The Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress (CUP, also translated as the Society of Union and Progress; , French: Union et Progrès) 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 CUP and its members have often been referred to as "Young Turks", although the Young Turk movement produced other political parties as well. Within Turkey its members were known as ('Unionists') or ('Committeemen').
The organisation began as a liberal reform movement, and the autocratic government of Sultan Abdul Hamid II () persecuted it because of its calls for constitutional government and reform. Most of its members were exiled and arrested after a failed coup-attempt in 1896. The resultant period of infighting among Young Turk émigrés saw Ahmet Rıza Bey emerge as the organization's leader. The CUP's cause revived by 1905 with a new cadre of bureaucrats and army contingents based in Ottoman Macedonia which were fighting ethnic insurgents in the Macedonian Struggle. In 1908 the Unionists revolted in the Young Turk Revolution, and forced Abdul Hamid to re-instate the 1876 Constitution, ushering in an era of political plurality. During the Second Constitutional Era, the CUP at first influenced politics from behind the scenes, introducing major reforms to continue the modernisation of the Ottoman Empire. The CUP's main rival was the Freedom and Accord Party, a conservative party which called for the decentralisation of the empire, in opposition to the CUP's desire for a centralised Turkish-dominated state.
The CUP consolidated its power at the expense of the Freedom and Accord Party in the 1912 "Election of Clubs" and in the 1913 Raid on the Sublime Porte, while also growing increasingly splintered, radical and nationalistic due to Turkey's defeat in the First Balkan War and attacks on Balkan Muslims. The CUP seized full power following Grand Vizier Mahmud Şevket Pasha's assassination in June 1913, with major decisions ultimately being decided by the party's Central Committee. A triumvirate of the CUP leader Talât Pasha with Enver Pasha and Cemal Pasha took control of the country, and sided with Germany in World War I.
After an ideological transformation, from 1913 to 1918, the CUP ruled the empire as a dictatorship.Zurcher, Eric Jan (1997)The Unionist Factor: The Role of the Committee of Union and Progress in the Turkish National Movement 1905-1926. With the help of their paramilitary, the Special Organization, the Unionist régime enacted policies resulting in the genocide of the empire's indigenous Armenian, Pontic Greek, and Assyrian citizens in order to Turkify Anatolia.
Following Ottoman defeat in World War I in October 1918, CUP leaders escaped into exile in Europe, where the Armenian Revolutionary Federation assassinated several of them (including Talât and Cemal) in Operation Nemesis in revenge for their genocidal policies. Many CUP members were court-martialed and imprisoned in war-crimes trials with support from the Allied powers. However, most former Unionists were able to join the burgeoning Turkish nationalist movement led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, ultimately continuing their political careers in the Republic of Turkey as members of Atatürk's Republican People's Party following the Turkish War of Independence. Atatürk and the Republican People's Party expanded on reforms introduced by Union and Progress and continued one-party rule in Turkey until 1946.
Name The CUP was first established as the Committee of the Ottoman Union (Ottoman Turkish: İttihad-ı Osmanî Cemiyeti) in Constantinople (now Istanbul) on 6 February 1889 by a group of medical students of the Imperial Military School of Medicine. Ahmet Rıza, being an avid follower of Auguste Comte and his theories on progressivism, changed the name of the early club to the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) (). Between 1906 and 1908 it was known as the Committee of Progress and Union, but changed its name back to the more recognisable Committee of Union and Progress during the Young Turk Revolution.
The word cemiyet has many translations. It is a loanword from the Arabic ( جمعية, jām‘ia) and a classical translation would be "committee" or "society" or "organisation". As the Young Turks greatly admired the French Revolution and the radical political clubs and societies that were founded over its course, a more accurate and faithful translation of İttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti into English would be "The Society of Union and Progress". They especially wished to model their movement of the Jacobin Club and thought of themselves as such.
In the West, the CUP was conflated with the wider Young Turks movement and its members were called Young Turks, while in the Ottoman Empire a member was known as a İttihadçı or Komiteci, which means İttihadist (Unionist) and Committeeman respectively. Its ideology is known as İttihadçılık, or İttihadism (Unionism). The Central Committee informally referred to itself as the "Sacred Committee" (Cemiyet-i mukaddese) or the "Kaaba of Liberty" (Kâbe-i hürriyet).
Origins The Committee of Ottoman Union (İttihad-ı Osmanî Cemiyeti) was established as a secret student society on 2 June 1889 by Ibrahim Temo, Şerafettin Mağmumi, Dr. Mehmed Reşid, Abdullah Cevdet, and İshak Sükuti, all of whom were medical students of the Imperial Military School of Medicine in Constantinople.. While they held many contradicting Enlightenment derived beliefs, they were united by the necessity of a constitution to prevent further decline of the empire. Under pressure from the earlier Young Ottomans, Sultan Abdul Hamid II promulgated a constitution and a parliament upon his ascension to the throne in 1876, but suspended both after defeat in the 1877-1878 Russo Turkish War. From 1878 to 1908, Abdul Hamid ruled the empire as a personal dictatorship after purging the Young Ottomans. Critically though, the empire was still in decline. It was in massive debt to European creditors to the point where its finances were controlled by Western bankers, and nationalist movements by non-Muslim minorities continued making inroads. Therefore, a new generation of opposition, called the Young Turks, hoped to overthrow Abdul Hamid II for one of his brothers in order to save the empire through constitutionalism: either the crown prince Mehmed Reşad (Mehmed V) or former Sultan Murad V.
Under the guise of a banquet, the Committee of Ottoman Union held its first meeting in Midhat Pasha's vineyard outside Edirnekapı, Constantinople. It was decided at this meeting that the society would be modeled from the Italian Carbonari and be structured into cells. They met every Friday in different places, where they held seminaries discussing the works of Young Ottoman thinkers such as Namık Kemal and Ziya Pasha, drafted regulations, and read banned philosophy and literature. The society gained support from civilian and military students from other colleges around Constantinople, whereupon members of the society were under surveillance and some would be arrested and interrogated.
Ottoman Union became the preeminent faction of the Young Turks once it absorbed other opposition groups and established contact with exiled intelligentsia, Freemasons, and cabinet ministers, to the point where European observers started calling them the "Young Turk Party". During this time, the organisation was taken over by high-ranking officers and ulema. They supported Kâmil Pasha's coup attempt during height of the diplomatic crisis caused by the Hamidian massacres. With Kâmil's defeat, a wave of arrests and exiles caused chaos for the organisation inside the Ottoman Empire. In August 1896, Unionist ministers plotted a coup d'état to overthrow the sultan, but the plot was leaked to the palace. Prominent statesmen were exiled to Fezzan, Tripolitania, Acre and Benghazi. Another plot was hatched the year after where Unionist cadets of the Military Academy planned to assassinate the Minister of Military Schools. Authorities were tipped off, and a major arrest operation was carried out. 630 people were arrested; 78 of them were sent to Tripolitania. This exile incident went down in history as the "Sacrifices of the Şeref" (Şeref Kurbanları) and was the biggest exile event in Abdul Hamid's reign.
Émigré politics In 1894, Ahmed Rıza Bey was recruited by Ottoman Union to lead its Paris chapter of a united organisation of dissidents operating in Europe and those in Constantinople: the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress (Osmanlı İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti) (CUP), which was centered around the organ Meşveret and its French supplemental. Following the failure of the CUP's plots in the mid-1890s, the organisation's Constantinople section turned inoperable and the headquarters moved to Paris, which had a sizable colony of Young Turk intellectuals. Other Young Turk émigré communities were established in Paris, London, Geneva, Bucharest, and Cairo.
In exile though the Young Turks would be racked by infighting. Rıza was an avowed positivist, and advocated for a Turkish nationalist and secularist agenda. Even though he denounced revolution, he had a more conservative and Islamist rival in Mehmed Murad Bey of Mizan fame. Rıza also had to deal with the "Activist" faction of the CUP that did push for a revolution. Other CUP branches often acted autonomously with their own ideological currents, to the point where the committee resembled more of an umbrella organisation. Meşveret (Rıza) called for the reinstatement of the constitution but without revolution, as well as a more centralised Turkish-dominated Ottoman Empire sovereign of European influence.
Under pressure from the palace, French authorities banned Meşveret and deported Rıza and his Unionists in 1896. After settling in Brussels, the Belgian government was also pressured to deport the group a couple years later. A congress in December 1896 saw Murad elected as chairman over Rıza and the headquarters moved to Geneva, causing a schism in the society between Rıza's supporters in Paris and Murad's supporters in Geneva. After the Ottoman Empire's triumph over Greece in 1897 Sultan Abdul Hamid used the prestige he gained from the victory to coax some Young Turks back into his fold. After expelling Rıza from the CUP, Murad accepted the amnesty offer. A wave of extraditions, more amnesties, and buy-outs, weakened an opposition organisation already operating in exile. Though moral was low, Ahmet Rıza, who returned to Paris, was the sole leader of the exiled Young Turks network.