey

The End…

The founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, is quoted on the front page of the 1 August 1926 The Los Angeles Exiner as denouncing the Young Turks and especially the CUP (the "Young Turk Party"):

These left-overs from the former 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 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.As to the fate of the Three Pashas, two of them, Talaat Pasha and Djemal Pasha, were assassinated

by Armenian nationals shortly after the end of WWI while in exile in Europe during Operation Nemesis, a revenge operation against perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide. Soghomon Teghlirian, whose family was killed in the Armenian Genocide, assassinated the exiled Talaat Pasha in Berlin and was subsequently acquitted by a German jury. Djemal Pasha was similarly killed by Stepan Dzagikian, Bedros Der Boghosian, and Ardashes Kevorkian for “crimes against humanity" in Tbilisi, Georgia. The third pasha, Encer Pasha, was killed in fighting against the Red Army near Baldzhuan in Tajikistan (then Turkistan).