The Young Turks And The Ottoman Nationalities

The rise of nationalism at the end of the Ottoman Empire

First published in 1973, this book has become the definitive study of the "Young Turks," also known as the Committee of Union and Progress. Counting Turkish army officers as its members, the Young Turks sought to reform the Ottoman Empire by provoking a constitutional revolution against Sultan Ahmed Hamid II. Feroz Ahmad describes these events and the ensuing counterrevolution of 1909, including a discussion of the "Group of Saviour officers" who were determined to destroy the Young Turks. The Unionists were routed by the Ottoman armies during the First Balkan War and suffered great losses in Macedonia. But in 1913 they regained power in a coup led by the charismatic Enver Bey. Afterward the Young Turks abandoned the idea of a "union" and pursued a more moderate policy. Ahmad's book concludes with an examination of territorial losses and the consequences of six years of war on the Ottoman state.

*Includes pictures *Includes a bibliography for further reading In August 2017, Turkey's President Recip Tayyip Erdogan gave a directive to the Foreign Ministry to go into ravaged Syria and rescue an 87-year-old Turkish man stranded in Damascus by the civil war. The elderly gentleman lived his life simply and quietly. He disliked drawing attention to himself, and he was grieving for his wife who had just died. The man called himself Dundar Abdulkerim Osmanoglu, but many affixed the title Sehzade ("Prince") to his name, for he was Head of the imperial House of Osman and heir to the defunct throne of the Ottoman Empire. His ancestors had created an Empire that had lasted for over 600 years and caused the greatest rulers of both the Muslim East and the Christian West to tremble. Osmanoglu was the great grandson of Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1841-1918), who was notable for introducing constitutional government to the Ottoman Empire. He had been brought reluctantly to this act by a revolution guided by a group of political activists known as the Young Turks. They believed they could save the dying Ottoman state by instituting reforms that would transform the empire into a secular constitutional state on par with the Great Powers of Europe. They also believed that the path to such a change lay with Turkish nationalism rather than imperialism. Abdu Hamid did not share that vision, so he was eventually deposed. Erdogan is the political heir of the Young Turks. Turkey developed into a secular and seemingly Western state, a member of the NATO alliance and an aspirant for membership in the European Union, but Erdogan seems to be reaching back to the imperial past, and he appeals more to the authoritarianism of Abdul Hamid II than the liberalism of the Young Turks. Similarly, Erdogan's Justice and Development Party opposes the secularism that has dominated Turkish national life for almost 100 years. Dundar Ali has never expressed any desire to return to the throne of his ancestors - in fact, he did not wish to leave Damascus, where he had been born and where he worked. It is ironic then, that a great-grandson of the revolution has reached out to the great-grandson of the enemy of the revolution and embraced his legacy as his own. Dundar Ali now lives in Istanbul, the former imperial capital once known internationally as Constantinople. Interest in the former imperial family and the legacy of the Ottoman Empire is increasing within Turkey, encouraged by Erdogan, and there now seems to be a rivalry growing between secularists and Ottomanists, not unlike that which arose between the Young Turks and the Ottomanists in the 19th century. The empire's inclusiveness, which marked it as a direct successor of the Byzantine Empire, was most certainly challenged by an aging leadership, and the Ottoman Empire's inability to create a shared identity, a weak central state, and growing inner dissensions were some of the main factors explaining its long demise. Such a failure also explains the need for the creation of a new form of identity, which was ultimately provided by Mustafa Kemal, the founding father of modern Turkey, a firm critic of the Young Turks. As this all suggests, the story of the Young Turks and the last years of the Ottoman Sultanate is a complex and interesting one. It is the history of a state struggling to survive against seemingly impossible odds, featuring a long battle for the minds and souls of the inhabitants of a declining empire between nationalism and liberal imperialism. It is a struggle that has produced not only modern Turkey but several states in the Balkans and the Middle East as they exist today. The Young Turks were triumphant, but in many ways it was a Pyrrhic victory, because this triumph led to the further disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and its final collapse when they disastrously plunged the empire into the First World War.

Notwithstanding the advantages of physical power, the struggle for survival among societies is not merely a matter of serial armed clashes but of the nation's spiritual resources that in the end always decide upon the victory. In Europe, there indeed exist independent countries, insignificant from the point of view of the entire civilization, and born by sheer coincidence, yet, this coincidence, this fancy, or diplomatic ploy that created them can just as easily bring them to an end---the nations that count in the political calculations are only the enlightened ones. Therefore, our nation should not merely grow in power, strengthen its character, and foster in people the feeling of love for homeland, but also---inasmuch as it is possible---breath the fresh breeze of humanity's general progress, feed it to the nation, absorb its creative energy. Until now, we have trusted and lived only in the weary conditions, conditions devoid of health-giving elements---now, as a result the nation's heart beats too slowly and its mind works too tediously. We ought to open our windows to Europe, to the wind of continental change and allow it to air our sultry home, since as not all health comes from the inside, not all disease comes from the outside.

Arabs and Young Turks provides a detailed study of Arab politics in the late Ottoman Empire as viewed from the imperial capital in Istanbul. In an analytical narrative of the Young Turk period (1908-1918) historian Hasan Kayali discusses Arab concerns on the one hand and the policies of the Ottoman government toward the Arabs on the other. Kayali's novel use of documents from the Ottoman archives, as well as Arabic sources and Western and Central European documents, enables him to reassess conventional wisdom on this complex subject and to present an original appraisal of proto-nationalist ideologies as the longest-living Middle Eastern dynasty headed for collapse. He demonstrates the persistence and resilience of the supranational ideology of Islamism which overshadowed Arab and Turkish ethnic nationalism in this crucial transition period. Kayali's study reaches back to the nineteenth century and highlights both continuity and change in Arab-Turkish relations from the reign of Abdulhamid II to the constitutional period ushered in by the revolution of 1908. Arabs and Young Turks is essential for an understanding of contemporary issues such as Islamist politics and the continuing crises of nationalism in the Middle East.