The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP, also translated as the Society of Union and Progress;
romanized: İttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti), refers to several revolutionary groups and a political party active between 1889 and 1926 in the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey. The foremost faction of the Young Turks, the CUP instigated the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, which ended absolute monarchy and began the Second Constitutional Era. After an ideological transformation, from 1913 to 1918, the CUP ruled the empire as a dictatorship[22][23] and committed genocides against the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian peoples as part of a broader policy of ethnic erasure during the late Ottoman period.[24] The CUP and its members have often been referred to as Young Turks, although the movement produced other political parties as well. Within the Ottoman Empire its members were known as İttihadcılar ('Unionists') or Komiteciler ('Committeemen').[25]
Beginning as a liberal reform movement, the organization was persecuted by Sultan Abdul Hamid II's autocratic government because of its calls for constitutional government and reform. Most of its members were exiled and arrested after a failed coup attempt in 1896, starting a period infighting among émigré Young Turk communities in Europe. The CUP's cause was revived by 1906 with a new "Macedonian" cadre of bureaucrats and Ottoman army contingents based in Ottoman Macedonia which were fighting ethnic insurgents in the Macedonian Struggle.[26] In 1908, the Unionists revolted and forced Abdul Hamid to reinstate the Constitution in the Young Turk Revolution, ushering in an era of political plurality. Its main rival was the Freedom and Accord Party, which called for the federalization and decentralization of the empire, in opposition to the CUP's desire for a centralized and unitary Turkish-dominated state.
The CUP consolidated its power at the expense of the Freedom and Accord Party in the 1912 "
Cemal Pasha, took control over the country, and sided with Germany in World War I. With the help of their paramilitary, the Special Organization, the İttihadist regime enacted policies resulting in the destruction and expulsion of the empire's Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian citizens in order to Turkify
The CUP was first established as The Committee of the Ottoman Union (
romanized: İttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti). Between 1906 and 1908 it was known as the Committee of Progress and Union, but changed its name back to the more recognizable Committee of Union and Progress during the Young Turk Revolution
.
The word cemiyet has many translations. It is a loanword from the Arabic ( جامعة, jāmi‘a) and a classical translation would be "gathering" or "university", but in 19th century Ottoman Turkish, it came to mean "committee" or "society" or "organization". As the Young Turks greatly admired the French Revolution and the radical political clubs and societies that were founded over its course, a more accurate and faithful translation of İttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti into English would be "The Society of Union and Progress". They especially wished to model their movement of the Jacobin club and thought of themselves as such.[citation needed]
In the West, the CUP was conflated with the wider Young Turks movement and its members were called Young Turks, while in the Ottoman Empire a member was known as a İttihadçı[25] or Komiteci,[25] which means İttihadist (Unionist) and Committeeman respectively. Its ideology is known as İttihadçılık, or İttihadism (Unionism). The Central Committee informally referred to itself as the "Sacred Committee" (Cemiyet-i mukaddese) or the "Kaaba of Liberty" (Kâbe-i hürriyet).[28]
The Committee of Ottoman Union (İttihad-ı Osmanî Cemiyeti) was established as a secret society on 2 June 1889 by Ibrahim Temo, Dr. Mehmed Reşid, Abdullah Cevdet, and İshak Sükuti, all of whom were medical students of the Imperial Military School of Medicine in Constantinople.[29][30][31][32] While they held many contradicting Enlightenment derived beliefs, they were united by the necessity of a constitution to prevent further decline of the empire. Sultan Abdul Hamid II promulgated a constitution and a parliament upon his ascension to the throne in 1876, but suspended both after defeat in the 1877-1878 Russo Turkish War. From 1878 to 1908, Abdul Hamid ruled the empire as a personal dictatorship. Critically though, the empire was still in decline. It was in massive debt to European creditors to the point where its finances were controlled by Western bankers, and nationalist movements by non-Muslim minorities continued making inroads. Therefore, those opposed to his regime, called Young Turks, hoped to overthrow Abdul Hamid II for one of his brothers in order to save the empire through constitutionalism: either the crown prince Mehmed Reşad (Mehmed V) or former Sultan Murad V.
Under the guise of a banquet, the Committee of Ottoman Union held its first meeting in
Russian Nihilists, and be structured into cells. They met every Friday in different places, where they held seminaries discussing the works of Young Ottoman thinkers such as Namık Kemal and Ziya Pasha, drafted regulations, and read banned philosophy and literature. The society gained support from civilian and military students from other colleges around Constantinople.[33] Abdul Hamid II first became aware of the society's activities in July 1890.[33] From that date on, members of the society were under surveillance and some would be arrested and interrogated. In 1894 the Ministry of Military Schools launched an investigation that recommended expelling nine leaders from the medicine school but palace pardoned them as they viewed the Unionists as a harmless student movement.[34] Soon however, some members of Ottoman Union started fleeing to Europe, where they congregated in colonies.[35]
In 1894,
Military Academy planned to assassinate the Minister of Military Schools. Authorities were tipped off, and a major arrest operation was carried out. 630 people were arrested; 78 of them were sent to Tripolitania. This exile incident went down in history the "Sacrifices of the Şeref" (Şeref Kurbanları) and was the biggest exile event in Abdul Hamid's reign.[40]
Émigré politics
In its
romanized: İttihad ve Terakki Fırkası), whose membership was open to the public. Though officially unrelated to the CUP, it was very much an instrument of the Central Committee, and the two organizations merged in 1913.[61] Also at the congress Pan-Turkism was introduced in its party program for an eventual union with the other Turkic populations in the world.[73] The committee pledged to discontinue komitecilik characteristics such as initiation ceremonies and other conspiratorial practices and vowed to be more transparent with the public.[74] However, neither the pledge for more transparency nor the pledge to discontinue initiation ceremonies were fully achieved.[75] The committee continued to influence politics in the backrooms and through the occasional assassination (see Ahmet Samim), inviting criticism from many politicians that the committee was opaque and authoritarian rather than a force of democracy. By the end of 1909, Union and Progress was both an organization and a party with 850,000 members and 360 branches spread across the country.[75]
In the summer of 1909, the CUP (and Şevket) introduced several laws designed to settle the question of Ottomanism through an egalitarian approach. The Unionists hoped these reforms would dismantle the
Ulema. The Bulgarians wished for segregated units with Christian commanders and priests, which was struck down by the Committee.[26] Other laws were introduced with assimilation in mind: one law banned all languages in school except for Turkish as the language of instruction. Another banned minority interest parties.[76] An extensive set of constitutional amendments were signed into law that weakened the Sultan's powers in favor of parliament and the Sublime Porte. The years after the 31 March Crisis were much less free compared to the euphoric start of the Second Constitutional Era. Censorship and restrictions on gatherings were implemented in a context of increasing polarization between the CUP and its opposition.[76]
Lead up to the Sublime Porte Raid
In September 1911,
romanized: Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa), which was used to conduct guerrilla operations against the Italians in Libya.[78] Those who had once served as fedâiin assassins during the years of underground struggle were often assigned as leaders of the Special Organisation.[52] The ultra-secretive Special Organisation answered to the Central Committee, and in the future worked closely with the Ministry of War and Ministry of Interior.[79] A great many officers, most of whom Unionist, including Enver, his younger brother Nuri, Mustafa Kemal, Süleyman Askerî, and Ali Fethi (Okyar) all departed to Libya to fight the Italians.[80]
With many of the Unionist officers in Libya, this weakened the power of the CUP and the army at home. As a consequence of the Italian invasion, İbrahim Hakkı Pasha's Unionist government collapsed and two more parties splintered from the CUP: the right-wing New Party [tr], and the left-wing Progress Party. Union and Progress was forced into a coalition government with some minor parties under Mehmed Said Pasha.[81] Another blow against the CUP came in mid-November, when all of the opposition parties coalesced around a new big tent party known as Freedom and Accord, which immediately attracted 70 deputies to its ranks.[82]
When it came time for general elections in April 1912, held in the midst of the war with Italy and one of many Albanian revolts,[83] the Union and Progress Party and Dashnak campaigned for the elections under an electoral alliance. Alarmed at the success of Freedom and Accord and increasingly radicalised, Union and Progress won 269 of the 275 seats in parliament through electoral fraud and violence, which led to the election being known as the "Election of Clubs" (Turkish: Sopalı Seçimler), leaving the Freedom and Accord just six seats.[84][85] Although they won ten seats from the Union and Progress lists, Dashnak terminated the alliance as they expected more reforms from the CUP as well as more support for their candidates to be elected.[85]
In May 1912, Miralay Mehmed Sadık separated from the CUP and organized a group of pro-Freedom and Accord officers in the army calling themselves the Saviour Officers Group, which demanded the immediate dissolution of the Unionist dominated parliament.[83][86] The fraudulent electoral result of the "Election of Clubs" had badly hurt the popular legitimacy of the CUP, and faced with widespread opposition and Mahmud Şevket Pasha's resignation as Minister of War in support of the officers, Said Pasha's Unionist government resigned on 9 July 1912.[87] It was replaced by Ahmed Muhtar Pasha's "Great Cabinet" that deliberately excluded the CUP by being made up of older ministers, many of which were associated with the Ancien Régime.[83]
On 5 August 1912, Muhtar Pasha's government shuttered the Unionist dominated parliament and called for snap elections which would never happen due to the outbreak of war in the Balkans. For the moment, the CUP had become isolated, driven from power, and risked being banned by the government.[citation needed]
With the CUP out of power, in the lead up to the elections, the party challenged Muhtar Pasha's government to a jingoistic game of pro-war populism against the Balkan states by utilizing its still powerful propaganda network.
On 8 October, Montenegro declared war on the Ottoman Empire, starting the
Treaty of Ouchy, in which Tripolitania was annexed and the Dodecanese were occupied by Italy. This proved too little and too late to salvage Rumelia; Albania, Macedonia, and western Thrace was lost, Edirne was put under siege, and Constantinople was in serious risk of being overrun by the Bulgarian army (see First Battle of Çatalca). Edirne was a symbolic city, as it was an important city in Ottoman history, serving as the Empire's third capital for nearly one hundred years, and together with Salonica represented Europe's Islamic heritage.[90]
Muhtar Pasha's government resigned on the 29th of October following total military defeat in Rumelia for Kâmil Pasha's return, Freedom and Accord's leader and keen on destroying the CUP once and for all. With the loss of Salonica to Greece the CUP was forced to relocate its Central Committee to Istanbul, but by mid-November the new headquarters was shut down by the government and its members were forced into hiding.[91]
Grand Vizier Kâmil Pasha and his War Minister Nazım Pasha wished to ban the CUP, so the CUP launched a preemptive strike: a coup d'état known as the Raid on the Sublime Porte on 23 January 1913. During the coup Kâmil Pasha was forced to resign as Grand Vizier at gunpoint and a Unionist officer Yakub Cemil killed Nazım Pasha.[92] The coup was justified under the grounds that Kâmil Pasha was about to "sell out the nation" by agreeing to a truce in the First Balkan War and giving up Edirne. The intention of the new leadership, dominated by Talât, Enver, Cemal, under Şevket Pasha's premiership (who reluctantly accepted the role), was to break the truce and renew the war against Bulgaria.[93]
The CUP once again did not take over the government, instead opting for the creation of a national unity government; only four Unionist ministers were appointed into the new government. The immediate aftermath of the coup resulted in a much more severe state of emergency than previous governments had ever implemented. Cemal in his new capacity as military commander of Constantinople was responsible for arresting many and heavily stifling opposition.[94] At this point the Unionists were no longer concerned with their actions being considered constitutional.
The pro-war regime immediately withdrew the Empire's delegation from the London conference on the same day it took power. The first task of the new regime was to found the National Defense League on 1 February 1913 which was intended to mobilize the resources of the empire for an all-out effort to turn the tide.[93] On 3 February 1913 the war resumed. In the Battle of Şarköy, the new government staked a daring operation in which XX Army Corps was to make an amphibious landing at the rear of the Bulgarians at Şarköy while the Straits Composite Force was to break out of the Gallipoli peninsula.[95] The operation failed due to a lack of co-ordination with heavy losses.[95] Following reports that the Ottoman army had at most 165,000 troops to oppose the 400,000 of the League army together with news that morale in the army was poor due to Edirne's surrender to Bulgaria on 26 March, the pro-war regime finally agreed to an armistice on 1 April 1913 and signed the Treaty of London on 30 May, acknowledging the loss of all of Rumelia except for Constantinople.[96]
News of the failure to rescue Rumelia by the CUP prompted the organization of a countercoup by Kâmil Pasha that would overthrow the CUP and bring Freedom and Accord back into power.[97] Kâmil Pasha was put under house arrest on 28 May, but the conspiracy continued and aimed to assassinate Grand Vizier Mahmud Şevket Pasha and major Unionists.[97] On 11 June, Şevket Pasha was assassinated. He had represented the last independent personality in the Empire; with his assassination, the CUP took full control over the country. The power vacuum in the army created by Şevket's death was filled by the committee.[98] Any remaining opposition to the CUP, especially Freedom and Accord, was suppressed and their leaders exiled. All provincial and local officials reported to "Responsible Secretaries" chosen by the party for each Vilayet. Mehmed V appointed Said Halim Pasha, an Egyptian royal who was loosely affiliated with the committee, to serve as Grand Vizier until Talât replaced him in 1917. A courts marshal sentenced to death 16 Freedom and Accord leaders, including Prince Mehmed Sabahaddin who was sentenced in absentia, as he already fled to Geneva in exile.[97]
After surrendering in the First Balkan War, the CUP became fixated on retaking Edirne, while other important issues like economic collapse, reform in Eastern Anatolia, and infrastructure were largely ignored.[90] On 20 July 1913, following the outbreak of the Second Balkan War, the Ottomans attacked Bulgaria and, on 21 July 1913, Colonel Enver retook Edirne from Bulgaria, further increasing his status as a national hero.[99] By the terms of the Treaty of Bucharest in September 1913, the Ottomans regained some of the land lost in Thrace during the First Balkan War.[99]
The regime
The new regime was a dictatorship dominated by a triumvirate that turned the Ottoman Empire into a
at times also dominated the Central Committee without formal positions in the Ottoman government.
The CUP regime was less hierarchically totalitarian than future European dictatorships. Instead of relying on strict and rigid chains of command the regime functioned through the balancing of factions through massive corruption and kickbacks.
Loyalty to the committee was seen more valuable than competence. This lack of rule of law, lack of respect to the constitution, and extreme corruption worsened as the regime aged.
Nationalist pivot (1913–1914)
The Macedonian Conflict and its conclusion in the Balkan Wars was traumatic for the Ottomans, but especially so for the Ottomanists. The expulsion of Muslims from the lost land not only shocked Muslims with memories from the 1877-78 war with Russia, but also CUP Central Committee members, most of whom hailed from the Balkans or at least Constantinople.[26] With the integrity of Ottomanism was severely diminished, exclusionary Turkism became the committee's goal.[105]Muslim Albanians did not become any more loyal to the empire after the Young Turk Revolution, whilst the defeat in the First Balkan War had showed that the empire's Christian population were potential fifth columns. In addition, lack of action by the European powers in upholding the integrity of the Empire and the status quo of the Berlin Treaty during the Balkan Wars meant to the "sacred committee" that the Turks were on their own. However the CUP lost much respect for the European powers when they reconquered Edirne against the European powers' wishes.[106] This abandonment of Ottomanism was much more feasible due to the new borders of the Empire after the Balkan Wars, inflating the proportion of Turks and especially Muslims in the empire at the expense of Christians.[citation needed]
From its end, the triumvirate which dominated the CUP did not accept the outcome of the Balkan wars as final, and a major aim of the new regime was to take back all of the territory which had been lost.[107] A school textbook from 1914 captured the burning desire for revenge:
In the year 1330 [1912] the Balkan states allied against the Ottoman government... In the meantime, they shed the blood of many innocent Muslim and Turkish people. Many women and children were massacred. Villages were burnt down. Now in the Balkans under every stone, there lay thousands of dead bodies, with eyes and stomachs carved out, awaiting revenge... It is our duty to our fatherland, as sons of the fatherland, to restore our stolen rights, and to work to take revenge for the many innocent people whose blood were shed in abundance. Then let us work to instill that sense of revenge, love of fatherland and sense of sacrifice for it.[108]
In the aftermath of the First Balkan War hundreds of thousands of refugees from Rumelia arrived with tales of atrocities committed by the Greek, Montenegrin, Serb and Bulgarian forces. A marked anti-Christian and xenophobic mood settled in amongst many Ottoman Muslims.[109] The CUP encouraged boycotts against Austrian, Bulgarian, and Greek businesses, but after 1913 also against the empire's own Christian and Jewish citizens.[110]
The new regime starting to glorify the "Turkish race" after abandoning the multi-culture ideal of Ottomanism. Particular attention was paid to
Hulagu Khan.[111] As such, the Turks needed to become the dominant political and economic group within the Ottoman Empire while uniting with all of the other Turkic peoples in Russia and Persia to create a vast pan-Turkic state covering much of Asia and Europe.[113] In his poem "Turan", Gökalp wrote: "The land of the Turks is not Turkey, nor yet Turkestan. Their country is the eternal land: Turan".[113] The pan-Turanian propaganda was significant for not being based upon Islam, but was rather a call for the unity of the Turkic peoples based upon a shared history and supposed common racial origins together a pan-Asian message stressing the role of the Turkic peoples as the fiercest warriors in all of Asia. The CUP planned on taking back all of the territory that the Ottomans had lost during the course of the 19th century and under the banner of pan-Turkic nationalism to acquire new territory in the Caucasus and Central Asia.[114]
New institutions
Right from the time of the 1913 coup d'état, the new government planned to wage a
Ottoman Red Crescent Society and the National Defense League that were intended to engage the Ottoman public with the entire modernisation project by promoting their nationalist and militaristic ways of thinking.[120] Reflecting Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz Pasha's influence, especially his "nation in arms" theory, the purpose of the society under the new regime was to support the military.[119]
In January 1914, Enver became a Pasha and was appointed Minister of War, supplanting the calmer Ahmet İzzet Pasha, which made Russia, especially its Foreign Minister Sergey Sazonov, greatly suspicious. An extensive purge of the army was carried out, with about 1,100 officers including 2 field marshals, 3 generals, 30 lieutenant-generals, 95 major-generals and 184 colonels whom Enver had considered to be inept or disloyal forced to take early retirement.[121]
Absent the wartime atmosphere, the Unionists did not yet purge minority religions from political life; at least 23 Christians joined it and were elected to the
Many Unionists were traumatized from the outcome of the Macedonian Question and the loss of most of Rumelia. The winners of the
Armenian Question. Not wanting Anatolia to turn into another Macedonia, the CUP concluded that Anatolia would become the homeland of the Turks through policies of homogeneity in order to save both "Turkdom" and the empire. The CUP would engage in an "... increasingly radicalized demographic engineering program aimed at the ethno-religious homogenization of Anatolia from 1913 till the end of World War I".[124]
To that end, before the committee's exterminatory anti-Armenian policies, anti-Greek policies were in order.
İzmir vilayet with the aim of "cleansing" the area.[125][126]
The purpose of the campaign was described in a CUP document:
The [Committee of] Union and Progress made a clear decision. The source of the trouble in western Anatolia would be removed, the Greeks would be cleared out by means of political and economic measures. Before anything else, it would be necessary to weaken and break the economically powerful Greeks.[127]
The campaign did not proceed with the same level of brutality as did the Armenian genocide during 1915 as the Unionists were afraid of a hostile foreign reaction, but during the "cleansing" operations in the spring of 1914 carried out by the CUP's Special Organisation it is estimated at least 300,000 Greeks fled across the Aegean to Greece.[128][129] In July 1914, the "cleansing operation" was stopped following protests from the ambassadors to the Porte with the French ambassador Maurice Bompard speaking especially strongly in defence of the Greeks, as well as the threat of war from Greece.[130] In many ways, the operation against Ottoman Greeks in 1914 was a trial run for the operations that were launched against Armenians in 1915.[131]
In September, irregular warfare against Russia on the Caucasian border commenced. The CUP sent delegates to the Eighth Congress of the Dashnak Party where negotiations were held on the role of the Dashnak Armenians in the coming war. In the end, the Dashnaks pledged to use their militants to defend the Ottoman Empire in the coming war, but refused to incite rebellion amoungst Russian Armenians.[132] Later that month Russian Foreign Minister Sazonov permitted the organisation of Ottoman Armenian irregular volunteer regiments (some Ottoman Armenians fled to Russian Tbilisi at this point).[133] When deportations of Armenian civilians during World War I begin, Dashnak and Hunchak leaders would be arrested and executed, driving the Armenian nationalist organizations towards Russia. Dashnak militants would rearm and integrate themselves into Russian sponsored volunteer units during the war, while the Hunchaks continued to operate separate guerilla bands.[134]
Following the 1913 coup, the CUP initiated a massive arms-buying spree, buying as many weapons from Germany as possible while asking for a new German military mission to be sent to the empire, which would not only train the Ottoman army, but also command Ottoman troops in the field.[135] In December 1913, the new German military mission under the command of General Otto Liman von Sanders arrived to take command of the Ottoman army. Enver, who was determined to uphold his own power, did not allow the German officers the sort of wide-ranging authority over the Ottoman army that the German-Ottoman agreement of October 1913 had envisioned.[136] At the same time, the Unionist government was seeking allies for the war of revenge it planned to launch as soon as possible. Ahmet İzzet Pasha, Chief of the General Staff recalled: "... what I expected from an alliance based on defence and security, while others' expectations depended upon total attack and assault. Without doubt, the leaders of the CUP were anxiously looking for ways to compensate for the pain of the defeats, which the population blamed on them."[137]
Tensions in Europe rapidly increased as the events of the
Freiherr von Wangenheim that brought the Empire into the First World War.[139]
Unionist Shaykh-al-Islam Mustafa Hayri delivering Mehmed V's Declaration of Holy War
After much politicking by Wangenheim, German influence in the Empire noticeably increased through media acquisitions and increasing presence of the German military mission in the capital. On 1 August 1914, the Empire ordered a partial mobilization. Two days later it ordered a general mobilization.[140]
On 2 August, the
US$ 86 million, but with the German officers and crews remaining aboard.[141]
On 21 October, Enver Pasha informed the Germans that his plans for the war were now complete and he was already moving his troops towards eastern Anatolia to invade the Russian Caucasus and to Palestine to attack the British in Egypt.
attack the Russian Black Sea ports with the newly christened Yavuz and Midilli and other Ottoman gunboats in the expectation that Russia would declare war in response; the attack was carried out on the 29th.[143]
After this act of aggression against his country, Sazonov submitted an ultimatum to the Sublime Porte demanding that the Empire intern all of the German military and naval officers in their service; after its rejection Russia declared war on 2 November 1914. The triumvirate called a special session of the Central Committee to explain that the time for the empire to enter the war had now come, and defined the war aim as: "the destruction of our Muscovite enemy [Russia] in order to obtain thereby a natural frontier to our empire, which should include and unite all the branches of our race".[143] This meeting caused a crisis in cabinet and the resignation of Unionist ministers opposed to the war, including the Minister of Finance Cavid.[144]
On 5 November, Britain and France declared war on the Empire. On 11 November 1914, Mehmed V, declared war on Russia, Britain, and France. Later that month, in his capacity as
declaration of jihad against the Entente ordering all Muslims everywhere in the world to fight for the destruction of those nations.[143]
With the expectation that the new war would free the Empire of its constraints on its sovereignty by the great powers, Talât went ahead with accomplishing major goals of the CUP; unilaterally abolishing the centuries-old
reform package for the Eastern Anatolian provinces that was in effect for just seven months. This unilateral action prompted a joyous rally in Sultanahmet Square.[145]
Although the CUP had worked with the Dashnaks during the
Van Vilayet) by Dashnak members Arshak Vramian and Vahan Papazian on atrocities committed by the Special Organisation against Armenians in Van created more friction between the two organisations. However, the Unionists were still not yet confident enough to purge Armenians from politics or pursue policies of ethnic engineering.[149]
The CUP pushed the country into the war with the expectation that jihad would spell the collapse of the colonial empires of the Entente, and that the Muslim Turkic peoples of Central Asia would assist the Ottomans with an invasion of the Caucasus and Central Asia. For the most part jihad did not create significant uprisings against the Allied powers.[150] In fact, World War I began badly for the Ottomans. British troops seized Basra and began to advance up the Tigris river, Cemal Pasha's invasion of British Egypt failed, and Enver Pasha's Third Army was annihilated by the Russians in the Battle of Sarikamish. These defeats greatly depressed the committee and ended their pan-Turanist dreams. However, Allied attempts to force the Bosphorus in a naval breakthrough failed on 18 March, improving the confidence of the Unionists. On 18 March, the machinations for plans of a purge of Armenians from Ottoman politics and the economy and ethnic engineering in eastern Anatolia began which would culminate lethally on 24 April.[151] The goal was to realize Türk Yurdu: the Turkification of Anatolia and transforming the Ottoman Empire into a homogeneous Turkish nation state.[citation needed]
Armenians being marched to their executionAdanaArmenians being deported to Syria
After the failure of the Sarikamish expedition, the Ottoman Empire under the CUP was involved in ordering the deportations and massacres of about 1 million Armenians and other Christian groups between 1915 and 1918, known to history as the Armenian genocide or the Late Ottoman Genocides. Talât's position as the Interior Minister was key in organising the endeavour. The government would have liked to resume the "cleansing operations" against the Greek minority in western Anatolia, but this was vetoed under pressure from Germany, the Empire's only source of military equipment, as Germany wished for a neutral Greece in the war.[citation needed]
The Special Organisation played a key role in the Late Ottoman Genocides. The Special Organisation, which was made of especially fanatical Unionist cadres, was expanded from August 1914 onward. Talât gave orders that all of the prisoners convicted of the worse crimes such as murder, rape, robbery, etc. could have their freedom if they agreed to join the Special Organisation to kill Armenians and loot their property.[152] Besides the hardened career criminals who joined in large numbers to have their freedom, the rank and file of Special Organisation killing units included Kurdish tribesmen attracted by the prospect of plunder and refugees from Rumelia, who were thirsting for the prospect of revenge against Christians after having been forced to flee from the Balkans in 1912.[153]
In late 1914, Enver Pasha ordered that all Armenians serving in the Ottoman Army be disarmed and sent to
labour battalions.[154] The following year, he ordered the killing of all 200,000 Ottoman Armenian soldiers, who were now disarmed in the labour battalions.[154]
On 24 April 1915, Talât sent a telegram to Cemal Pasha (who was governor of Syria) instructing him to deport rebellious Armenians not to Central Anatolia (Konya), as had been done to a previous group which rose up in Zeytun (modern Süleymanlı), but instead to the much more inhospitable deserts of northern Syria. The Syrian deserts ended up being the destination of future Armenian deportees. Talât sent a circular to the governors to carry out the arrests of important Dashnak and Hunchak members as well as "important and harmful Armenians known by the government."[155]
Deported Armenians had their property confiscated by the state and redistributed to Muslims or simply snatched by local provincial authorities (such as Central Committee member Mehmet Reşid's governorship in Diyarbekir). Return of property to the deportees was de facto forbidden. By late 1916 most Armenians outside of cities like Constantinople and Izmir lost their private property.[157]
In areas where Christian minorities were deported from, the government settled Balkan Muslim refugees to take their place and property. Some local governors stood up to the Central Committee's orders of deportations against Christians such as in Kütahya, İzmir, and Dersim (modern Tunceli), but most resistors were simply replaced by Talât.[158] This program of redistribution of Armenian property, Millî İktisat (national economy), was a core tenet of the CUP's Türk Yurdu project.[159]
The deportations, massacres, and confiscation of property that were performed against Armenians and other Christian groups were on a larger scale than ever, but this was not the first of such occurrences. Talât and the CUP hypocritically portrayed their actions in a Hamidian context; just like how Abdul Hamid's pretext for massacres against his own Armenian subjects was justified through legal means.[160]
In December 1914, Cemal, encouraged by Şakir, ordered the deportation of all the Jews living in the southern part of
Judeophilic sentiments. The CUP had its origins in Salonica, at the time the center of the Jewish world with a Jewish plurality. Some in the committee were even Dönmeh, that is, Muslims with Jewish ancestry, including Cavid and Dr. Nazım, and most in the committee enjoyed cordial relations with contemporary Zionists.[163] In general, most Jews were sympathetic with the Unionist regime, especially those concentrated in urban areas and those outside the empire, and sentiments of an Islamic-Jewish alliance were common.[164] However, while the Jews of the Yishuv were not deported, the Ottoman authorities made sure to harass the Jews in various other ways, prompting the creation of the pro-entente NILI resistance network centered around Ottoman Palestine.[162]
As the Allied armies started advancing into Palestine in March 1917, Cemal Pasha ordered the
deportation of the Jews of Jaffa, and after the discovery of NILI headed by the agronomist Aaron Aaronsohn who spied for the British out of the fear that Unionists would inflict the same fate on Jews as they did upon Armenians, ordered the deportation of all the Jews.[165] However, British victories over the Ottomans in the autumn of 1917 with Field Marshal Allenbytaking Jerusalem on 9 December 1917 saved the Jews of Palestine from being deported.[166]
Other ethnic groups
The Assyrian Christian community was also targeted by the Unionist government in what is now known as the
Seyfo. Talât ordered the governor of Van to remove the Assyrian population in Hakkâri, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, however this anti-Assyrian policy couldn't be implemented nationally.[167]
Even though many Kurdish tribes played an important role in the Special Organisation's exterminatory operations against Christian minorities, Kurds also found themselves victims of deportation of the government, though not of massacre. Talât outlined that nowhere in the Empire's vilayets should the Kurdish population be more than 5%. To that end, Balkan Muslim and Turkish refugees were prioritised to be resettled in
Kurds were to be deported to Central Anatolia. Kurds were supposed to be resettled in abandoned Armenian property, however negligence by resettlement authorities still resulted in the deaths of many Kurds by famine.[168]
The CUP was against all groups which could potentially demand independence. Cemal Pasha's governance in the multicultural provinces of Greater Syria saw many groups, not just Armenians, be effected by Committee rule (See Seferberlik). During the war, Cemal Pasha famously hung local Syrian notables for treason, which helped facilitate the Arab Revolt against the empire. He also made more judicious use of the Tehcir law (compared to Talât) to selectively and temporarily deport certain Arab families he considered suspicious.[169] Due to the Allied blockade of the region and a lack of supplies for the civilian population, certain parts of Ottoman Syria experienced desperate famine.[citation needed]
The deportations of the
German reaction to the deportations of Armenians was muted. The participation of the Ottoman Empire as an ally against the Entente powers was crucial to German grand strategy in the war, and good relations were needed. Following Russian breakthrough in the Caucasus and signs that Greece would side with the Allied powers after all, the CUP was finally able to resume operations against the Greeks of the empire, and Talât ordered the deportation of the Pontus Greeks of the Black Sea coast. Acts of plunder by the Special Organisation and regional authorities occurred in the region around Trabzon, with Topal Osman being an especially infamous figure.[170]
On 24 May 1915, after learning of the "Great Crime", the British, French and Russian governments issued a joint statement accusing the Ottoman government of "crimes against humanity", the first time in history that this term had been used. The British, French and Russians further promised that once the war was won they would put the Ottoman leaders responsible for the Armenian genocide on trial for crimes against humanity.[171]
In January 1916, Gallipoli ended in an Ottoman victory with the withdrawal of the Allied forces; this victory did much to boost the prestige of the CUP regime.[173] After Gallipoli, Enver Pasha proudly announced in a speech that the empire had been saved while the mighty British empire had just been humiliated in an unprecedented defeat.[citation needed]
During World War I, while the alliance between the Ottoman Empire and Germany was crucial to the goals of both empires, it stood constantly on tense ground. Both the Unionists and the Wilhelminian elites of Germany shared chauvinistic attitudes against Anglo-Saxon values of democracy and pluralism, as well as more general
Anglophobic and Russophobic sentiments. However, the enactment of the Türk Yurdu project through the deportation and extermination of Christian minorities deeply disturbed politicians back in Berlin (though not so much the German military elites).[175]
On 4 February 1917, Said Halim was finally outmaneuvered from his premiership, and Talât was appointed Grand Vizier, bringing the radical faction of the CUP directly to power, though Said Halim was always a puppet of the Central Committee. When it came to policy, the Union and Progress regime introduced many reforms which peaked in Talât Pasha's administration. Reforms in women's rights and matrimony law, secularization, and education were undertaken, that set the groundwork for the more extensive
Ottoman-German alliance, it simply delayed conflict. The Ottoman Empire regained the Caucasian provinces (Batumi, Kars, Ardahan) lost in the war against Russia forty years ago, but nothing was guaranteed for the CUP's Turanist ambitions in the Caucasus and Central Asia.[175]
The Committee decided to take matters into their own hands. Enver Pasha established the Army of Islam to conquer Baku and its oil fields and potentially fulfill Pan-Turkist dreams in Central Asia. German officers were deliberately excluded from the army group, as the Ottomans were suspicious (correctly) of similar German intentions to occupy Baku. This tension reached a boiling point in the spring of 1918, in an incident where Ottoman and German forces clashed in the area. The Ottomans won the race to Baku when the Army of Islam arrived in September, but by then the Central Powers were losing on all fronts. Both countries capitulated to the Allied powers before relations could deteriorate any further.[citation needed]
Dashnaks sent out assassins to hunt down and kill the Unionists responsible for the Armenian genocide. Minister of the Interior and later Grand Vizier Talât Pasha was gunned down in Berlin by a Dashnak on 15 March 1921. Said Halim Pasha, Talât's predecessor who signed the deportation orders in 1915 was assassinated in Rome by a Dashnak on 5 December 1921. The commander of the Special Organisation Bahattin Şakir was assassinated in Berlin on 17 April 1922 by a Dashnak gunman. Another member of the ruling triumvirate, Cemal Pasha was assassinated on 21 July 1922 in Tbilisi by Dashnaks. The final member of the Three Pashas, Enver Pasha was killed in Central Asia while leading the Basmachi Revolt against the Bolsheviks, the Bolshevik force under the command of an ethnic Armenian.[176]
Though most Unionists chose to rally around Mustafa Kemal and his
with Kara Kemal committing suicide before his execution. With opposition quashed, Atatürk consolidated his power and continued ruling Turkey until his death in 1938.
force in Turkish politics, which the party stays faithful to, to this day.
Most historians from Turkey write of the period Union and Progress was in power using the lens of Kemalist historiography, which asserts that the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey are two distinct countries, and that the Committee of Union and Progress and the Republican People's Party feature no relation to each other. However, due to the commonalities of various personnel and governing ideologies, opponents of Kemalist Historiography assert that a continuity does exist between the Unionists which took power in the 1913 coup d'état and the Republicans which lost power in Turkey's first multi-party election in 1950; therefore Turkey, as both a constitutional monarchy and as a republic, was in a state of continuous one-party dictatorship between those years.[179][180][181]
In addition to Atatürk's CHP,
Ottoman caliphate. Consequently, both parties were required to be outlawed, although Kazim Karabekir, founder of the PRP, was eventually rehabilitated after the death of Atatürk by İnönü and even served as speaker of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey
.
It was Karabekir who crystallised the modern Turkish position on the Armenian genocide, telling Soviet peace commissioners that the return of any Armenians to territory controlled by Turks was out of the question, as the Armenians had perished in a rebellion of their own making.[citation needed] Historian Taner Akçam has identified four definitions of Turkey which have been handed down by the first Republican generation to modern Turks, of which the second is "Turkey is a society without ethnic minorities or cultures."[182]
Outside Turkey
The Young Turk Revolution and CUP's work had a great impact on Muslims in other countries. The
Young Bukhara movement were deeply influenced by the Young Turk Revolution and saw it as an example to emulate. Jadidists sought to emulate the Young Turks. After the Young Turk Revolution, reformist elements in the Greek military formed a secret revolutionary organization modeled from the CUP which overthrew the government in the Goudi Coup, bringing Eleftherios Venizelos to power.[183]
In 1988, Soviet authorities dismanteled an organization in
. In ideological terms there is thus a great deal of continuity between the periods of 1912–1918 and 1918–1923. This should come as no surprise... the cadres of the national resistance movement almost without exception consisted of former Unionists, who had been shaped by their shared experience of the previous decade.
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