Committee of Union and Progress

The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP, Ottoman Turkish: اتحاد و ترقى جمعيتی, romanized: İttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti) was a political group that tried to reform and modernize the Ottoman Empire during the late 19th and the early 20th centuries. It ended up being the main political expression of the Young Turks movement.^[1]

The reforms that had been supported by the Ottoman Empire since the late 1830s under the Tanzimat created a generation of Ottomans that advocated even greater modernization of the empire. In 1865, the İttifak-ı Hamiyet (Patriotism Alliance) was founded. In 1867 it was renamed Genç Türkiye Partisi (Young Turkey Party). Both organizations served as bases for the establishment of the CUP^[2] in Paris in 1889 by a group of Ottoman intellectuals and military officers as the result of the authoritarian governance of Sultan Abdülhamid II.^[3] Its central ideology was Ottomanism, which advocated the development of a patriotic feeling in all subjects of the empire,^[4] a kind of "Ottoman nationalism."

The goal of the CUP was the reformation of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of a modern, constitutional, but centralized state, which would be governed by the equality of its subjects in terms of gender, nationality, and religion. It strongly supported the dethronement of Abdülhamid, but preferred the establishment of a constitutional monarchy rather than a republic.^[5] Ahmed Rıza was the main leader of the movement.^[6] Mustafa Kemal was also among its early members.^[7]

1. ↑ Ahmad, Feroz (2018). The Young Turks: Struggle for the Ottoman Empire, 1914-1918. Istanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları. pp. 3–4. ISBN 6053995304.
2. ↑ Gökbayır, Satılmış (2012). "Gizli Bir Cemiyetten İktidara: Osmanlı İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti'nin 1908 Seçimleri Siyasi Programı". Çankırı Karatekin Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi. 3 (1): 62.
3. ↑ Ahmad, Feroz (2014). The Young Turks and the Ottoman Nationalities: Armenians, Greeks, Albanians, Jews, and Arabs, 1908–1918. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. p. 6. ISBN 978-1-60781-338-5.
4. ↑ Findley, Carter Vaughn (2010). Turkey, Islam, Nationalism and Modernity. A History, 1789-2007. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 102.
5. ↑ Gökbayır (2012). pp. 64-65.
6. ↑ Lévy-Aksu, Noémi; Georgeon, François (2020). The Young Turk Revolution and the Ottoman Empire. The Aftermath of 1908. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 7–8.
7. ↑ Zürcher, Erik J. (2004). Turkey. A Modern History. London: I.B. Tauris. p. 142.