The Young Turk Period, 1908-1918 - PSI424

282 The Rise of Modern Turkey, 1808-1975
tance that followed the arrival of the Operation Army. Military officers were sent
to the provinces to collect taxes so that the government could carry on. Thus, in
the name of the Constitution and democracy the army assumed autocratic control. 20
The final step came three days later. On April 27 Parliament again met as the
National Public Assembly, this time at the Aya Sofya mosque and under Sait Pa§a's
chairmanship. Obtaining a fetva that justified the sultan's deposition on the grounds
of complicity in the counterrevolution and the deaths that resulted, as well as of
the theft of state funds, the National Assembly declared him deposed in favor of his
brother, Mehmet V Re§at. 21 The sultan and his family were immediately placed
on a special train and sent to Salonica the same night so that the next morning the
public and the sultan's supporters were presented with a fait accompli against which
there could be no real opposition. After 33 years on the throne, then, still now only
in his 66th year, Abdulhamit accepted the events as the will of God and lived on
quietly in Salonica until he was recalled to Istanbul in 1912 due to the fear that he
might fall to the enemy in the Balkan Wars. He then resided in the Beylerbeyi
Palace, on the Anatolian side of the Bosporus, until his death six years later, on
February 10, 1918. Thus ended in obscurity and disgrace the life of one of the most
eminent of all Ottoman sultans. 22
The Ottoman Constitutional Democracy, 1909-1911
It long has been assumed that the revolutions of 1908 and 1909 ushered in a period
of direct rule by the CUP. However mistaken this assumption was for Abdulhamit's
last year of power, it was even less true in the period of constitutional democracy
that followed until the disastrous war with Italy in Tripolitania. As we have seen,
the counterrevolution of April 1909 disrupted and scattered the CUP and its
supporters, and it was the senior officers of the Macedonian army who restored the
Parliament and deposed Abdulhamit to preserve order. This in turn inaugurated
not a new period of CUP dominance but, rather, a mainly constitutional and
democratic regime influenced from behind the scenes by Mahmut §evket Pa§a, who
became martial-law commander of Istanbul as well as inspector of the First, Second,
and Third armies, thus inaugurating a limited kind of army participation in politics
that has been exercised from time to time ever since.
In response, the CUP itself emerged mainly as a civilian political party. It worked
to restore its previous authority by developing an empire-wide membership and
political organization as well as a program that could appeal to the masses. So it
was that while its first congress, held in Salonica in 1908, was secret, with its public
statement still limited to support of the as yet unstated aims of the Macedonian
CUP, the one held on November, 13, 1909, and all subsequent party congresses
were quite public. The secret "patriotic clubs" previously established in the provincial
centers now openly emerged as its party centers, all, however, still under the
strong control of its leaders in Istanbul and Salonica. Its military members did not
participate actively in politics, but their influence still was felt from behind the
scenes. The CUP program was strongly secularist and reflective of the modernist
policies of the intellectuals. It favored the existing organization of Parliament, with
a Chamber of Notables partly appointed by the sultan and partly by the Chamber of
Deputies. The vote was to be given to Ottoman male subjects over the age of 20
who possessed some property. Elections still would be indirect, but article 113 would
be abolished altogether. All Ottomans would be equal before the law, free to
assemble publicly and discuss political issues as long as the public order was not