The Young Turk Revolution Restores the Constitution
Army officers force Abdul Hamid II to reinstate parliament after thirty years of one-man rule
Quick facts
- Constitution restored
- 24 July 1908
- Movement
- Committee of Union and Progress (Young Turks)
- Sultan forced to comply
- Abdul Hamid II
- Later leadership
- The Three Pashas: Talat, Cemal, Enver
What happened
The Committee of Union and Progress, a reform movement known as the Young Turks that sought to restore the constitution of 1876, forced Sultan Abdul Hamid II to reinstate parliamentary government on 24 July 1908, ending three decades of his personal autocratic rule. The movement was rooted partly in army officers based in the empire's Balkan provinces, and its restoration of constitutional government opened what is called the Second Constitutional Era. Within a few years, however, the liberal figures who had led the revolution were displaced by a more authoritarian military triumvirate, the Three Pashas, Mehmet Talat, Ahmet Cemal, and Enver, who would go on to take the empire into the First World War.
Why it matters
The Young Turk Revolution reopened Ottoman politics after thirty years of closure, but it replaced one form of concentrated power with another: within a decade the same movement's authoritarian wing had led the empire into a war it could not survive and directed the atrocities against Armenians that followed. The officers who came of age in this movement, including Mustafa Kemal, would go on to lead the very different national movement that built the Turkish republic out of the empire's wreckage.
How we know
The 1908 restoration of the Ottoman constitution and the Committee of Union and Progress's role in it are documented in the Library of Congress's Turkey country study alongside contemporary Ottoman and European diplomatic records of the same events.
Sources
- Federal Research Division, Library of Congress. Turkey: A Country Study (Library of Congress Country Studies), Ch. 3 · General sourcecountrystudies.us · Cited as a "reference" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Ottoman Empire · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Related timelines
- The Ottoman Empire → · See the Ottoman Empire timeline for a fuller account of the Young Turk Revolution, Abdul Hamid II's deposition, and the Committee of Union and Progress's rule.