Comparative study

Research into the course of progress

In 1808 the attempts of previous ruler at reform had ended in his being murdered. The capital was dominated by a reactionary mob of janissaries. The provinces had become semi-independent. The young Sultan bravely took up a single handed struggle against the existing abuses and projudices.

After the annihilation in 1825 of the Janissaries, a military corps which had effectually opposed any kind of change and any betterment for generations, the course of progress became more and more rapid.

The dev of modern Turkey as measured by its Press, Emin, near DR 571. y3



Origins of Young Turks


The impression of the people as to any government measure is very often true. The people are like children for unerring instinct in penetrating shams. Hence l was interested in the views of an intelligent Turk on the change of system implied in the substitution of the new office of Prime Minister for the ancient office of Grand Vezier. He said: it is really nothing new. it is the foreign translation of Turkish title of grand Vezir. Our government thinks the foreign title may be themost lucky just now !........l happen toknow that Hamdi Pasha, the late Grand Vezire, telegraphed to a friend two days before his own overthrow, -We have changed our policy. This may be taken to mean anything; but if it referred, as seems likely, to the substitution of a Prime Minister for a Grand Vezir, we have the pleasing spectacle of the last of the Grand Vezirs calmly plotting his own overthrow and semi-exile as Governor of Aidin, in order that Europe might be dazzled by the spectacle of a - free constitutional government - erected on the ruins of his own absolutism....The new ministers are not, by any means, new men. The same old names turn up once more.....

Henry O. Dwight, (1881), Turkish Life in War Time, Charles Scriber's Sons, (Articles compiled from New York Tribune), p 224


The bureau of the press exercises despotic functions in the best of times and in these war times it is rarely that a newspaper dares indulge in editorial comments. There are 18 daily newspapers published in the city, besides seven weeklies and semi-weeklies. Of these papers 4 are official organs of the government. The languages of the newspapers of Constantinople are English, French, Turkish, Greek, Armenian, Spanish and Bulgarian. The Turkish newspapers are printed some with arabic letters, some with Armenian letters, and some with Greek letters. lt is an odd circumstance that there are in Turkey both Armenians and Greeks in large numbers who have lost their own language, but use their own alphabet to write the Turkish which is their vernacular. A real curiosity is the Spanish newspaper, which is printed in Hebrew letters for the Jews.


Henry O. Dwight, (1881), Turkish Life in War Time, Charles Scriber's Sons, (Articles compiled from New York Tribune).







Even before they had acquird the power and the autonomy to transform their society, the Unionists introduced new methods into politics. The restoration of the constitution had been marked by an explosion of popular sentiment for the new regime. Some of this may have been spontaneous, but much of it was organized by the Unionists wherever it had its clubs. Thereafter, organized crowds and mass meetings, addressed by popular figures in the Committee, such as Huseyin Cahid, the fournalist, Riza Teufik the philosopher, or Halide Edip, the feminist novelist, soon came to play an important role in the political activity of the Unionists. This was especially true during crises and in a wartime.

The Unionists (Young Turks) used urban masses for the first time when they organized boycotts against Austria's annexationist policies and Greece's union with Crete. Later during Balkan Wars, organised demonstrations were used to keep off balance agovenrment hostile to the Unionists.

Bernard Lewis, History writing & Natural Revival in Turkey, Middle Eastern Affairs, Vol 4 (1953)
Serif Maudin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought (Princeton Univ. Press, 1962)
Feroz Ahmad, (1969), The Young Turks, Oxford , Clarendon





...........Thus on the eve of 1908, all the Young Turks Associations were united around one common purpose, to end the despotic rule of Sultan Abdulhamid and reinforce the Constitution. This was achieved, with the support of the Balkan population, with comparatively little bloodshed on July 23, 1908, and the Sultan reinstated the Constitution the bi-Cameral Parliament, and all the freedoms - amidst the unprecedented enthusiasm and joy of the population.
The intellegentsia had finally succeeded in defeating the Sultan, and the army had played the decisive role as the chief agent of modernization. The intelligentsia in power came from the lower middle classes. Talat Pasha, the most famous of the Young Turks, was a post office clerk of humble origin. The Union and Progress, which until 1908 was a political association .........suddenly found itself called upon to administer the country.
By Kemal H. Karpat, Turkey's Politics, Princeton Univ. Press, (1959)



......The Young Persians had in many respects a history similar to that of the Young Turks. They were for the most part members of influential families, who had been educated in Europe, or had been sent into exile. Young Turks, Young Persians, Young Egyptians, Young lndians, Young Chinese have shown to Europe and America the peril - and the pity - of our western and christian education, when it is given to eastern and non-christian students. They are born into the intellectual life with our ideas and are inspired by our ideals, but have none of the back ground, none of the inheritance of our national atmosphere and family training......................Their disillusionment is bitter. ....Educated in our universities, they return to their countries to conspire against us. The illiterate and simple oriental who has never travelled, is frequently the model of fidelity and loyalty and afection .....but no educated non-christian oriental, who has travelled and studied and lived on terms of equality with Europeans and Americans can ever be a sincere friend. The common result of social contact and intellectual companionship is that he becomes a foe, - and conceds the fact. Familiarity has bred more than contempt.
By Herbert Adams Gibbons, The New Map of Europe 1911-14, the Century Co., (1918)



...Participation of certain elites in reform - A careful look at elites Ulema attitudes towards the legislative and institutional reforms has found that the elements of class struggle within the Ulema Corps outlines a social gulf between the highest ulema families, whose power, influence and wealth were passed on from generation to generation, and the humble theological student (softa), of provincial origin. The class struggle among the Ottoman ulama has not been adequately studied. The fact that significant proportion of the highest ulama supported reform, and did so not simply from a position of dependence on the sultans favour, but from the conviction that any means to ensure the survival of the empire was ultimately justifiable.

Davidson breaks with prior historians in his judgement that Tanzimat statesmen (reformers)were sincere in their attempts to legislate equality between Muslim and non-Muslim. ln the context of the changing Ottoman state of the 19th century, he sees this effort as part of the process by which Ottoman subjects, grouped into corporate identities in varied relationships to the state, were to be redefined as individuals sharing equally in the rights and duties of citizenship.

Albert Hourani in 1906 turned the spotlight full on the neglected Muslem town-dwellers of the empire. ln the process he established a category, urban notables, and named a type of politics the politics of notables, which have proved of lasting value to historians of the Ottoman provinces and the successor states in the period from the 18th century to the mid-twentieth century. The urban notable was a man of local prominence who occupied an intermediary position betwen the distant power of lstanbul and local society. As a man of property and substance, he was interested in maintaining the status quo. Hence he remained loyal to a government that guaranteed the customs of the country and served, when necessary, as a conduit for its power. As a man of local standing and leadership he hoped to keep governmental interference at bay and voiced, when unavoidable or when useful to himself, his clients interests to the central government. The legislative and administrative reforms emanating from lstanbul throughtout the 19th century which aimed at the centralization of power and the breakdown of corporate identities tended to encroach on the urban notable's range of independence action...................Outright of loss of political control was put off until the occupation of lstanbul after the First WWar, ....the Young Turks convinced that he empire could not survive without a European protector, managed finally to sign an alliance with Germany on the eve of the First WW. Despite great economic hardship, the war gave the empire new opportunities for freedom of action, 'the Turks were finally masters of their house'.

The Young Turk policies of the war years - the forays into mass political mobilization economic planning, new social services and the encouragement of women in the labour force - laid the foundations, both social and psychological, for the creation of citizenry that had been the goal of the 19th century reforms all along.

Any sample of Turkish opinion in the Tanzimat period must include the one group which was forward-looking, politically conscious, constatnly vocal, and therefore influential out of proportion to its small size. This was the New Ottoman Committee, composed principally of writers and would be reformers who for a short time in the late 1860s coalesced into the nearest approximation to a political party that existed in the empire. lts members were an exraordinary collection of individualists. They quarrelled among themselves but were united in their ardent desire to preserve the Ottoman Empire. This group has often been called the Young Turks. lts members were, in fact, the spiritual fathers of the true Young Turks of 1908, and spiritual grandfathers of the Turks who created the nationalist republic of today.

New Ottoman patriotism meant an equal cooperation of peoples of all creeds in a devoted effort to preserve the empire, but opposition to any special concessions to Christians. Most of them seem to have believed in Muslim Turkish superiority among the united peoples of a united empire. Sometimes, therefore, their writings seem self-contradictory.

Albert Hourani, Mary Wilson, Philip Khoury (eds), (1993), The Modern Middle East, l.B.Tauris and Co Ltd, London, New York








........Because of manipulation of public opinion many people saw the sultan as the hero of the situation. Even though the Union Party leaders did not trust him, they did not feel able to remove him. Even less did they feel able to take the reins of government into their own hands. Age and seniority were very important preconditions for authority in Ottoman society and the Young Turks, Being for the most part captains and majors or minor bureaucrats in their late twenties and early thirties, had neither. The committee therefore chose to leave politics in the hands of the existing cabinet under Grand Vizier Sait Pasha. ln the meantime it set itself up as a watchdog with a mission to guard the new found constitutional freedom, interfering in politics whenever it saw fit. ........Generally, the Union branches consisted of a coalition of professionals (teachers, lawyers, doctors), Muslim merchants and guild leaders and large landowners. While it was almost exclusively muslim and largely Turkish, it actively sought the cooperation of the other nationalities, guaranteeing them a number of seats in the new parliament. Eventually, Turks held slightly over 50 percent of the 288 seats.

ln the following years the position of Union Party as a secret society exerting pressure and holding political power without any formal responsibility was to prove a destabilising factor.

......ln spite of their complete victory, the Unionist's influence remained indirect rather then direct, because in many parts of the empire they had to rely on local notables who allowed their names to be put forward as condidates on the Union list, rather than on members of the Union Party itself....Erik, J. Zurcher, Turkey, 1993, l.B. Tauris Co Ltd, London, New York


Thus, Shaw suggests, just as the traditional schools had cut young Jews off from Ottoman society by teaching only Hebrew, the modern schools were doing the same by emphasising French rather than Turkish. ln that sense, the Tanzimat not succeed in making non-Muslims loyal to the empire. The way the Tanzimat affected the Muslim Turkish-speaking population was that of the Young Ottomans, who came to prominence in the late Tanzimat period of 1867-78. They were the first organised opporsition group from the Ottoman intelligensia to use the ideas of the Englightenment and attempt to synthesize modernisation with lslam. They were also the first Ottoman group to use the media as means of spreading their ideology. Most of them were from the translators office of the Foreign Ministry and thus were from that small segment of society who were in close contact with idea from the West. However, in their actions and writings a sense of frustration at their inability to rise up the bureaucratic ladder is evident.

ln many ways, they shared similar outlooks to the ruling elites they criticized so strongly. The Young Ottoman mentor Sinasi was intellectually closer to their sworn enemy Ali Pasha than he was to Young Ottomans.

The crucial difference between their views and those of the great bureaucrats, like their arch-enemy was their re-emphasis on lslam as an essential component of Ottoman society. The argument was that the ideological vacuum resulting from the pushing back of religion from the public to the private sphere was one of the main weaknesses of the Tanzimat. There was attempt to produce a synthesis between modernisation and lslam by looking for lslamic references for parliaments and representative government.

Hugh Poulton, (1997) Top Hat, Gray Wolf and Crescent; New York University Press



First modern general census of Otoman Empire was to be carried out at 1830-31. Ulema were appointed to head many of the regional teams in order to dispel the suspicions of the people.

Valuable services rendered by Ulemas in connection with taking revolutionary measures against deseases such as plagues and chlorea - since the popular religion belief in predestination prevented people in taking any precautions against contagious diseases whcih from time to time caused havoc among the population of the Ottoman Empire. *ln 1812, for example, over 70,000 people were estimated to have died from plague in lstanbul and the vicinity alone.* The importance of the liberal attitude ofthe Ulema of higher level and their cooperation with the government helped to overcome the opposition among the people and the lower Ulema who were the cause of frequent unrest.

..................Saturday the oldest inhabitants of the city were brought to naught by the vain effort to recall another such rain as descended upon us. The waters from the hills could not run off in the sewers, and poured down the slopes into the lower parts of the city. The streets were flooded from curb to curb, and in many places the sidewalks also were under water. l was obliged to wade in a roaring torrent more than knee-deep, in one of the great thoroughfares. Lines were stretched along the streets to enable people to keep their feet. Carriages could not stem the tide, for great blocks of stone came roaring down th ehills and smasshed their wheels. Two men were carried away and drowned in the street. Many small houses were also swept away. There is, howeer, this compensation,that he street dogs were carried off too. The storm lasted for five or six hours, and in the evening the gas works suddenly went down, and Pera and Galata were left in darkness. Houses here commonly use candles or petroleum, but the streets and the shops are lighted with gas, and in the Sultan's palace there is nothing but gas. Hence the sudden destruction of the gasometer produced the wildest panic within the sacred precincts of the palace. A plot, an insurrection, a Russian attack, might all have produced less fear than did this wild riot of the waters. Outside was the roar of waters dashing against the doors of the palace, the shouts of sailors, whose ships were dragging their anchors, the hiss of escaping steam, and nearer the rapid shouts of command, as the guardturned out to resist whatever might come. .......Every night placards are posted by discontented Turks upon the doors of the mosques, and the Government is greatly annoyed because it cannot detect the authors of these seditious documents. The placards are commonly aimed at grand Vazir, but hints also for changes in yet higher quarters. So far the discontent survives every attempt to crush it..........

Henry O. Dwight, (1881), Turkish Life in War Time, Charles Scriber's Sons, (Articles compiled from New York Tribune).