Young Turks

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This article refers to the Turkish nationalist constitutionalist society. For other uses, please see Young Turks (disambiguation).

The Young Turks (Turkish Jöntürk (singular), Jöntürkler (plural), from French Jeunes Turcs) were a Turkish patriotic constitutionalist society, officially known as the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) — in Turkish İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti — whose leaders led a rebellion against Sultan Abdul Hamid II (who was officially deposed and exiled in 1909). They ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1908 until the end of World War I in November 1918.

1 History
2 See also
3 Further reading
4 External links

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History

The Young Turks had their origins in secret societies of progressive university students and military cadets, driven underground along with all political dissent after the constitution was abrogated by the Sultan. Like their European forerunners, such as the carbonari of the Italian Risorgimento, they typically formed cells, of which only one member might be connected to another cell. From the spontaneous bloodless revolution in Saloniki that led to the old pasha's resignation, the CUP was a force to be reckoned with.

In 1913, as the government was losing the Second Balkan War, the CUP seized power. The CUP-led government was headed by the minister of the interior/Grand Vizier, Mehmed Talat Pasha (1874–1921). Working with him were the minister of war Ismail Enver, (1881–1922) and the minister of the navy Ahmed Djemal, (1872–1922). Until German archives were opened, historians treated the CUP government as a dictatorial triumvirate; now it appears that the party was riven by internal dissent and loosely guided by a large directorate of the party's central committee. Ottoman territory was splintering away at the edges: Bosnia-Herzegovina annexed by Austria-Hungary (1908), Libya and the island of Rhodes by Italy (1912), a rebellion in Albania, and rumors of French designs on Syria. With the example of Egypt as a warning, the Young Turks sought to modernize the Empire's communications and transportation networks (which still relied on camel caravans), without putting themselves in the hands of European conglomerates and non-Muslim bankers. Europeans already owned the paltry railroad system (5,991 km of single-track railroads in the whole of the Ottoman dominions in 1914) and since 1881 administration of the defaulted Ottoman foreign debt had been in European hands. The Ottomon Empire was virtually an economic colony.

Rebuffed elsewhere by the major European powers, the Young Turks, through highly secret diplomatic negotiations, led the Ottoman Empire to ally herself with Berlin during World War I. The Empire's role as an ally of the Central Powers is part of the history of that war. With the collapse of Bulgaria and Germany's capitulation, the Ottoman Empire was isolated. On October 13, 1918, Talat and the CUP ministry resigned, and an armistice was signed aboard a British battleship in the Aegean Sea at the end of the month. On November 2, Enver, Talat and Cemal, with their German allies, escaped from Istanbul into exile.

Public assurances of equal treatment for the Empire's non-Muslim minorities that had been given in 1908 evaporated once the Young Turks were in power. Even among the Islamic majority, the Turkish-speaking segment of the Empire quickly emerged pre-eminent. In 1915 the Young Turks executed a number of Arab nationalist intellectuals in Damascus and Beirut. Since 1908, "Young Turks" has become a nickname for any brash group of young usurpers and subsequently passed into general usage: eg. "Ash were the Young Turks of the Britpop scene".

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