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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 party until well after the elections in its 1909 Congress at Selanik (Thessaloniki).
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.
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. [2]
The Committee of Union and Progress, the main driving force behind the revolution, could count on the support of about 60 deputies, [3] 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]
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 broad opposition movement in the late Ottoman Empire agitating 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 intelligentsia exiled in Western Europe and Egypt 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 Senate is the upper house in the bicameral Parliament of Romania. It has 136 seats, to which members are elected by direct popular vote using party-list proportional representation in 43 electoral districts, to serve four-year terms.
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.
The 31 March incident was a political crisis within the Ottoman Empire in April 1909, during the Second Constitutional Era. The incident broke out during the night of 30–31 Mart 1325 in Rumi calendar, thus named after 31 March where March is the equivalent to Rumi month Mart. Occurring soon after the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, in which the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) had successfully restored the Constitution and ended the absolute rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, it is sometimes referred to as an attempted countercoup or counterrevolution. It consisted of a general uprising against the CUP within Istanbul, largely led by reactionary groups, particularly Islamists opposed to the secularising influence of the CUP and supporters of absolutism, although liberal opponents of the CUP within the Liberty Party also played a lesser role. The crisis ended after eleven days, when troops loyal to the CUP restored order in Istanbul and deposed Abdul Hamid.
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 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 General Assembly was the first attempt at representative democracy by the imperial government of the Ottoman Empire. Also known as the Ottoman Parliament, it was located in Constantinople (Istanbul) and was composed of two houses: an upper house, and a lower house.
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 military coup in the Ottoman Empire against the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) government by a group of military officers calling themselves the Saviour Officers during the dissolution era of the Ottoman Empire.
Early general elections were held in the Ottoman Empire in April 1912. Due to electoral fraud and brutal electioneering, which earned the elections the nickname Sopalı Seçimler, 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.
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, 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 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 movement produced other 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 minimal amendments during the course of the Second Constitutional Era and was retained by the Republic of Turkey with slight revisions until 1946.
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.
The Third Chamber of Deputies of the Ottoman Empire was elected in the 1908 Ottoman general election, which was called following the Young Turk Revolution. The new parliament consisted of 147 Turks, 60 Arabs, 27 Albanians, 26 Greeks (Rum), 14 Armenians, 10 Slavs, and four Jews. Including the amount of deputies elected in by-elections, the total amount of seats included 288 deputies. On 17 January 1912, through an imperial decree, the Sultan Mehmed V dissolved the Chamber of Deputies and called for new elections within three months.
