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288 seats in the Chamber of Deputies [1] | |||
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General elections were held in November and December 1908 for all 288 seats of the Chamber of Deputies of the Ottoman Empire, following the Young Turk Revolution which established the Second Constitutional Era. They were the first elections contested by organised political parties. [1]
The Young Turk Revolution in July resulted in the restoration of the 1876 constitution, ushering in the Second Constitutional Era, and the reconvening of the 1878 parliament, bringing back many of the surviving members of that parliament; the restored parliament's single legislation was a decree to formally dissolve itself and call for new elections.
The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), the driving force behind the revolution, was in an advantageous position for the election. Because it was still a secret organization, the CUP did not organize itself into a proper political party until well after the elections in its 1909 Congress at Selanik (Thessaloniki). The CUP and the Armenian Dashnak Committee ran in an electoral alliance. [2]
In the lead up to the election, Mehmed Sabahaddin's League for Private Initiative and Decentralization established itself as the Liberty Party. The Liberty Party was liberal in outlook, bearing a strong British imprint and was closer to the Palace. It hardly had time to organize itself for the election. Under pressure from the CUP, the government arrested key supporters of Sabahaddin's as they attempted to campaign in Anatolia, and even presented death threats. [2]
The elections were held in two stages. In the first stage, voters elected secondary electors (one for the first 750 voters in a constituency, then one for every additional 500 voters). In the second stage the secondary electors elected the members of the Chamber of Deputies. [1] The CUP was successful in abolishing quotas for non-Muslim populations, by amending the electoral to instead stipulate one deputy to every 50,000 males. [3]
The Committee of Union and Progress, the main driving force behind the revolution, won every seat in parliament except for one. However, its parliamentary group very quickly whittled itself down to a core group of 60 deputies, [4] gaining the upper hand against the Liberty Party. Many independents were elected to the parliament, mostly from the Arab provinces. The new parliament consisted of 147 Turks, 60 Arabs, 27 Albanians, 26 Greeks, 14 Armenians, 10 Slavs, and four Jews. [1]
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Following the electoral victory, the CUP transformed itself from a clandestine organization to a political party. Before that would happen though, Abdulhamid II (r. 1876–1909) would attempt to regain his autocracy in what would be known as the 31 March incident.
The Young Turks was a constitutionalist broad opposition movement in the late Ottoman Empire against Sultan Abdul Hamid II's absolutist regime. The most powerful organization of the movement, and the most conflated, was the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), though its goals, strategies, and membership continuously morphed throughout Abdul Hamid's reign. By the 1890s, the Young Turks were mainly a loose and contentious network of exiled intelligentsia that made a living by selling their newspapers to secret subscribers.
The Grand National Assembly of Turkey, usually referred to simply as the TBMM or Parliament, is the unicameral Turkish legislature. It is the sole body given the legislative prerogatives by the Turkish Constitution. It was founded in Ankara on 23 April 1920 amid the National Campaign. This constitution had founded its pre-government known as 1st Executive Ministers of Turkey in May 1920. The parliament was fundamental in the efforts of Mareşal Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, 1st President of the Republic of Turkey, and his colleagues to found a new state out of the remnants of the Ottoman Empire.
The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (1908–1922) was a period of history of the Ottoman Empire beginning with the Young Turk Revolution and ultimately ending with the empire's dissolution and the founding of the modern state of Turkey.
The Young Turk Revolution was a constitutionalist revolution in the Ottoman Empire. Revolutionaries belonging to the Internal Committee of Union and Progress, an organization of the Young Turks movement, forced Sultan Abdul Hamid II to restore the Constitution, recall the parliament, and schedule an election. Thus began the Second Constitutional Era.
The Second Constitutional Era was the period of restored parliamentary rule in the Ottoman Empire between the 1908 Young Turk Revolution and the 1920 dissolution of the General Assembly, during the empire's twilight years.
The First Constitutional Era of the Ottoman Empire was the period of constitutional monarchy from the promulgation of the Ottoman constitution of 1876, written by members of the Young Ottomans, that began on 23 December 1876 and lasted until 14 February 1878. These Young Ottomans were dissatisfied by the Tanzimat and instead pushed for a constitutional government similar to that in Europe. The constitutional period started with the dethroning of Sultan Abdulaziz. Abdul Hamid II took his place as Sultan. The era ended with the suspension of the Ottoman Parliament and the constitution by Sultan Abdul Hamid II, with which he restored his own absolute monarchy.
The 1913 Ottoman coup d'état, also known as the Raid on the Sublime Porte, was a coup d'état carried out in the Ottoman Empire by a number of Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) members led by Ismail Enver Bey and Mehmed Talaat Bey, in which the group made a surprise raid on the central Ottoman government buildings, the Sublime Porte. During the coup, the Minister of War, Nazım Pasha, was assassinated and the Grand Vizier, Kâmil Pasha, was forced to resign. Soon after the coup, the government fell into the hands of the CUP, now under the leadership of the triumvirate known as the "Three Pashas", made up of Enver, Talaat, and Cemal Pasha.
Starting in the 19th century the Ottoman Empire's governing structure slowly transitioned and standardized itself into a Western style system of government, sometimes known as the Imperial Government. Mahmud II (r. 1808–1839) initiated this process following the disbandment and massacre of the Janissary corps, at this point a conservative bureaucratic elite, in the Auspicious Incident. A long period of reform known as the Tanzimat period started, which yielded much needed reform to the government and social contract with the multicultural citizens of the empire.
The Constitution of the Ottoman Empire was in effect from 1876 to 1878 in a period known as the First Constitutional Era, and from 1908 to 1922 in the Second Constitutional Era. The first and only constitution of the Ottoman Empire, it was written by members of the Young Ottomans, particularly Midhat Pasha, during the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. After Abdul Hamid's political downfall in the 31 March Incident, the Constitution was amended to transfer more power from the sultan and the appointed Senate to the popularly-elected lower house: the Chamber of Deputies.
The Armenian National Constitution or Regulation of the Armenian Nation was a constitution in the Ottoman Empire for members of the Gregorian Armenian Millet. Promulgated in 1863, it defined the powers of the Armenian Patriarch, a newly formed Armenian National Assembly, and lay members. This code is still active among Armenian Church in diaspora. The Ottoman Turkish version was published in the Düstur. Other constitutions were promulgated for the Catholic Armenian and the Protestant Armenian millets.
Sultanzade Mehmed Sabahaddin was an Ottoman prince, sociologist, and intellectual. Because of his threat to the ruling House of Osman, of which he was a member, and his political activity and push for democracy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he was exiled. He was one of the founders of the short-lived Liberty Party.
The Freedom and Accord Party was a liberal Ottoman political party active between 1911 and 1913, during the Second Constitutional Era. It was the most significant opposition to Union and Progress in the Chamber of Deputies. The political programme of the party advocated for Ottomanism, government decentralisation, the rights of ethnic minorities, and close relations with Britain. In the post-1918 Ottoman Empire, the party became known for its attempts to suppress and prosecute the CUP.
The Chamber of Deputies of the Ottoman Empire was the lower house of the General Assembly, the Ottoman Parliament. Unlike the upper house, the Senate, the members of the Chamber of Deputies were elected by the general Ottoman populace, although suffrage was limited to males of a certain financial standing, among other restrictions that varied over the Chamber's lifetime.
The 1912 Ottoman coup d'état was a coup by military memorandum in the Ottoman Empire against the Committee of Union and Progress by a group of military officers calling themselves the Saviour Officers during the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. The coup occurred in the context of increasing distrust in the CUP's political agenda, the fallout of the Italo-Turkish War, and rising political polarization.
Early general elections were held in the Ottoman Empire in April 1912. The ruling Committee of Union and Progress won 269 of the 275 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, whilst the opposition Freedom and Accord Party only won six seats, a victory widely deemed fraudulent and won through intimidation.
General elections were held in the Ottoman Empire in 1914. The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) was the only party to contest the elections, and the newly elected Chamber of Deputies convened for the first time in May.
The Committee of Union and Progress was a revolutionary group, secret society, and political party, active between 1889 and 1926 in the Ottoman Empire and in 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 and committed genocides against the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian peoples as part of a broader policy of ethnic erasure during the late Ottoman period. The CUP and its members have often been referred to as "Young Turks", although the Young Turk movement produced other Ottoman political parties as well. Within the Ottoman Empire its members were known as İttihadcılar ('Unionists') or Komiteciler ('Committeemen').
The Ottoman Electoral Law was promulgated in December 1876 alongside the Ottoman constitution. The law underwent only minimal amendments in the Second Constitutional Era and was retained by the Republic of Turkey with only slight revisions until 1946. The law was detailed and covered a wide range of electoral matters including-electoral districts, parliamentary contingencies, the preparation of registers, the method of selection and the duties of electoral inspection committees, suffrage requirements and the general conduct of elections. The law also included penal clauses.
The Ottoman Liberty Party was a short-lived liberal political party in the Ottoman Empire during the Second Constitutional Era. It was founded by Prince Sabahaddin, Ahmet Samim, Suat Soyer, Ahmet Reşit Rey, Mehmet Tevfik Bey and Nureddin Ferruh Bey.
