Young Turk Revolution | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Part of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire | |||||||
Declaration of the Young Turk Revolution by the leaders of the Ottoman millets in 1908 |
|||||||
|
|||||||
Belligerents | |||||||
Young Turks | Ottoman government | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Sultan Abdul Hamid II |
The Young Turk Revolution (July 1908) of the Ottoman Empire was when the Young Turks movement restored the Ottoman constitution of 1876 and ushered in multi-party politics in a two stage electoral system (electoral law) under the Ottoman parliament. More than 3 decades earlier in 1876, constitutional monarchy had been established under Sultan Abdul Hamid II during a period of time known as the First Constitutional Era, which only lasted for two years before Abdul Hamid suspended it and restored autocratic powers to himself. On 24 July 1908, Abdul Hamid capitulated and announced the restoration of Constitution, which established the Second Constitutional Era.
Once underground, organizations (named committee, group, etc.) established (declared) their parties. Among them "Committee of Union and Progress" (CUP), and "Freedom and Accord Party" also known as the Liberal Union or Liberal Entente (LU) were major parties. There were smaller parties such as Ottoman Socialist Party. On the other end of the spectrum were the ethnic parties which included; People's Federative Party (Bulgarian Section), Bulgarian Constitutional Clubs, Jewish Social Democratic Labour Party in Palestine (Poale Zion), Al-Fatat, and Armenians organized under Armenakan, Hunchakian and Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF). ARF, previously outlawed, became the main representative of the Armenian community in the Ottoman Empire, replacing the pre-1908 Armenian elite, which had been composed of merchants, artisans, and clerics who had seen their future in obtaining more privileges within the boundaries of the state's version of Ottomanism.