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The Young Turks in Opposition, by M. Sukru Hanioglu. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. xii + 216 pages. Notes to p. 358. Bibl. to p. 380. Index to p. 390. $29.95.
Reviewed by Engin Deniz Akarli
The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), or the "Young Turks" as the people affiliated with this organization are sometimes called, led the opposition against Sultan `Abd al-Hamid II's autocratic rule and dominated Ottoman politics between 1908-18. In the process, the CUP served as the mother of many other political organizations and as a school of political praxis for many leaders of the post-Ottoman Near East.
Hanioglu's book is a welcome, and, in many ways, impressive contribution to our knowledge of the history of this important organization. The author concentrates his attention on the formative years of the CUP, from its modest beginnings among the students of the Royal Medical School in Istanbul, in 1889, to its first congress in Paris in 1902. He provides us with the most detailed account to date of this least well-known stage of the CUP's evolution on the basis of information painstakingly gathered from a great variety of sources in several languages. The scope and depth of Hanioglu's research is certainly praiseworthy.
Hanioglu traces the activities of the CUP in many...