Young person-Turks - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

Genesis and objective of the movement

CUP sees the day the July 14th 1889, centenary day of the Storming of the Bastille . The purpose of the movement was first to restore the Othoman Constitution of 1876. The movement was mainly made up of Turks but was combined with nationalist parties reformists other people Othoman like the Armenian Dashnak, then was turned over against them to promote the advent of a homogeneous Turkish state from a religious point of view, whose translation concretes was the deportation and persecutions of the Armenians in 1915. It on several occasions directed the government of the Ottoman Empire between 1908 and the end of the First World War in 1918.

The Young Turks find their origins in the political and military failures of the Othoman government, and its progressive decline throughout the 19th century. They recruit their members in the secret societies of the students progressists of the universities and the military juniors, who wanted to modernize and occidentalize basic in roof the company, by dissociating “Old man-Turks”. Their organization is mainly made up of intellectuals and officers. Influenced by the Freemasonry, the formalities of admissions inspired by the ritual maconnic. The candidate had the bandaged eyes and was received by three masked individuals and carrying a Pèlerine. The candidate must successively lend oath by posing the hand on the Coran and a sword. He swears to ensure a better future the country, while obeying all the orders blindly coming from association.

The Young Turks reproached the sultan for not having been able to resist the foreign pressures and they also denounced its authoritarianism and its brutality.

In 1908, the sultan worries about the agitation which reigns in the empire and sends agents to inquire into the Young Turks in Macedonia. Officers member of the CUP know themselves discovered by the agents of the sultan and they launch a guerilla against him with the support of part of the population. Niazi one of the leaders of the CUP leaves with his unit the town of Resne and is cut off in the mountains from southernmost Macedonia. Enver Pasha hurries to publish a proclamation denouncing the authoritarianism of the sultan and announcing the beginning of the revolution. Nothing was organized, the CUP counted hardly three hundred members, the chiefs did not have any plan and the troops not instructions. The reaction of the army remained unknown. The sultan dispatched a regiment to fight the rebels, but the soldiers fraternized with the insurrectionists. It gave the order then to send a division of elite in Macedonia, but she refused to go. Thereafter it called special units of the interior of the Anatolia, but as for the other units, they were solidarized with the revolutionists.

The sultan called the “fox red” reacts with promptitude, it announces the handing-over in force of the constitution of 1876, the creation of a constitutional government, rejects all the faults of the mode on his advisers and greets the revolutionists whom it officially regards as the savers of the country. Enver Pasha promulgates the new constitution top of a balcony of Olympia Palace the July 19th 1908.

Thanks to the restoration of this constitution the empire opens at one new era and moves towards a constitutional and liberal mode, equipped with a Parliament and with the reintegration with the Chrétiens in the national community. Parties are formed for elections, and in fact the CUP gains high the hand the elections.

The chiefs of the CUP are then given for principal spot to regenerate the Empire by applying institutions copied to him to those of the Western States. But the ethnic, social structure and nun of the Empire did not have anything similar with that of the other European states, the biggest problem for them were that of the national minorities. It was impossible for the Young person-Turks to join together the Greek, the Turks, the Arménie NS, the Kurdish and the Arab within the same state. Norbert Von Bischoff affirms that “Each one of these men belonged to a world physical and spiritual different from that of its neighbors and did not have, with his colleagues, any common idea on the form and the mission of the State to create. ” Nevertheless, the Young person-Turks did not have time to apply their program, a cloud of old politicians exiled by Abdülhamid had returned, there among had been top dogs, princes, ministers, senior officials… They benefitted from the elections for évincer the revolutionists of the CUP, and to take the control of the party. The craftsmen of the revolution left it then Anatolia, Niazi in Albania or it was made assassinate, and Enver with Berlin or it had been named military attach3e. Corruption was then with its roof, and of the mutinies burst in Albania and Arabia. Six months after the promulgation of the constitution, the situation was worse than it had never been it.

In April 1909 noting that anarchy grew of day in day, of the partisans of the sultan found their insurance. They dispatched everywhere priests and hodjas to prevent that the goal of the Young person-Turks was the destruction of the Islam and of the Califat. The regiments of the garrison of Istanbul were mutinèrent and of the Islamiste S and the juniors by the army tried to carry out a Contre-révolution to dissolve inter alia the Parliament and to stop several members of the CUP. They claimed the return of the arbitrary capacity of the Sultan, the abolition of the constitution and the installation of a hard islamist mode. The situation was then very serious for the CUP which had been just made expel of Istanbul, the officers then called the army of Macedonia directed by an Arab general of origin , Mahmoud Chevket. It gave the order to the second and with the third army to go on Istanbul, it penetrated there the April 24th 1909. Returned Enver of any haste of Berlin ordered the detachment of the cavalry of the first mixed division, as for Mustafa Kemal it occupied the functions of chief of staff. It is possible that the Sultan handled this islamist opposition, in particular the students of the Softa , spearhead of the opposition. The sultan Abdülhamid II is then made intern in the Allatini villa with Salonique and it is replaced by his brother Mehmed V (1909 - 1918) who will not have any real capacity, marking the end of the Othoman absolute monarchy.

The Young Turks then return to the Ottoman Empire his constitution, and give him a currency borrowed from the France: “Freedom, Equality, Fraternité”, which initially lets hope for a better future with the minorities of the Empire.

The Young person-Turks arrive at the capacity

With the example of the Egypt like warning, the Young person-Turks had to modernize the communications of the Empire and the grid systems (which were always based on caravans of camels) without placing itself between the hands of the conglomerates and the European bankers. Europeans had already the network railways (5.991 kilometers of railroads to single rail in the totality of the territories of the Ottoman Empire in 1914), and since 1881 the administration of the foreign debt had been transferred from the Ottoman Empire, the sick man of Europe to the hands of Europeans. The Ottoman Empire was practically at the time only a European colony economic.

The Ottoman Empire crumbled in the Balkans, the Austria-Hungary had benefitted from the disorganization of the Empire to annex the Bosnia-Herzégovine in 1908. The Libya and the island of Rhodos were to be annexed by the Italy in 1912, of the rebellions took place in Albania, which was going to proclaim its independence in 1912. Rumors of French unloading in Syria circulated. Lastly, the Bulgaria was going to proclaim its independence and the Crete to be attached to the Greece.

After the release of the First Balkan war, the Ottoman Empire was in danger, the Serb , the Greeks and the Bulgarian ones threatened to invade the country. After several pushed back attacks, a dishonouring armistice of peace was signed between the Ottoman Empire and the allies. Bulgaria required the restitution of Andrinople which she regarded as Bulgare. After knowledge of these conditions, the Ottoman Empire was divided and two camps clashed. There were on a side the partisans of the peace carried out by the top dog Kiamil Pasha who was favorable to the restitution of Turkey-red cotton and other a certain number of officers who found this treaty dishonouring and unacceptable. But the military troops which could not of it any more a war, wished only one thing, peace. Mutinies burst then within the army, nobody was not able to put an end to the chaos which reigned then in the country.

Enver Pasha which was in station in Libya returned in urgency to Istanbul. He convened the management committee of “Union and Progress” and with radical officers he decided to seize the power, he invades the imperial palace and killed with end carrying the Minister for the war Nazim, and drives out Kiamil Pasha and the members of the cabinet. After having reversed the government, it even constituted a triumvirate made up of him, Talaat Pasha and Cemal Pasha while Mahmoud Chevket became top dog. The triumvirate was then made grant the full powerss by a terrorized room and put the Parliament on vacation. A group of politician protested against the authoritative intrigues of Enver, they were made stop and hang. As for the mutinies, they were made crush in blood.

Once the restored order, the new government pushed back the conditions of peaces presented by the Balkan States.

After a first military defeat, Andrinople passed to the hands the Bulgarian ones, but following the second Balkan war between the allies, the Ottoman Empire benefitted from it to take again the city. The Young Turks were then considered as hero by the Turks of the city. In the middle of the festivities, the top dog Mahmoud Chevket was made assassinate.

Government CUP was then directed by the Minister of Interior Department and large Vizier (Prime Minister) Talaat Pasha (1874 - 1921). Worked with him the Minister for the war Enver Pasha (1881 - 1922) and the Minister for the navy Cemal Pasha (1872 - 1922).

Enver Pasha provided that a war was going soon to burst, and in 1913 the Ottoman Empire bought weapons and warships and approached Berlin. The Othoman army whose reorganization was then entrusted to the Germans was summoned by the Minister for the war to accelerate this one. Berlin then replaced the baron von Marschall by the ambassador von Wangenheim. The German staff sent to Istanbul an important military mission, ordered by the general Liman von Sanders. He was named general inspector of the Othoman army, while Goltz Pasha accepted the command of the army corps of the Black Sea. The Liman general placed colonel Bronsart von Schellendorf at Enver like adviser technical, the colonel Kress von Kressenstein at Djemal, as Head of State major while the Kannengiesser general dealt with the repairing of artillery and the forts. At the end of 1913, the German seizure on the Turkish army was total.

Pushed back by the European powers, the Young Turks brought, at the end of secret diplomatic negotiations, the Ottoman Empire to be combined with Berlin during the First World War, in the hope to reconquer the provinces of the East (Kars, Ardahan and Batum), lost with the profit of the Russian empire at the time of the war of 1877-78. The role of the empire as combined central powers strongly influenced this war.

In 1914 and 1915, the Russia invades Is Empire (the the Caucasus) with the assistance of volunteers and insurgent Armenian (Armenian pretext to exterminate the thereafter alive in the Empire). It stops however the war in 1917 because of the revolution Bolshevik, and a peace treaty is finally signed the March 3rd 1918 between the Ottoman Empire and Russia, the Traité of Brest-Litovsk which ensures the evacuation of the provinces of the East Anatolia N and the return of Ardahan, of Batoum and Kars, annexed by Russia at the time of the Traité of Berlin of 1878.

In 1917 the British take the towns of Baghdad and Jerusalem, and their Arab allies, with the promise of creation of an Arab Kingdom after the war made with the emir Hussein of Mecque, seize Damas.

With the collapse and the capitulation of the Bulgaria and Germany, the Ottoman Empire is found insulated on the European scene, its fine approaches.

The Young Turks made deep reforms, thus supplementing the Tanzimat, the efforts of the government were directed towards a fast modernization of the company, in particular in the fields of the urbanization, agriculture, industry, the secularization of the state and the emancipation of the women. They laicize the schools and the courts and of the schools are especially open for the women of the Empire, of which the rights also progress. The first years of governorship were most democratic of all the history of the Ottoman Empire.

Interior disorders of the party

The Young person-Turks had at the beginning a liberal policy, the purpose of they were to found a reformed and multiethnic state. Then, during the revolution, the unionistic ones (counterparts of the Jacobins French) and the federalists disputed the fate of the country. The federalists wanted a federal empire in order to ensure the rallying of the minorities the Othoman citizenship. The unionistic ones wanted as for them a centralized and unit empire.

The liberal federalists are shown by the population to have sold off the empire after the defeat of the two Balkan wars. The assassination of the top dog Mahmoud Chevket the June 21st 1913, mark the final defeat of the federalists.

The unionistic ones gain in legitimacy and are made the guards of a unit structure of the Empire. The capacity passes to a Triumvirat consisted Talaat, Cemal and Enver. A strict Nationalisme is then set up, an increased repression strikes the " then; minorités" (majority in many provinces), and the triumvirate leads the Ottoman Empire declining to make several massacres and a genocide.

Armenian genocide

End of the party

The October 13rd 1918 the Talaat minister and party in power CUP resign and leave the capacity; the Armistice of Moudros is signed on board a British ship at the end of October in the Aegean Sea. The Othoman government is then placed under the authority of the European powers directed by the British. The November 2nd Talaat and Cemal flee of Istanbul with their German allies for a long exile.

The war criminals young Turkish will be judged by Othoman courts, Talaat, Cemal and Enver condemned to died in 1919 for the extermination of whole people constituting a distinct community , with this precision in the indictment: the deportations " were conceived and decided by the Central committee of Ittihat" (the Committee Union and Progress).

Soghomon Tehlirian, whose family was killed in the Armenian genocide, will assassinate Talaat which had been exiled with Berlin and will be discharged later by the County court of Berlin during a judgment which will constitute the starting point of the development of the legal concept of Génocide. Cemal pareillement will pareillement be killed by Stepan Dzaghikian, Bedros Der Boghosian and Ardashes Kevorkian with Tbilissi, in Georgia. Enver as for him will be killed in a battle against the Red Army close with Baldzhuan in the Tadjikistan.

In August 1920 the sultan Mehmed VI sign the Treated of Sevres which devotes the dismemberment then the division and the end of the Ottoman Empire after six centuries of existence.

A new Turkish nationalist movement emerges then in Anatolia under the direction of Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), which carries out a war of independence and puts an end to the European occupation. It expels the Greek occupying forces , British, French and Italy then it does not make sign another European treaty the Traité of Lausanne in 1923. This new treaty returns null and void that of Sevres, buries the recognition of independent entities Armenian and Kurdish and endorses reciprocal ethnic purifications between all the territories of the area, mainly between the Ottoman Empire and Greece: 1.400.000 orthodoxe Christian Othoman citizens, " Grecs" , are expelled of Moslem Turkey and 400.000 Greek citizens, " Turcs" , of Greece after the gréco-Turkish war of 1923. The Ottoman Empire formally ceases existing in 1923, replaced by the republic of Turkey directed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

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