Committee of Union and Progress

Action Army marching on Bekirköy

The murder of the anti-Unionist journalist Hasan Fehmi on 6 April was widely seen as an assassination by the CUP. His funeral turned into a demonstration against the committee when a crowd of 50,000 assembled in Sultanahmet Square and eventually in front of the parliament.[59] These events served to be the backdrop of the 31 March incident.[60]

Days afterwords, discontent against the CUP and disappointment with renewed constitutionalism culminated in an uprising by reactionaries and liberals. A mob revolted in Constantinople that Abdul Hamid took advantage of, securing his absolutism once again. The members of the Liberty Party that took part in the uprising lost control of the situation when Abdul Hamid accepted the mob's demands, again suspending the constitution and shuttering the parliament in favor of Sharia law. The uprising was localised in the capital, so MPs and other Unionists were able to flee and organise. Talât was able to escape to Aya Stefanos (Yeşilköy) with 100 deputies to organise a counter government.[61] In the military, Mahmud Şevket Pasha joined forces with Unionist and constitutionalist officers to form the "Action Army" (Turkish: Hareket Ordusu) and began a march on Constantinople. Some lower ranking Unionist officers within the formation included Enver, Niyazi, and Cemal, as well as Mustafa İsmet (İnönü) and Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk).[62] Upon the Army of Action arriving at Ayastefanos, it was secretly agreed there that Abdul Hamid would be deposed.[61] Constantinople was taken back within a few days and order was restored through many courts marshals and executions, and the constitution was reinstated for the third and final time. Abdul Hamid II was deposed via a fatwa issued by the Shaykh-al-Islam and a unanimous vote of the Ottoman Parliament. Abdul Hamid's younger brother replaced him and took the name Mehmed V, committing to the role of a constitutional monarch and figurehead of the future CUP party-state.

Abdul Hamid II at Selanik, where he was exiled after his dethronement in the 31 March Incident

While the CUP survived the failed countercoup and saw their ultimate enemy dethroned, their influence was now checked by Mahmud Şevket Pasha, who became the most powerful person in the Ottoman Empire. Şevket Pasha, representing the military, started butting heads with the CUP as he represented the only opposition to them other than the small Ottoman Democratic Party after the 31 March Incident.[63] The Liberty Party's reluctant support for the counter revolution meant that the party was banned. The Unionists expected more influence in the government for their role in foiling the countercoup, and maneuvered Cavid into the Finance Ministry in June, becoming the first CUP affiliated minister in the government. Two months later, Talât was appointed minister of interior.[64]

CUP and the ARF held a strong alliance throughout the Second Constitutional Era, with their cooperation dating back to the Second Congress of Ottoman Opposition of 1907; as both were united in overthrowing the Hamidian regime for a constitutional one.[47] During the countercoup, massacres against Ottoman Armenians in Adana occurred that was facilitated by members of the local CUP branch, straining the alliance between the CUP and Dashnak. The committee made up for this by nominating Cemal as governor of Adana.[65] Cemal restored order, providing compensation to victims and bringing justice to the perpetrators, thus mending the relations between the two committees.[65] The CUP outlawed minority interest parties following the crisis,[66] however the ARF and Hunchak parties were not banned.

Talât Pasha, undisputed leader of the CUP and the Three Pashas triumvirate. By 1917, he was both Grand Vizier and Interior Minister.

In its 1909 congress in Salonica, the Committee of Union and Progress was formally transformed from a conspiracy group into a mass politics organization.[54] A separate parliamentary group from the committee was created, known as the Union and Progress Party (Ottoman Turkish: إتحاد و ترقى فرقه‌ سی, 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.[54] Also at the congress Pan-Turkism was introduced in its party program for an eventual union with the other Turkic populations in the world.[67] The committee pledged to discontinue komitecilik characteristics such as initiation ceremonies and other conspiratorial practices and vowed to be more transparent with the public.[68] However, neither the pledge for more transparency nor the pledge to discontinue initiation ceremonies were fully achieved.[69] 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.[69]

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.[66] In February 1910 several parties splintered from the Union and Progress Party, including the People's Party, Ottoman Committee of Alliance, and the Moderate Liberty Party.[63]

In September 1911, Italy submitted an ultimatum containing terms clearly meant to provoke a rejection, and following the expected rejection, invaded Ottoman Tripolitania.[70] The Unionist officers in the army were determined to resist the Italian aggression, and the parliament had succeeded in passing the "Law for the Prevention of Brigandage and Sedition", a measure ostensibly intended to prevent insurgency against the central government, which assigned that duty to newly created paramilitary formations. These later came under the control of the Special Organisation (Ottoman Turkish: تشکیلات مخصوصه, romanized: Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa), which was used to conduct guerrilla operations against the Italians in Libya.[71] Those who once served as fedâiin assassins during the years of underground struggle were often assigned as leaders of the Special Organisation.[46] 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.[72] 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.[73]

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, and the left-wing Progress Party.[74] Union and Progress was forced into a coalition government with some minor parties under Mehmed Said Pasha.[74] 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.[75]

Opening of the Ottoman Parliament, 1908

When it came time for general elections in 1912, held in the midst of the war with Italy and one of many Albanian revolts,[76] 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.[77][78] Though they received ten seats from the Union and Progress's lists, Dashnak terminated the alliance as they expected more reforms from the CUP as well as more support for their candidates to be elected.[78]

In May 1912, colonel 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 on July 11.[76][79] 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.[80] 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.[76] 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.

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.[81] Unbeknownst to the CUP, the Sublime Porte, and most international observers, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece were already preparing themselves for a war against the Empire in an alliance known as the Balkan League.[81] On 28 September 1912, the Ottoman army conducted military maneuvers on the Bulgarian border, to which Bulgaria responded by mobilizing.[81] On 4 October the Committee organized a pro-war rally in Sultanahmet Square.[82] Finally on 8 October, Montenegro declared war on the Ottoman Empire, starting the First Balkan War, with the rest of its allies joining in during the week. The Ottoman Empire and Italy concluded their war so that the Empire could focus on the Balkan states with 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.[83]

Muhtar Pasha's government resigned on the 29th of October following total military defeat in Rumelia for Kâmil Pasha's return, who was close to Freedom and Accord 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.[84]

The Revenge Map, published by the Society of Muslim Refugees from Rumeliya. In black is the part of the Ottoman Empire lost during the Balkan Wars from which many Muhacirs fled.

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.[100] 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.[101]

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.[102] The CUP encouraged boycotts against Austrian, Bulgarian, and Greek businesses, but after 1913 also against the empire's own Christian and Jewish citizens.[103]

Ziya Gökalp, ideologue of the committee and later member of Mustafa Kemal's Grand National Assembly

The new regime starting to glorify the "Turkish race" after abandoning the multi-culture ideal of Ottomanism. Particular attention was paid to Turan, the mythical homeland of the Turks that was located north of China.[104] A much greater emphasis was put on Turkish nationalism with the Turks being glorified in endless poems, pamphlets, newspaper articles and speeches as a great warrior nation who needed to recapture their former glory.[105] The chief ideologue of the CUP, Ziya Gökalp, complained in a 1913 essay that "the sword of the Turk and likewise his pen have exalted the Arabs, the Chinese and the Persians" rather than themselves and that the modern Turks "needed to turn back to their ancient past".[106] Gökalp argued it was time for the Turks to start following such great "Turanian" heroes as Attila, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane the Great and Hulagu Khan.[104] 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.[106] In his poem "Turan", Gökalp wrote: "The land of the Turks is not Turkey, nor yet Turkestan. Their country is the eternal land: Turan".[106] 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.[107] This was the motivation for the Ottoman Empire's entry into World War I, the "pan-Turkic" ideology of the party which emphasized the Empire's manifest destiny of ruling over the Turkic people of central Asia once Russia was driven out of that region.

Right from the time of the 1913 coup d'état, the new government planned to wage a total war, and wished to indoctrinate the entire Turkish population, especially the young people, for it.[108] In June 1913, the government founded the Turkish Strength Association, a paramilitary group run by former army officers which all young Turkish men were encouraged to join.[109] The Turkish Strength Association featured much physical exercise and military training intended to let the Turks become the "warlike nation in arms" and ensure that the current generation of teenagers "who, in order to save the deteriorating Turkish race from extinction, would learn to be self-sufficient and ready to die for fatherland, honour and pride".[110] In May 1914, the Turkish Strength Association was replaced with the Ottoman Strength Clubs, which were very similar except for the fact that the Ottoman Strength Clubs were run by the Ministry of War and membership was compulsory for Turkish males between the ages of 10–17.[111] Even more so than the Turkish Strength Association, the Ottoman Strength Clubs were meant to train the nation for war with an ultra-nationalist propaganda and military training featuring live-fire exercises being an integral part of its activities.[111] Along the same lines was a new emphasis on the role of women, who had the duty of bearing and raising the new generation of soldiers, who had to raise their sons to have "bodies of iron and nerves of steel".[112]

Propaganda postcard with the atrocities of Bulgarian and Greek troops over the Muslim populations during the Balkan Wars

The CUP created a number of semi-official organisations such as the Ottoman Navy League, the Ottoman Red Crescent Society and the Committee for National Defence that were intended to engage the Ottoman public with the entire modernisation project by promoting their nationalist and militaristic ways of thinking.[113] 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.[112]

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.[114]

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 fifth parliament in 1914, in which the Union and Progress Party was the only contender. The CUP and Dashnak still maintained cordial relations, and in February 1914 concluded negotiations of the passage of a bipartisan reform package for the eastern provinces which would be administered in cooperation with European inspectorates. However relations with the Hunchaks came to an end when intelligence services revealed a plot by the Hunchakian party of assassinating key leaders of the CUP. Those involved were arrested in 1913, and hanged in June 1915. The reform package also turned out to be stillborn, being abandoned by October once the Ottoman Empire entered World War I.[115]

Enver Pasha, the Minister of War

Many Unionists were traumatized from the outcome of the Macedonian Question and the loss of most of Rumelia. The winners of the 1877-78 Russo-Turkish war and the First Balkan War applied anti-Muslim ethnic cleansing measures against its citizens, which the CUP reacted with similar fever against the Empire's Christian minorities but on a much greater scale in the future.[116] With the Macedonian Question's conclusion, attention was now given to Anatolia and 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".[117] To that end, before the committee's exterminatory anti-Armenian policies, anti-Greek policies were in order. Mahmut Celaleddin (Bayar), who was appointed local secretary of the Union and Progress Party branch of Smyrna (modern İzmir), as well as Talât and Enver Pasha, formulated a terror campaign against the Greek population in the İzmir vilayet with the aim of "cleansing" the area.[118][119] 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.[120]

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.[121][122] 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.[123] In many ways, the operation against Ottoman Greeks in 1914 was a trial run for the operations that were launched against Armenians in 1915.[123]

In September, irregular warfare against Russia on the Caucasian border commenced; the ARF was invited to collaborate in these operations but refused.[124] Only in late September in response to cross-border raids would Russian Foreign Minister Sazonov permit the organisation of Ottoman Armenian irregular volunteer regiments (many Ottoman Armenians fled to Russian Tbilisi at this point).[125]

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.[126] 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.[127] 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."[128]

Tensions in Europe rapidly increased as the events of the July Crisis unfolded. The CUP saw the July Crisis as the perfect chance to revise the outcome of the loss of Rumelia in the Balkan wars and the loss of the six vilayets in the Berlin Treaty through an alliance with a European power. With the fall of the Anglophile Kâmil Pasha and Freedom and Accord, Germany took advantage of the situation by reestablishing its friendship with the Ottoman Empire that dated back to the Hamidian Era.[129] It was a small faction within the government and the CUP, first and foremost headed by Talât, Enver, and Halil, that solidified an alliance with Germany with an equally small faction within the German government in the form of Freiherr von Wangenheim that brought the Empire into the First World War.[130]

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.[131] On 2 August, the Ottoman and German governments signed a secret alliance. The purpose of this alliance was to bring the Empire into World War I. On 19 August, another secret alliance with Bulgaria negotiated by Talât and Halil and Bulgarian Prime Minister Vasil Radoslavov was signed. On 2 August Wangenheim informed the Ottoman cabinet that the German Mediterranean squadron under Admiral Wilhelm Souchon was steaming towards Constantinople, known as the famous pursuit of the Goeben and Breslau, and requested that the Ottomans grant the squadron sanctuary once it arrived (which the government gladly obliged to).[132] On 16 August, a phony deal was signed with the Ottoman government supposedly buying the Goeben and Breslau for US$86 million, but with the German officers and crews remaining aboard.[133]

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.[134] To provide a pretext for the war, Enver and Cemal Pasha (at this point Minister of the Navy) ordered Admiral Souchon to 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.[135] After the 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.[135] 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".[135] This meeting prompted the Minister of Finance Cavid to resign (though he still retained his seat in the Central Committee and returned to his post in 1917) and greatly infuriated the Grand Vizier Said Halim.[136] 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 Caliph of all Muslims, he issued a declaration of jihad against the Entente ordering all Muslims everywhere in the world to fight for the destruction of those nations.[135]

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 Capitulations, prohibiting foreign postal services, terminating Lebanon's autonomy, and suspending the 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.[137]

Armenians being marched to their execution

Adana Armenians being deported to Syria

After the failure of the Sarikamish expedition, the Three Pashas were 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.

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.[144] 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.[145] 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.[146]

In late 1914, Enver Pasha ordered that all Armenians serving in the Ottoman Army be disarmed and sent to labour battalions.[147] In early 1915, Enver ordered the killing of all 200,000 Ottoman Armenian soldiers, who were now disarmed in the labour battalions.[147] 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.[148] The Syrian deserts end up being the destination of future Armenian deportees. Talât also sent a circular to the governors to execute the arrests of important Dashnak and Hunchak members as well as "important and harmful Armenians known by the government."[149] That night, many of Constantinople's prominent Armenian elites were rounded up, arrested, and killed soon after, including Vramian. Military, provincial, and Unionist commissaries were then dispatched to spread stab-in-the-back myths about Armenians to feed into the spirit of jihad.[148] On 27 May, the legal basis for demographic engineering was enacted in the form of a provisional law that allowed for the government the powers of mass repression and deportation if national security was at risk (Tehcir Law).[150]

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.[151] 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.[152] This program of redistribution of Armenian property, Millî İktisat (national economy), was a core tenet of the CUP's Türk Yurdu project.[153] 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.[154]

Talât with CUP leaders Halil Bey and Enver Pasha, and Zionist politician Alfred Nossig, 1915

In December 1914, Cemal, encouraged by Şakir, ordered the deportation of all the Jews living in the southern part of Ottoman Syria known as the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem (roughly what is now Israel) on grounds that most of the Jews came from the Russian Empire, but in reality because the CUP considered the Zionist movement as a threat to the Ottoman state.[155] The deportation order was vetoed by Wangenheim and other members of the Central Committee; Germany's leaders believed that the Jews had vast secret powers, and if the Reich were to assist the Jews in the war, the Jews in their turn would assist the Reich.[156] Within the Central Committee, many had personal 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.[157] 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.[158] 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.[156]

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.[159] However, the British victories over the Ottomans in the autumn of 1917 with Field Marshal Allenby taking Jerusalem on 9 December 1917 saved the Jews of Palestine from being deported.[160]

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.[150]

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 Urfa, Maraş, and Antep, while some Kurds were 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.[161]

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.[162] 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.

The deportations of the Rûm were put on hold as Germany wished for a Greek ally or neutrality, however for the sake of their alliance, 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.[163] Acts of plunder by the Special Organisation and regional authorities occurred in the region around Trabzon, with Topal Osman being an especially infamous figure.[164]

Central Powers' delegation to Brest Litovsk; from left to right: General Max Hoffman (Germany), Ottakar Czernin (Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs), Grand Vizier Talât Pasha, and Richard von Kühlmann (German Minister of Foreign Affairs)

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.[165] 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.[165] However, with the Anglo-Australian-New Zealand-Indian-French forces stalemated in Gallipoli and another Anglo-Indian expedition slowly advancing on Baghdad, the CUP's leaders were not threatened by the Allied threat to bring them to trial.[166] On 22–23 November 1915, General Sir Charles Townshend was defeated in the Battle of Ctesiphon by Nureddin Pasha and Goltz Pasha, thus ending the British advance on Baghdad.[167] On 3 December 1915, what was left of Townshend's force was besieged in Kut al-Amara (his forces surrendered to Halil Pasha five months later).[168] 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.[167] 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.

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).[169]

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 reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's regime. When it came to the military, though the withdrawal of Russia from the war and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, negotiated and signed by Talât Pasha, was not only a massive success for the CUP but also for the 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.[169] 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.

The Pembe Konak, the building where the CUP's Istanbul headquarters was located

Most leaders of the Turkish National Movement and to that extent, individuals associated with Atatürk's Republican People's Party (CHP) (which continued one-party-rule) were former Unionists. Presidents of the Republic of Turkey Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, İsmet İnönü, and Celal Bayar, were members of Union and Progress. CUP Central Committee members Ziya Gökalp, Halil Menteşe, Midhat Şükrü Bleda, Fethi Okyar, and Rahmi Arslan managed to integrate themselves within the new post-Ottoman regime. Other important Republican Turkish figures formerly associated with the CUP included Rauf Orbay, Kâzım Karabekir, Adnan Adıvar, Şükrü Kaya, Çerkez Ethem, Bekir Sami, Yusuf Kemal, Celaleddin Arif, Ahmet Ağaoğlu, Recep Peker, Şemsettin Günaltay, Hüseyin Avni, Mehmet Emin Yurdakul, Mehmet Akif Ersoy, Celal Nuri İleri, Ali Münif Yeğenağa, Yunus Nadi Abalıoğlu, Falih Rıfkı Atay, and others. When Bülent Ecevit became leader of CHP in 1972, he was first general secretary of the party not previously affiliated with the CUP (and born in the Republic of Turkey). His leadership transformed the party into a social democratic 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.[173][174][175]

In addition to Atatürk's CHP,[8] Union and Progress also has at times been identified with the two opposition parties that Atatürk attempted to introduce into Turkish politics against his own party in order to help jump-start multiparty democracy in Turkey, namely the Progressive Republican Party and the Liberal Republican Party. While neither of these parties was primarily made up of persons indicted for genocidal activities, they were eventually taken over (or at least exploited) by persons who wished to restore the 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. 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."[176] While the postwar reconstruction of eastern Europe was generally dominated by Wilsonian ideas of national self-determination, Turkey probably came closer than most of the new countries to ethnic homogeneity due to the subsequent population exchanges with neighbouring countries (e.g. population exchange between Greece and Turkey).

Atatürk was particularly eager that Islamism be marginalised, leading to the tradition of secularism in Turkey. This idea was culminated by the CUP in its more liberal heyday, as it was one of the first mass movements in Turkish history that abandoned political Islam.

The Young Turk Revolution and CUP's work had a great impact on Muslims in other countries. The Persian community in Istanbul founded the Iranian Union and Progress Party. Indian Muslims imitated the CUP oath administered to recruits of the organisation.

Considered the world's first one-party state,[177] the CUP regime set an example for future one party regimes, especially in interwar Europe.

• 1902: Congress of Ottoman Libertarians
• 1907: Second Young Turk Congress

• 1908
• 1909
• 1910
• 1911

• 1912
• 1913
• 1916
• 1917
• 1918

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