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.
İsmail Enver, better known as Enver Pasha, was an Ottoman military officer, revolutionary, and convicted war criminal who formed one-third of the dictatorial triumvirate known as the "Three Pashas" in the Ottoman Empire.
Osman Zeki Üngör was a Turkish composer, violin virtuoso and lyricist, who served as the first conductor of the Presidential Symphony Orchestra of Turkey.
Fritz Kortner was an Austrian stage and film actor and theatre director.
ʻAbd al-Ḥamīd, also spelled as Abdulhamid, Abd-ul Hamid, and Abd ol-Hamid, is a Muslim male given name, and in modern usage, surname. It is built from the Arabic words ʻabd and al-Ḥamīd, one of the names of God in the Qur'an, which gave rise to the Muslim theophoric names. It means "servant of the All-laudable".
The Young Ottomans were a secret society established in 1865 by a group of Ottoman intellectuals who were dissatisfied with the Tanzimat reforms in the Ottoman Empire, which they believed did not go far enough. The Young Ottomans sought to transform the Ottoman society by preserving the Empire and modernizing it along the European tradition of adopting a constitutional government. Though the Young Ottomans were frequently in disagreement ideologically, they all agreed that the new constitutional government should continue to be at least somewhat rooted in Islam. To emphasize "the continuing and essential validity of Islam as the basis of Ottoman political culture" they attempted to syncretize an Islamic jurisprudence with liberalism and parliamentary democracy. The Young Ottomans sought for new ways to form a government like the European governments, especially the constitution of the Second French Empire. Among the prominent members of this society were writers and publicists such as İbrahim Şinasi, Namık Kemal, Ali Suavi, Ziya Pasha, and Agah Efendi.
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 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.
Mahmud Shevket Pasha was an Ottoman generalissimo and statesman, who was an important political figure during the Second Constitutional Era. During the 31 March Incident, Shevket Pasha and the Committee of Union and Progress overthrew Abdul Hamid II after an anti-Constitutionalist uprising in Constantinople. He played the role of a power broker after the crisis, balancing the various factions of the Young Turks and the army. As War Minister he played a leading role in military reform and the establishment of Air Divisions. Shevket Pasha became Grand Vizier during the First Balkan War in the aftermath of the 1913 coup d'état, from 23 January 1913 until his death by assassination.
Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha was an Ottoman statesman and imperial administrator. He was twice the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire around the time of the Second Constitutional Era. He was also one-time president of the Turkish Red Crescent.
Abdulhamid or Abdul Hamid II was the 34th sultan of the Ottoman Empire, from 1876 to 1909, and the last sultan to exert effective control over the fracturing state. He oversaw a period of decline with rebellions, and presided over an unsuccessful war with the Russian Empire (1877–78), the loss of Egypt and Cyprus from Ottoman control, followed by a successful war against the Kingdom of Greece in 1897, though Ottoman gains were tempered by subsequent Western European intervention.
Nakhlé Moutran was the pasha of Baalbek (Lebanon) during the late Ottoman empire period. He was a Greek Melkite Catholic, and inherited his political office from his grandfather who is said to have been the first Christian to be given the title Pasha after the Tanzimat edict of 1856. He was close to France, which after the onset of World War I caused his arrest and trial where he was sentenced to perpetual prison with labour, but died on his way to his designated imprisonment location in Diyarbakr.
The Crouching Beast is a 1935 British war thriller film directed by Victor Hanbury and starring Fritz Kortner, Wynne Gibson and Richard Bird. It was shot at Welwyn Studios with sets designed by the art director Duncan Sutherland. Based on the novel Clubfoot by Valentine Williams, the film was distributed by the Hollywood studio RKO Pictures in order to fulfil its British quota. However it was considerably more expensive than many of the quota quickies produced by American companies during the era.
Mehmed Ferid Pasha was an Ottoman statesman. He served as Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire from 15 January 1903 until 22 July 1908, at the time when the Sultan restored the 1876 Constitution following the Young Turk Revolution. Other than Ottoman Turkish he spoke the Albanian, Arabic, French, Italian, and Greek languages.
The Osmanoğlu family are the members of the historical House of Osman, which was the namesake and sole ruling house of the Ottoman Empire from 1299 until the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923.
Hasan Rami Pasha (1842–1923) was an Ottoman admiral and naval minister during the reign of Abdul Hamid II, who later also participated in the Greco-Turkish War (1897).
Shemsi Pasha (1846-1908) was an Ottoman-Albanian general.
The Action Army, also translated as the Army of Action, was a rebellion force formed by elements of the Ottoman Army sympathetic to the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) during the 31 March Incident, sometimes referred to as the 1909 countercoup. Mobilised in Selanik by Mahmud Shevket Pasha, it occupied Istanbul and successfully suppressed the uprising in the 31 March Incident.
Abdullah Hilmi Tunalı was a Turkish politician, member of the Chamber of Deputies, and later member of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey during the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd terms.
