Retreat, reform and the Young Turks
After the failed siege of Vienna, the Ottoman Empire slowly loses territory; reformers modernise the state, and in 1908 the Young Turks force the sultan to restore the constitution.
- A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire — M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, Princeton University Press (2008)
- Turkey: A Modern History (4th edition) — Erik J. Zürcher, I.B. Tauris (2017)
- Osman's Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1923 — Caroline Finkel, John Murray (2005)
The second Ottoman siege of Vienna failed in 1683, and by the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 the empire lost Hungary. Over the next two centuries Russia pushed south, Greece (1830) and other Balkan peoples won independence, and Europeans began to call the empire “the sick man of Europe”.
- Osman's Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1923 — Caroline Finkel, John Murray (2005)
- A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire — M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, Princeton University Press (2008)
Ottoman statesmen fought back with reform. The Tanzimat (“reorganisation”), launched by the Gülhane decree of 1839, promised equality to all subjects regardless of religion and built modern ministries, schools and courts. In 1876 the empire adopted its first constitution and parliament, but Sultan Abdülhamid II suspended them in 1878 and ruled autocratically for thirty years.
- A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire — M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, Princeton University Press (2008)
- Turkey: A Modern History (4th edition) — Erik J. Zürcher, I.B. Tauris (2017)
- Turkey: A Modern History (4th edition) — Erik J. Zürcher, I.B. Tauris (2017)
- A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire — M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, Princeton University Press (2008)
In 1908 the Committee of Union and Progress, the “Young Turks”, mostly young officers and officials in Macedonia, forced Abdülhamid to restore the constitution. Their hopes of a united Ottoman nation collapsed in the Balkan Wars of 1912–13, when the empire lost almost all its European lands. A CUP triumvirate, Enver, Talat and Cemal, seized power in a 1913 coup and led the empire into the First World War.
- A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire — M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, Princeton University Press (2008)
- Turkey: A Modern History (4th edition) — Erik J. Zürcher, I.B. Tauris (2017)
Why it matters today
The long retreat left Turks with a fear of being carved up by great powers and a vast refugee memory: many Turkish families descend from Muslims expelled from the Balkans, the Caucasus and Crete. The reformers' dream of a modern, powerful state, and the Young Turks' nationalism, flow directly into the Republic.