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275 seats in the Chamber of Deputies 138 seats needed for a majority | ||||||||||
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![]() The Chamber of Deputies after the elections | ||||||||||
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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 ("Election of Clubs"), the ruling Committee of Union and Progress won 269 of the 275 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, [1] [2] whilst the opposition Freedom and Accord Party only won six seats. [3]
The elections were announced in January 1912, after the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) lost a by-election to the Freedom and Accord Party in Istanbul in December 1911. [4] The CUP had hoped early elections would thwart the efforts of the party to better organise itself. [2] The CUP platform represented centralist tendencies, whilst Freedom and Accord promoted a more decentralised agenda, including supporting allowing education in local languages. [2]
Although the two main parties competing in the election, the CUP and Freedom and Accord, were largely secular in their political outlook, issues such as the Islamic religious piety of their candidates became sensationalised campaign topics. Seeing the potent amount of political capital to be gained by appealing to religion, as the Muslim vote was the most important in the Empire, both parties consistently accused one another of various other supposed offenses against Islamic tradition. [2]
Freedom and Accord members accused the CUP candidates of a "disregard for Islamic principles and values" and of "attempting to restrict the prerogatives of the sultan-caliph", despite the fact that many Freedom and Accord members were quite progressive in their own lives and dealings. [2] In return, the CUP, seeing that its previous policy of secular Ottomanism (Ottoman nationalism) was failing, turned to a similar line of Islamist rhetoric as Freedom and Accord in order to drum up support among the Muslims of the Empire; it accused Freedom and Accord of "weakening Islam and Muslims" by trying to separate the Ottoman sultan's office from the Caliphate. [2] Although this accusation was almost identical to the one leveled by Freedom and Accord at the CUP itself, it was highly effective. [2] Freedom and Accord retorted by claiming that the CUP, in its previous attempt to amend the constitution, was covertly trying to "denounce" and abolish the ritual fasting during the month of Ramadan and the five daily prayers. [2]
The manner of the CUP's victory led to the formation of the Savior Officers, whose aim was to restore constitutional government. After gaining support from the army in Macedonia, the Officers demanded government reforms. Under pressure, the Grand Vizier Mehmed Said Pasha resigned. [1] Sultan Mehmed V then appointed a new cabinet supported by the Officers and Freedom and Accord. [1] On 5 August 1912, Mehmed V called for early elections. However, with the election underway in October, the outbreak of the Balkan Wars led to it being interrupted. [2] Fresh elections were eventually held in 1914.
The CUP went to the polls in an electoral alliance with the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, but the alliance broke down after only 10 of its 23 candidates won seats due to a lack of support from the CUP. [5]
Mehmed V Reşâd was the penultimate sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1909 to 1918. Mehmed V reigned as a constitutional monarch, interfering little when it came to government affairs, though the constitution was held with little regard by his ministries. The first half of his reign was marked by contentious politicking between factions of the Young Turks, and the second half by war and domination of the Committee of Union and Progress and the Three Pashas.
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.
Liberalism was introduced in the Ottoman Empire during the Tanzimat period of reformation.
The caliphate of the Ottoman Empire was the claim of the heads of the Turkish Ottoman dynasty to be the caliphs of Islam in the late medieval and early modern era. During the period of Ottoman expansion, Ottoman rulers claimed caliphal authority after the conquest of Mamluk Egypt by sultan Selim I in 1517 and the abolition of the Mamluk-controlled Abbasid Caliphate. This left Selim as the Defender of the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina and strengthened the Ottoman claim to leadership in the Muslim world.
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.
Ahmed Muhtar Pasha also spelled Ahmed Mihtar Pasha was a prominent Ottoman field marshal and Grand Vizier, who served in the Crimean and Russo-Turkish wars. Ahmed Muhtar Pasha was appointed as Grand Vizier in July 1912 at age 72, largely due to his prestige as an old military hero.
The Three Pashas, also known as the Young Turk triumvirate or CUP triumvirate, consisted of Mehmed Talaat Pasha, the Grand Vizier and Minister of the Interior; Ismail Enver Pasha, the Minister of War and Commander-in-Chief to the Sultan; and Ahmed Djemal Pasha, the Minister of the Navy and governor-general of Syria, who effectively ruled the Ottoman Empire after the 1913 Ottoman coup d'état and the subsequent assassination of Mahmud Shevket Pasha.
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 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 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.
General elections were held in the Ottoman Empire in 1919 and were the last official elections held in the Empire. Due to the dearth of political parties, the elections were dominated by the Association for Defence of National Rights (A-RMHC), which consisted of nationalist local groups protesting against the Allied occupation of Turkey.
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 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.
The Taksim meeting alternatively known as the Taksim Plot and less commonly as the Taksim Assembly was a secret meeting held in January 1912 by Albanian nationalist deputies of the Ottoman parliament and other prominent Albanian political figures. The event gets its name from Taksim Square because of the location of the house where it was held. The meeting was organized on the initiative of Hasan Prishtina and Ismail Qemali, Albanian politicians, who invited most of the MPs of Albanian origin and aimed at launching an armed general uprising in Albanian territories against the central government headed by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). The meeting followed two other Albanian uprisings of 1910 in the Vilayet of Kosovo and 1911 in the mountains of upper Shkodra. The Taksim meeting resulted in an uprising the same year, with armed uprisings in Shkodër, Lezhë, Mirditë, Krujë and other Albanian provinces, which exceeded the organizers' expectations. The biggest uprising was in Kosovo, where the rebels were more organized and managed to take over important cities like Prizren, Peja, Gjakova, Mitrovica and others.