Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902-1908

by M. Şükrü Hanioğlu

This book will completely transform the standard interpretation of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, a watershed event in the late Ottoman Empire and a key to the emergence of the modern nation-states in the Middle East and Balkans.

Preparation for a Revolution is the first book on the Young Turk Revolution to draw on both the extensive memoirs and papers of the Young Turks and on the extensive diplomatic archives around the world. The author has plumbed not only the Ottoman Archives but collected documents from archives in Bonn, Berlin, Jerusalem, London, Paris, Rome, Athens, Sofia, Tirana, Bern, Geneva, Sarajevo, Cairo, Stockholm, and Tokyo. Breaking new ground, Hanioglu describes in detail how practical considerations led the Young Turks to sacrifice or alter many of their goals for social transformation. He tells a story rich in character and plot, and reveals the many factions and competing intellectual trends that marked this tumultuous period at the end of the Ottoman Empire.

Preparation for a Revolution will prove indispensable to anyone working on the political, intellectual, and social history of the Ottoman Empire and of the states that were established on its ruins.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Middle East

560 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

He received his B.A. in Political Science and Economics and his Ph.D. in Political Science from Istanbul University. During his graduate years he taught late Ottoman diplomatic and political history as an instructor in the Political Science Department. He wrote his Ph.D. thesis on the political activities and thought of one of the founders of the Committee of Union and Progress, Dr. Abdullah Cevdet.

In 1981 he decided to work on the history of the Committee of Union and Progress during the period from 1889 to 1908, i.e. from its foundation to the Young Turk Revolution. Since the CUP was an underground organization, it was essential to use the organization's own papers to write its history. For this purpose he visited Albania in 1982. After examining the CUP papers there, he published the first volume of this project in 1986. The second volume appeared in 1992, to be followed by a third and final volume. Besides the original CUP documents, he has used other archival sources, including those found in the Turkish, German, Austrian, French, Swiss, Italian, Greek, and British archives.

From 1981 to the present, he has taught courses on late Ottoman political and diplomatic history, late Ottoman history, and Turkish political life, at Istanbul and Bosphorus Universities and the Turkish Naval Academy. He has also taught and conducted seminars at Columbia University, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Michigan, and the University of Chicago. At Princeton he has taught NES 433 (The Near East and the Eastern Question since 1815,) NES 439 (Nationalist Movements from Bosnia to Central Asia: 19th and 20th Centuries,) NES 543, 544 (Ottoman Diplomatics: Paleography and Diplomatic Documents,) and NES 572 (Problems in Late Ottoman & Modern Republican History.)

He supervised fourteen Ph.D. dissertations at Istanbul University, all of them on Ottoman intellectual and diplomatic history. A few examples are: "The Journal Mecmua-i Funun and Its Role in the Ottoman Enlightenment," "Cemaleddin Efgani and His Impact on Turkish Intellectuals," and "Huseyin Kazim and Turkish Nationalism."

At Princeton he has supervised six Ph.D dissertations on Ottoman-Turkish History.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

M. Şükrü Hanioğlu’s Preparation for a Revolution is the sequel to his earlier work The Young Turks in Opposition and focuses on the period between the 1902 Congress of Ottoman Opposition and the conclusion of the 1908 Revolution. He makes more of an effort to highlight his argument this time, however, coming to some broad conclusions about how and why the nature of the movement transformed over a half-decade, although his book does dedicate significant attention to simply chronicling the various movements and machinations that led to the restoration of the Ottoman constitution.

Following a brief introduction that outlines his objectives, Hanioğlu resumes where his last book’s narrative left off and examines the actions of the Ottomanist and decentralist “majority” of Young Turks following the conclusion of the Congress. Finding itself under almost immediate attack from the palace, the author argues that the “majority” leaped into action and began planning for foreign intervention and the overthrow of the sultan. Their efforts failed, however, because they did not have the resources or clout to secure the intervention of a Great Power, its non-Turkish component made it susceptible to accusations that it was a separatist movement, and it was unable to make meaningful alliances with Armenians or Albanians that could have supported the cause. Their plot for a military coup d’état, meanwhile, failed due to their inability so procure sufficient funds, particularly following the death of their patron Damud Mahmud Pasha. The Turkist centralist “minority”, on the other hand, remained quiet and under the radar in order to build up its strength, emphasizing evolutionary change and rejecting activism. Their nominal leader, Ahmed Riza, opposed European intervention and believed that people could be educated towards change, leading to rift between the activist and non-activist factions. Hanioğlu claims that it was both sides’ belief in Turkism that kept them together.

After reviewing several groups that never allied strongly with either side, including the old CUP and the Jewish population, the author returns to the “majority” and chronicles their return, after a two year hiatus following the failed coup attempt, under the new title of the Committee for Progress and Union (CPU) and partnered with the League of Private Initiative led by Sabahaddin Bey. It is this organization, bolstered by its alliance with the Armenian Dashnaktsuitun, that has been credited with a series of successful mass revolts between 1905 and 1907. Hanioğlu argues, however, that these groups had limited influence over the revolts and that there was little central organization. Bahaeddin Sakir, however, experienced more success in his goal “to unite the Young Turks under a single banner and to form a revolutionary committee”. The two pillars of this movement were organization and activism and Sakir succeeded in establishing many external branches, which the author examines in great detail, outlining their development and weighing their potential and realized contribution to the Young Turks. They had less success establishing networks in Anatolia and, in particular, the capital. Through the establishment of these branches, the CPU defined its core as Islamic, anti-Western, and Turkist, although its multifaceted nature prevented it from espousing these tenets too publically or forcefully. Nonetheless, as Hanioğlu contends, “[b]y harnessing resentment toward European political intervention and economic penetration into an active policy, adopting a Turkist discourse, and implementing a Panislamist rhetoric, the CPU succeeded in rallying Turks and Muslims”.

The development of the organization came to a head at the 1907 Congress of Ottoman Opposition Parties. Unlike in 1902, the CPU discussed the resolutions ahead of time in an attempt to avoid another public rift and, although there were some disagreements, eventually a foundation was laid. Their next objective was to bring in new organizations in two categories: revolutionary and propaganda publishing. Although the former were more important, the CPU had a difficult time recruiting these bodies and thus focused on the latter type in order to inflate their signature count for the document. The Congress was successful in passing its resolutions, but many of the signatories could not provide any meaningful support towards revolution, the league was low on resources, and all the non-Turkish groups effectively rejected the alliance and stood in opposition to it. Nonetheless, the CPU began to concentrate its efforts in Macedonia, which, after merging with the Ottoman Freedom Society, became the locus of an effort to create a revolutionary strike force in the military that would be supported by a network of armed bands. The appropriation of existing bands was successful in Macedonia, but less so in Istanbul, where a strong presence would have weakened the long-term Ottoman response to a rebellion. Taking advantage of fears of European intervention and the poor administration of the army, the Young Turks mobilized these forces towards revolution. The author devotes relatively little space to the 1908 Revolution itself, whose outcome was well known, and instead chooses to focus on the recruitment and relative importance of each of the ethnic bands recruited by the CPU. This is followed by an epilogue that examines the CPU’s consolidation of power over the next year in the lead up to the failed counterrevolution of 1909.

The epilogue does not signal the conclusion of the book, however, as Hanioğlu follows it with a chapter outlining the development of Young Turk political thought after 1902. His overarching argument is that practical politics overtook the movement’s roots in scientific doctrine, in large part due to the amount of officers who joined in its later stages, with the transformation being essentially complete by 1908. As activists replaced theoreticians in major roles, individuals had a choice between politicizing and breaking away from the mainstream of the movement. The author then argues that the explicit Turkist element died out in 1907, even though it provided a pragmatic foundation to the ideology, because it could not provide the foundation of a revolution in Macedonia. He contends nonetheless that Turkism was their genuine and driving belief, but it was abandoned in times of political necessity and had to remain hidden. Anti-imperialism, meanwhile, grew stronger because it was politically expedient, but the CPU did not genuinely care about protecting Islam due to their ideological background and, after the Revolution, courted the European powers freely. As for religion, they had three purposes for it in their propaganda, “first, as a protonationalist device to agitate the Muslim masses against the sultan; second, to attack European imperialism; and third, to delegitimize the sultan’s position from an Islamic point of view”. Finally, their belief in an intellectual elite shifted towards a policy of a governing elite, and they rejected the notion of a popular political movement even as they promoted active mass participation in revolutionary events.

Overall, Preparation for a Revolution is a true successor to The Young Turks in Opposition in both content and form. While the author clearly makes more of an effort to highlight particular arguments, the focus of this work remains a detailed chronicling of the intricacies of the movement and the transformations it undertook between 1902 and 1908. I did find retention an easier task for this text, but I am not certain if that is a consequence of me being prepared and/or used to his style or perhaps having a broader base of knowledge in general. What is certain is that, although the casual reader may get overwhelmed, this is a crucial piece for any scholar of the late Ottoman Empire not only due to its in-depth analysis of the movement, but also due to it possessing one of the clearest elucidations of how the Young Turks actually managed to overthrow the sultan and come to power in the twilight of the empire’s existence.