Yıldız assassination attempt

Yıldız assassination attempt
Part of Armenian national liberation movement
Location	Yıldız Mosque, Constantinople, Ottoman Empire
Date	21 July 1905
Target	Sultan Abdul Hamid II
Deaths	26
Non-fatal injuries	58

A failed assassination attempted on Sultan Abdul Hamid II by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation at Yıldız Mosque took place on 21 July 1905 in the Ottoman capital Constantinople.The Times described the incident as "one of the greatest and most sensational political conspiracies of modern times."

The events of the Hamidian massacres and Sultan Abdul Hamid II's anti-Armenian policies were the motivations for the assassination attempt. Armenian resistance within the Ottoman Empire was planned by Armenian national liberation movement. The First Sassoun resistance of 1894, the First Zeitun Resistance in 1895, the Defense of Van in June 1896. The 1896 Ottoman Bank Takeover was the seizure of the Ottoman Bank on 26 August by members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation in an effort to raise further awareness with twenty-eight armed men and women led primarily by Papken Siuni and Armen Karo who took over an enterprise largely employing European personnel from Great Britain and France.

The Armenian Revolutionary Federation planned the assassination attempt on the sultan to enact vengeance. Dashnak members, led by ARF founder Christapor Mikaelian, secretly started producing explosives and planning the operation in Sofia, Bulgaria. During planning, the explosives were made at the improvised bomb-making factory in the village of Sablyar, near the Bulgarian town of Kyustendil. Christapor Mikaelian, alongside his friend Vramshabouh Kendirian, died in an accidental explosion. Despite losing the instigators of the operation, it continued as planned.