Liberalism and the Path to Treason in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1923

Abstract

This chapter looks at the final decade of the Ottoman Empire to examine the way that liberalism went from being part of the sensibility and worldview of an elitist Ottoman establishment, to a term of opprobrium as the Committee of Union and Progress took up the reins of power in the Ottoman government and state. While in recent years the discussion of pluralism has focused on how one state, as a unitary actor, has treated confessional or ethnic minorities, I show here that the very question of political pluralism was the source of a fissure in the Ottoman establishment, and ultimately a cause of conflict as the empire was dissolved and the Kemalist Republic was established.