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Committee of Union and Progress

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The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP, Ottoman Turkish: اتحاد و ترقى جمعيتی, romanized: İttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti) was a political group that tried to reform and modernize the Ottoman Empire during the late 19th and the early 20th centuries. It ended up being the main political expression of the Young Turks movement.[1]

The reforms that had been supported by the Ottoman Empire since the late 1830s under the Tanzimat created a generation of Ottomans that advocated even greater modernization of the empire. In 1865, the İttifak-ı Hamiyet (Patriotism Alliance) was founded. In 1867 it was renamed Genç Türkiye Partisi (Young Turkey Party). Both organizations served as bases for the establishment of the CUP[2] in Paris in 1889 by a group of Ottoman intellectuals and military officers as the result of the authoritarian governance of Sultan Abdülhamid II.[3] Its central ideology was Ottomanism, which advocated the development of a patriotic feeling in all subjects of the empire,[4] a kind of "Ottoman nationalism."

The goal of the CUP was the reformation of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of a modern, constitutional, but centralized state, which would be governed by the equality of its subjects in terms of gender, nationality, and religion. It strongly supported the dethronement of Abdülhamid, but preferred the establishment of a constitutional monarchy rather than a republic.[5] Ahmed Rıza was the main leader of the movement.[6] Mustafa Kemal was also among its early members.[7]

Young Turk Revolution and World War I

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The CUP came to power between 1908 and 1918 after the Young Turk Revolution in July 1908. The outbreak of the revolution that took place in Ottoman Macedonia was caused by the disclosure of British and Russian plans to partition the region.[8] The CUP actions alarmed the sultan, who accepted their demands for the restoration of the constitution and other reforms. Abdülhamid's failed counter-revolution the following year led to his dethronement.[9] The CUP also had the support of the modernist non-Muslim communities of the Ottoman Empire, who had been inspired with the confidence that their constitution and political program would ensure their full equality and peaceful coexistence within the empire.[10][11]

However, the 1909 movement brought the political leadership of the CUP, which was politically dominant and had a reformist program, into conflict with the more conservative military leadership, as politicians were considered incapable of preserving the order and securing the new regime.[12] Despite their initial constitutionalist and inclusive agenda towards religious and national minorities, the CUP started showing a direction towards Turkism. Soon, the group's leadership saw itself identified with the interest of the Ottoman Empire.[13]

Although the CUP remained politically dominant, opposition by 1911 was growing, and a single political group was formed, Freedom and Accord Party Entente Libérale (Hürriyet ve İtilaf Fırkası). In 1912 and 1913, both Balkan Wars were fought. The Ottomans lost almost of their European territories in the First Balkan War. Although the Second Balkan War had the Ottomans on the winning side, the defeat led on July 12, 1913 to a coup d'état by a group of the CUP. From then to the end of World War I, the empire was ruled dictatorially by three CUP members: Mehmed Talaat Pasha, İsmail Enver Pasha and Ahmed Cemal Pasha.[14]

The triumvirate led the Ottoman Empire to World War I because of an alliance with the Central Powers. During the Young Turk Revolution, the pro-German factions of the army had come to power.[15] During the Gallipoli Campaign, which was victorious for the Ottomans, the CUP leadership managed to limit the power of Grand vizier Said Halim Pasha and strengthened their own political position.[16] During the war, the triumvirate proceeded with a process of ethnic cleansing of populations that were considered hostile to the survival of the empire. The procedure took the form of a genocide of Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontic Greeks.[17] Ultimately, the defeat of the Central Powers and therefore the Ottoman Empire in the war led to the fall of the triumvirate and the decline of the CUP.

Aftermath

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The three leaders of the CUP, which had essentially collapsed, were held responsible for the Ottoman defeat in the war. Most CUP members were court-martialled by Sultan Mehmed VI and imprisoned. Talaat, Enver, and Cemal Pasha had already fled the country,[18] but all three were either murdered by Armenians or killed in revolutionary movements.

Despite the defeat in the war and the decline of the CUP, the remaining members had maintained conditions that allowed them continue their fight. Mustafa Kemal, who since 1919 had been the central figure in the Turkish War of Independence -a contuation of armenian genocide-,[19] rallied many members around him but criticized the CUP for its lack of leadership and differentiated himself from it.[20] Finally, in 1923, after his definitive victory in the war, he emerged as the undisputed leader of the newly-founded Republic of Turkey.

After the success of the Kemalist movement, the few remaining CUP members offered Mustafa Kemal its leadership in the spring of 1923, but he declined.[21] Eventually, the last members organized an opposition to his radicalism and authoritarianism. The remnants of the organization were eliminated from Turkey during the Izmir trials for plotting the assassination of Mustafa Kemal in 1926.[22]

References

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  1. ↑ Ahmad, Feroz (2018). The Young Turks: Struggle for the Ottoman Empire, 1914-1918. Istanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları. pp. 3–4. ISBN 6053995304.
  2. ↑ Gökbayır, Satılmış (2012). "Gizli Bir Cemiyetten İktidara: Osmanlı İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti'nin 1908 Seçimleri Siyasi Programı". Çankırı Karatekin Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi. 3 (1): 62.
  3. ↑ Ahmad, Feroz (2014). The Young Turks and the Ottoman Nationalities: Armenians, Greeks, Albanians, Jews, and Arabs, 1908–1918. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. p. 6. ISBN 978-1-60781-338-5.
  4. ↑ Findley, Carter Vaughn (2010). Turkey, Islam, Nationalism and Modernity. A History, 1789-2007. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 102.
  5. ↑ Gökbayır (2012). pp. 64-65.
  6. ↑ Lévy-Aksu, Noémi; Georgeon, François (2020). The Young Turk Revolution and the Ottoman Empire. The Aftermath of 1908. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 7–8.
  7. ↑ Zürcher, Erik J. (2004). Turkey. A Modern History. London: I.B. Tauris. p. 142.
  8. ↑ Zürcher (2004). p. 90.
  9. ↑ Zürcher (2004). pp. 95-99.
  10. ↑ Ahmad, Feroz (2013). From Empire to Republic. Essays on the Late Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Vol. 2. Istanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Unıversıty Press. p. 163.
  11. ↑ Ahmad (2014). p. 42.
  12. ↑ Ahmad, Feroz (1969). The Young Turks. The Committee of Union and Progress in Turkish Politics, 1908-1914. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 50–52.
  13. ↑ Zürcher, Erik J. (2010). The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building. From the Ottoman Empire to Atatürk’s Turkey. London: I.B. Tauris. p. 69.
  14. ↑ Findley (2010). p. 198.
  15. ↑ Taner, Timur (2008). "Uluslaşma Süreci, İttihatçılık ve Devrim". In Akşin, Sina; Balcı, Sarp; Ünlü, Barış (eds.). 100. Yılında Jön Türk Devrimi. Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları. pp. 44–46.
  16. ↑ Seyhun, Ahmet (2021). Competing Ideologies in the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Turkish Republic Selected Writings of Islamist, Turkist, and Westernist Intellectuals. London: I.B. Tauris. p. 196. ISBN 075560220X.
  17. ↑ Shirinian, George N., ed. (2017). Genocide in the Ottoman Empire. Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks. New York: Berghahn.
  18. ↑ Lewis, Bernard (1968). The Emergence of Modern Turkey. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 240-241.
  19. ↑ * Üngör, Uğur Ümit (2011). The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913–1950. Oxford University Press. p. 121. ISBN 978-0-19-965522-9. As such, the Greco-Turkish and Armeno-Turkish wars (1919–23) were in essence processes of state formation that represented a continuation of ethnic unmixing and exclusion of Ottoman Christians from Anatolia. Kieser, Hans-Lukas (2007). A Quest for Belonging: Anatolia Beyond Empire and Nation (19th-21st Centuries). Isis Press. p. 171. ISBN 978-975-428-345-7. Archived from the original on 15 January 2023. Retrieved 4 May 2021. The Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 officially recognized the " ethnic cleansing " that had gone on during the Turkish War of Independence ( 1919 - 1922 ) for the sake of undisputed Turkish rule in Asia Minor . Avedian, Vahagn (2012). "State Identity, Continuity, and Responsibility: The Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Turkey and the Armenian Genocide". European Journal of International Law. 23 (3): 797–820. doi:10.1093/ejil/chs056. ISSN 0938-5428. Archived from the original on 7 May 2021. Retrieved 14 April 2021. The 'War of Independence' was not against the occupying Allies – a myth invented by Kemalists – but rather a campaign to rid Turkey of remaining non-Turkish elements. In fact, Nationalists never clashed with Entente occupying forces until the French forces with Armenian contingents and Armenian deportees began to return to Cilicia in late 1919. Kévorkian, Raymond (2020). "The Final Phase: The Cleansing of Armenian and Greek Survivors, 1919–1922". In Astourian, Stephan; Kévorkian, Raymond (eds.). Collective and State Violence in Turkey: The Construction of a National Identity from Empire to Nation-State. Berghahn Books. p. 165. ISBN 978-1-78920-451-3. The famous 'war of national liberation', prepared by the Unionists and waged by Kemal, was a vast operation, intended to complete the genocide by finally eradicating Armenian, Greek, and Syriac survivors. Gingeras, Ryan (2016). Fall of the Sultanate: The Great War and the End of the Ottoman Empire, 1908-1922. Oxford University Press. p. 288. ISBN 978-0-19-967607-1. While the number of victims in Ankara's deportations remains elusive, evidence from other locations suggest that the Nationalists were as equally disposed to collective punishment and population politics as their Young Turk antecedents... As in the First World War, the mass deportation of civilians was symptomatic of how precarious the Nationalists felt their prospects were. Kieser, Hans-Lukas (2018). Talaat Pasha: Father of Modern Turkey, Architect of Genocide. Princeton University Press. pp. 319–320. ISBN 978-1-4008-8963-1. Thus, from spring 1919, Kemal Pasha resumed, with ex- CUP forces, domestic war against Greek and Armenian rivals. These were partly backed by victors of World War I who had, however, abstained from occupying Asia Minor. The war for Asia Minor— in national diction, again a war of salvation and independence, thus in- line with what had begun in 1913— accomplished Talaat's demographic Turkification beginning on the eve of World War I. Resuming Talaat's Pontus policy of 1916– 17, this again involved collective physical annihilation, this time of the Rûm of Pontus at the Black Sea. Lay summary in: Kieser, Hans-Lukas. "Pasha, Talat". 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War. Levene, Mark (2020). "Through a Glass Darkly: The Resurrection of Religious Fanaticism as First Cause of Ottoman Catastrophe". Journal of Genocide Research. 22 (4): 553–560. doi:10.1080/14623528.2020.1735560. ISSN 1462-3528. S2CID 222145177. Ittihadist violence was as near as near could be optimal against the Armenians (and Syriacs) and in the final Kemalist phase was quantitively entirely the greater in an increasingly asymmetric conflict where, for instance, Kemal could deport "enemies" into a deep interior in a way that his adversaries could not..., it was the hard men, self-styled saviours of the Ottoman-Turkish state, and – culminating in Kemal – unapologetic génocidaires, who were able to wrest its absolute control. Ze'evi, Dror; Morris, Benny (2019). The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey's Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894–1924. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p. 672. ISBN 9780674916456. Levon Marashlian, "Finishing the Genocide: Cleansing Turkey of Armenian Survivors, 1920-1923," in Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide, ed. Richard Hovannisian (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999), pp. 113-45: "Between 1920 and 1923, as Turkish and Western diplomats were negotiating the fate of the Armenian Question at peace conferences in London, Paris, and Lausanne, thousands of Armenians of the Ottoman Empire who had survived the massacres and deportations of World War I continued to face massacres, deportations, and persecutions across the length and breadth of Anatolia. Events on the ground, diplomatic correspondence, and news reports confirmed that it was the policy of the Turkish Nationalists in Angora, who eventually founded the Republic of Turkey, to eradicate the remnants of the empire's Armenian population and finalize the expropriation of their public and private properties." Marashlian, Levon (1998). "Finishing the Genocide: Cleansing Turkey of Armenian Survivors, 1920-1923". In Hovannisian, Richard G. (ed.). Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. pp. 113–45. ISBN 978-0-8143-2777-7. Between 1920 and 1923, as Turkish and Western diplomats were negotiating the fate of the Armenian Question at peace conferences in London, Paris, and Lausanne, thousands of Armenians of the Ottoman Empire who had survived the massacres and deportations of World War I continued to face massacres, deportations, and persecutions across the length and breadth of Anatolia. Events on the ground, diplomatic correspondence, and news reports confirmed that it was the policy of the Turkish Nationalists in Angora, who eventually founded the Republic of Turkey, to eradicate the remnants of the empire's Armenian population and finalize the expropriation of their public and private properties. Shirinian, George N. (2017). Genocide in the Ottoman Empire: Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks, 1913-1923. Berghahn Books. p. 62. ISBN 978-1-78533-433-7. The argument that there was a mutually signed agreement for the population exchange ignores the fact that the Ankara government had already declared its intention that no Greek should remain on Turkish soil before the exchange was even discussed. The final killing and expulsion of the Greek population of the Ottoman Empire in 1920–24 was part of a series of hostile actions that began even before Turkey's entry into World War I. Adalian, Rouben Paul (1999). "Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal". In Charny, Israel W. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Genocide: A-H. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-0-87436-928-1. Archived from the original on 16 May 2021. Retrieved 4 May 2021. Mustafa Kemal completed what Talaat and Enver had started in 1915, the eradication of the Armenian population of Anatolia and the termination of Armenian political aspirations in the Caucasus. With the expulsion of the Greeks, the Turkification and Islamification of Asia Minor was nearly complete. Morris, Benny; Ze'evi, Dror (2019). The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey's Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894–1924. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-91645-6. The Greek seizure of Smyrna and the repeated pushes inland— almost to the outskirts of Ankara, the Nationalist capital—coupled with the largely imagined threat of a Pontine breakaway, triggered a widespread, systematic four- year campaign of ethnic cleansing in which hundreds of thousands of Ottoman Greeks were massacred and more than a million deported to Greece... throughout 1914–1924, the overarching aim was to achieve a Turkey free of Greeks. Meichanetsidis, Vasileios Th. (2015). "The Genocide of the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire, 1913–1923: A Comprehensive Overview". Genocide Studies International. 9 (1): 104–173. doi:10.3138/gsi.9.1.06. S2CID 154870709. Archived from the original on 23 November 2022. Retrieved 8 December 2022. The genocide was committed by two subsequent and chronologically, ideologically, and organically interrelated and interconnected dictatorial and chauvinist regimes: (1) the regime of the CUP, under the notorious triumvirate of the three pashas (Üç Paşalar), Talât, Enver, and Cemal, and (2) the rebel government at Samsun and Ankara, under the authority of the Grand National Assembly (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi) and Kemal. Although the process had begun before the Balkan Wars, the final and most decisive period started immediately after WWI and ended with the almost total destruction of the Pontic Greeks ...
  20. ↑ Findley (2010). pp. 221-222.
  21. ↑ Zürcher (2004). p. 160.
  22. ↑ Zürcher (2004). p. 174.


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