As the 20th century dawned, Europe was in the midst of its belle époque. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 had concluded, ushering in a time of remarkable political stability. Economies were rapidly growing and connecting with each other, new technologies were emerging to enhance people's lives, and the arts were embracing modern forms. The late 19th and early 20th centuries were characterized by the coexistence of several empires. These empires engaged in competition, guided by rationalist policies and theories, with this competition taking the form of colonialism, a race for global influence, and eventual militarization.
One of these empires was, however, not truly experiencing a "Golden Age." The Ottoman state had reached its zenith in the 16th century, with its territories spanning three continents, stretching from Hungary to the Persian Gulf and from North Africa to the Caucasus. By the late 19th century, it had significantly weakened, as attempts to modernize the empire along European lines proved futile.
Rise of an Empire
The heart of the Ottoman Empire was part of the westward Turkic migrations from Central Asia that began in the 10th century. Turks established a lasting presence in Anatolia when the Seljuks, under the leadership of Sultan Alparslan, achieved a historic victory at the Battle of Manzikert against the Byzantines in 1071. The Seljuk Sultanate ruled in Anatolia until the 13th century when they became Mongol vassals. During the decline of the Seljuks, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent states, known as the so-called beyliks.
One of these beyliks was led by Sultan Osman, who, in the late 13th century, at a time when other beyliks were embroiled in conflicts with each other, sought to expand its territories in north-western Anatolia at the expense of neighboring Byzantine lands. Osman's beylik occupied a frontier position between the Turkish-Islamic world and Christian Byzantium, and historians have long debated why it, rather than more established neighbors such as the Karamanid or Germiyanid beyliks, ultimately prevailed. One explanation, the so-called ghaza thesis, credits Osman and his early followers' identity as ghazis, warriors for the faith, which drew volunteers, adventurers, and refugees from the collapsing Seljuk order to their frontier raids against Byzantium. Other historians point to more prosaic advantages: Osman's location gave him unmatched access to Byzantine territory weakened by civil war, and his successors proved unusually skilled at absorbing rival Turkish principalities and Byzantine defectors into a single expanding state. In the century following Osman's death, Ottoman rule began to extend over the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans.
The Ottoman Empire's rise culminated in 1453, when the Ottoman Army, under the leadership of Sultan Mehmed II (known as "the Conqueror"), captured the Byzantine capital of Constantinople (though Istanbul was the common name for the city in Turkish even before the conquest; in official use by the Ottoman authorities, other names such as Kostantiniyye were preferred in certain contexts).
The conquest of Istanbul marked the beginning of a long period of territorial expansion. The empire thrived under the rule of dedicated Sultans, culminating in the rule of Sultan Süleyman I (known as "the Magnificent"). Conquests were driven by the discipline and innovation of the army, and expansion extended as far as the gates of Vienna, where the Ottoman siege in 1529 failed to capture the city. Meanwhile, the navy established the empire as a significant trading power, and the Ottoman state also flourished economically, thanks to its control of the major overland trade routes between Europe and Asia.
This run of conquests rested on institutions that set the Ottomans apart from their European rivals. The most distinctive was the devşirme, a periodic levy of Christian boys from the Balkans who were converted to Islam, trained, and channeled either into the palace bureaucracy or into the Janissary corps, the empire's elite standing infantry and, for much of this period, the most disciplined force in Europe. Devşirme recruits owed their advancement to the Sultan rather than to hereditary privilege, so the system supplied the state with soldiers and administrators whose loyalty was, in theory, unclouded by family or regional interest. Alongside it stood the tımar system, under which cavalrymen known as sipahis were granted the tax revenues of a piece of land in exchange for military service and local administration, letting the empire field a large mounted army without a costly cash-salaried force. Together, these institutions gave the Ottoman state an administrative reach and military mobilization that few contemporary European monarchies could match.
The Ottoman state was dynastic and medieval in its organizing principles, and its official ideology was religious. The government was based on Islamic religious law (sharia), supplemented by royal ordinances and customary law. The main non-Muslim communities were Greek Orthodox Christians, Armenian Gregorian Christians, and Jews. The millet system of communal self-government gave the Ottoman state a multi-ethnic character, which was generally absent in Europe.
The century following Süleyman's death in 1566 tested the empire in ways the era of conquest had not. A succession of Sultans wielded far less personal authority than their predecessors, and effective power increasingly passed to the imperial harem, the bureaucracy, and the Janissary corps. This period, often labeled by historians the "Sultanate of Women," saw royal mothers and consorts such as Hürrem Sultan, Kösem Sultan, and Turhan Hatice Sultan decide the appointment of grand viziers and the direction of state policy, at times ruling as regents for underage or incapacitated Sultans. This instability, combined with recurring wars against the Habsburgs, Safavid Persia, and Venice, and a fiscal crisis brought on by debased currency and inflation, left many contemporaries convinced the empire was already in decline.
Some recovery followed. Beginning in 1656, a line of grand viziers from the Köprülü family were granted near-total authority to restore order: they purged corrupt officials, ran disciplined military campaigns, and reasserted central control over the provinces. Under Köprülü Mehmed Pasha and his son Fazıl Ahmed Pasha, the empire regained lost ground, retaking Crete from Venice in 1669 after a siege lasting more than two decades. The revival proved short-lived. In 1683, an Ottoman army under Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha laid siege to Vienna for the second time in Ottoman history, only to be routed by a relieving force under the Polish king John III Sobieski. The defeat triggered a prolonged war against a coalition of Austria, Poland, Venice, and Russia. It ended with the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699, the first treaty in which the Ottoman Empire ceded substantial European territory, including most of Hungary and Transylvania, rather than gaining it.
The decades that followed Karlowitz brought a different kind of opening. Under Sultan Ahmed III and his grand vizier, Nevşehirli Damat İbrahim Pasha, the period from 1718 to 1730, remembered as the Lâle Devri (Tulip Era), saw the Ottoman elite build closer ties with Europe, sponsor art, architecture, and literature centered on the tulip motif, and experiment cautiously with European models in printing, industry, and diplomacy. But the extravagance of the court, heavy taxation, and a failed war with Persia bred deep resentment, and in 1730 a Janissary named Patrona Halil led a popular revolt that forced Ahmed III to abdicate and had İbrahim Pasha executed. The rebellion ended the Tulip Era's cultural experimentation and set a pattern that would recur for the next two centuries: attempts to engage with European ideas repeatedly ran up against entrenched domestic interests, above all the Janissaries and the religious establishment, who saw reform as a threat to their own position.
Non-Muslim communities were not always content with their subordinate status. The rise of nationalism swept through many countries in the period after the French Revolution, and the Ottoman Empire was not immune. A burgeoning national consciousness, together with a growing sense of ethnic nationalism, made nationalistic thought one of the most significant Western ideas imported by the Ottoman Empire, as it was forced to deal with nationalism-related issues both within and beyond its borders.
The state gradually lost control over its territories. Ottomans were forced to allow European powers to intervene on behalf of the Empire's Christian subjects, which increased foreign influence on Ottoman internal affairs. On the other hand, in a time when feudalism was weakening elsewhere, the Ottoman Empire saw the rise of local ruling notables, called ayan, in the provinces. These local rulers were able to exercise almost absolute authority, collecting taxes for themselves, thereby depriving the Imperial Treasury of an important financial source.
It was the people, of all ethnic and religious groups, who suffered in this period. The situation worsened due to a significant population growth in the 16th and 17th centuries, accompanied by a decline in food production. Landless peasants began to migrate to cities in search of livelihoods. Those who remained in the countryside joined rebel bands, further weakening the central government's power in the provinces.
The Ottoman rulers failed to identify the real causes of the decline, as they were largely isolated from external developments. European powers were pursuing mercantilist policies, promoting local productivity and supporting a national bourgeoisie. They were making strides in industry, science, technology, as well as political and military organization, all of which were unfamiliar to the Ottomans. Interest groups within the Empire saw little need to change the status quo from which they benefited. It was not until 1727, three centuries after Johannes Gutenberg, that the first printing press was set up in Istanbul by a Hungarian convert named İbrahim Müteferrika.
The New Order
In the late 18th century, during the reign of Sultan Selim III (1789-1807), the Ottoman Empire began to break its isolation. Selim created a new European-style army called the Nizâm-ı Cedid (New Order) and a new treasury called the İrâd-ı Cedid (New Revenue). Factories and technical schools were opened with the assistance of European advisors.
Nevertheless, Selim could not complete his reform schedule, as the Empire was preoccupied with rising nationalistic movements among its subjects. This erupted in the form of the Serbian Revolt in 1804 and a war with Russia in 1806-1812. Furthermore, Napoléon Bonaparte's Egyptian Expedition in 1798-1799 created additional challenges. The anarchy throughout the provinces was too great for Selim to manage. Pressure from the old army establishment and the Janissaries, who opposed the reforms, mounted. The Sheikh-ul-Islam was induced to grant a decree against the reforms, resulting in Selim's deposition and the placement of his nephew Mustafa on the throne.
Selim's deposition did not end the crisis. Alemdar Mustafa Pasha, a provincial governor and one of Selim's few remaining loyal allies, marched on Constantinople in July 1808 to restore him. When Mustafa IV learned Alemdar was closing in, he had Selim killed rather than risk his return; Selim, unarmed, tried to fend off his assassins with the reed flute he had been playing before they strangled him. Alemdar arrived too late to save him but deposed Mustafa IV all the same, placing Mahmud II, the last surviving male of the Ottoman dynasty, on the throne and taking the grand vizierate for himself. His hold on power lasted only months. By the end of 1808, Janissaries loyal to the old order rose against him, and as they closed in, he detonated the gunpowder magazine he had taken refuge in, killing himself and hundreds of them. Mahmud II, 23 years old, inherited a throne no faction could yet guarantee he would keep.
Mahmud began by decreasing the power of his opponents, accepting provincial ayan's rights in return for their recognition of the Sultan's rule. He launched expeditions to remove those who rebelled and diluted the influence of religious scholars, known as the ulema, and religious organizations. However, his most significant achievement was the abolition of the Janissary corps in 1826, in an episode known as the Vak'a-i Hayriye (Auspicious Incident). Mahmud prepared for years before confronting the Janissaries directly: he secured the backing of the Şeyhülislam and quietly built up a loyal artillery corps of roughly 12,000 men. When the Janissaries rose in revolt on 14 June 1826 to reject his new-style troops, Mahmud declared them enemies of the state and had their Istanbul barracks bombarded with artillery. Several thousand were killed in the assault or executed in the days after, and a corps that had stood at the center of Ottoman military life for nearly five centuries ceased to exist. The Bektaşi Sufi order, long tied to the Janissaries' religious identity, was banned in the same campaign, its lodges shut and its properties seized by the state. This marked the establishment of a new modern Ottoman Army called Asâkir-i Mansûre-i Muhammediye (Victorious Mohammedan Soldiers). This new army, modelled entirely on the earlier Nizâm-ı Cedid corps, was organized along European lines and trained by European advisors, such as Helmuth von Moltke, who later became the chief commander of the German Army. From the Mahmudian period onwards, the army became a major instrument for protecting the state and the driving force of modernization.
Mahmud's reforms had immediate effects in areas such as European-style clothing, architecture, legislation, institutional organization, and land reform. He restructured the government by founding Ministries and launched advisory councils to prepare new laws and regulations. During his reign, the first Ottoman newspaper was issued, the postal service was launched, and the first population census was conducted.
Mahmud's reign was also marked by the loss of Greece and a near-fatal confrontation with his own Egyptian governor. The Greek revolt that began in 1821 spread faster than the Ottoman army could contain, and by 1825 Mahmud turned to his powerful vassal in Egypt, Mehmed Ali Pasha, whose son Ibrahim Pasha led a combined Ottoman-Egyptian force into the Peloponnese to crush it. The campaign provoked the European powers instead: on 20 October 1827, a combined British, French, and Russian fleet destroyed the Ottoman-Egyptian navy at the Battle of Navarino, sinking or burning most of it. A separate war with Russia followed, ending in the Treaty of Adrianople in 1829, by which the Sultan recognized Greek autonomy; full independence followed in 1830.
Mehmed Ali, who felt inadequately rewarded for the losses his fleet and army had taken on the Sultan's behalf, turned on Mahmud directly. In 1831, Ibrahim Pasha invaded Ottoman Syria and pushed north into Anatolia, routing the main Ottoman army at the Battle of Konya in December 1832 and opening the road to Istanbul. Mahmud only stopped him by accepting Russian military assistance, formalized in the Treaty of Hünkâr İskelesi in 1833, which included a secret clause closing the Dardanelles to foreign warships at Russia's request, a first sign of how deeply Russian influence could now reach into Ottoman affairs. A parallel settlement, the Convention of Kütahya, ceded Syria and Adana to Egyptian control. When Mahmud II died in 1839, the empire was diminished territorially but consolidated administratively.
Sultan Mahmud II was succeeded by his son, Sultan Abdülmecid I, at a moment of renewed crisis with Egypt. Mehmed Ali, still resentful of the 1833 settlement, sent Ibrahim Pasha's army back into Anatolia in 1839. It crushed the Ottoman forces at the Battle of Nezib on 24 June, and the Ottoman fleet, sent to confront it, sailed instead to Alexandria and surrendered to Mehmed Ali. Mahmud died on 1 July, days after the defeat and before news of it reached him. Only the intervention of Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia, formalized in the London Straits Convention of 1840, forced Ibrahim Pasha to withdraw from Syria. Mehmed Ali was confirmed as hereditary ruler of Egypt alone, under nominal Ottoman suzerainty, and the rest of the Empire was spared further losses.
The Tanzimat Era
During the reign of Sultan Abdülmecid I, the Tanzimat (Reorganisation) reforms commenced, effectively initiating the modernization of the Ottoman Empire. These reforms were announced in November 1839 with an edict known as the Hatt-ı Şerif (Noble Edict) of Gülhane.
The edict's chief architect, Mustafa Reşid Pasha, had spent much of the previous decade as Ottoman ambassador in Paris and London before becoming foreign minister in 1837. His years in Western Europe convinced him that the empire's survival depended on European-style law and administration, and he went on to serve as grand vizier six times between 1845 and 1857, using each term to push the Tanzimat program further.
The reforms aimed to promote Ottomanism among the ethnic groups and curb the rise of secessionist nationalist movements. The decree emphasized the equality of all subjects as Ottomans, regardless of their religion and race, and expressed principles of liberty, freedom from oppression, equality before the law, and security of life, property, and honor for all subjects of the empire. These reforms, implemented under the leadership of Abdülmecid's Grand Vizier Mustafa Reşid Pasha, also aimed at developing a fair taxation system, reorganizing the army, modernizing the financial system, establishing a secular education system, introducing modern laws, and creating provincial assemblies. Much of this legislative work ran through the Meclis-i Vâlâ (Supreme Council of Judicial Ordinances), set up the year before the Gülhane decree, which drafted early measures such as the 1840 Ottoman Penal Code, modeled in part on French law.
Taken together, the measures were meant to convert a system rooted in theocratic principles into that of a modern state. However, these measures failed to reverse the empire's decline. The empire faced significant challenges, including a lack of resources and a well-trained workforce. Furthermore, conservative elements opposing these reforms, claiming they were eroding the empire's fundamental Islamic character by adopting Western practices, posed a substantial obstacle for the reformers. This opposition was not only rhetorical: in September 1859, 41 officers, religious students, and officials were arrested in what became known as the Kuleli Incident, accused of plotting to assassinate Abdülmecid and roll back the Tanzimat reforms. The plot never got off the ground, but the fact that a sitting Sultan had been openly targeted for the first time since the abolition of the Janissaries showed how deep the resentment ran. Additionally, external interference from major European powers, ongoing conflicts, and the emergence of nationalist movements throughout the empire slowed down the reform efforts.
The European powers were well aware of the Ottoman Empire’s increasingly precarious situation throughout the 19th century. As the gradual dissolution of Ottoman authority became more visible across its vast territories, and as successive reform efforts were widely perceived, both within and outside the empire, as insufficient or ultimately ineffective, European states intensified their competition to secure their own strategic, military, and commercial interests within Ottoman lands. Rather than acting in concert, they pursued divergent and often conflicting agendas, each seeking to expand its influence in key regions such as the Balkans, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the straits connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, where control had direct implications for the balance of power in Europe.
This growing rivalry turned the weakening Ottoman Empire into a central arena of great power politics, where even limited changes on the ground risked triggering wider diplomatic crises. This struggle, often referred to as the "Eastern Question," had in fact been a persistent concern for European diplomacy since the late 18th century, as states grappled with how to respond to the steady weakening of Ottoman authority, whether by preserving the empire as a buffer, accelerating its partition, or selectively supporting nationalist movements that could serve their own interests.
The question surfaced openly in 1844, when Tsar Nicholas I, during a state visit to London, told Prime Minister Robert Peel and Foreign Secretary Lord Aberdeen that the Ottoman Empire was "a dying man" the powers could try to keep alive but would not save, and proposed a private understanding on how its territories might eventually be divided. Peel and Aberdeen agreed only to preserve the status quo for as long as possible, and the arrangement was kept from Parliament. Nicholas returned to the same theme nearly a decade later. In a series of private conversations in January 1853 with Sir George Hamilton Seymour, the British ambassador in St. Petersburg, he again pressed for an understanding on the empire's future: "We have on our hands a sick man, a very sick man. It will be, I tell you frankly, a great misfortune if, one of these days, he should slip away from us before all necessary arrangements were made." Seymour did not dispute the diagnosis but resisted the premise, replying that what the empire needed was a physician, not a surgeon.
The Crimean War
The European powers, however, did not share a consensus regarding these "arrangements" mentioned by Tsar Nicholas, as they each harboured different interests and objectives concerning the Ottoman Empire. This lack of unity eventually led to a conflict.
In 1851, Napoleon III coerced the Ottomans into acknowledging France as the supreme authority in the Holy Land, a dispute that centered on custody of the keys to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. This action displeased the Russians, prompting them to assert counterclaims. Citing two earlier treaties from 1757 and 1774, the Ottomans reversed their prior decision, officially abandoning the French treaty and insisting that Russia was the protector of the Christian faith within the Ottoman Empire.
In response, France flexed its military might by dispatching a warship to the Black Sea and combining it with assertive diplomacy. The Sublime Porte, the central government of the Ottoman Empire, once again altered its position, and a new treaty was struck between France and the Ottoman Empire. This treaty designated France, in conjunction with the Catholic Church, as the preeminent Christian authority in the Holy Land. Following this development, the Russian Army initiated mobilization along the Danube frontier. Concurrently, Britain, which was already engaged in rivalry with Russia in Central Asia, sought to preserve the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire.
Both Britain and France hoped for a diplomatic compromise between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Diplomats spent the summer of 1853 trying to head off war, including a compromise text known as the Vienna Note, drafted by Austria, Britain, France, and Prussia, but each side amended it into something the other could no longer accept, and by autumn the effort had collapsed. Although Britain agitated the Ottomans against Russia, it was the latter who initiated the war. They used the security of the Orthodox Christian subjects in the Ottoman Empire as a pretext to undermine British influence on the Sublime Porte and advance their own interests.
Hostilities began on 3 July 1853 when the Russian Army entered the Danubian provinces of the Ottoman Empire with a force of 35,000 troops and 72 artillery guns. On 4 October 1853, after Russia ignored an Ottoman ultimatum to withdraw within two weeks, Sultan Abdülmecid formally declared war, and Ottoman troops crossed the Danube to meet the Russian advance. As fighting raged in the Balkans, Russian warships destroyed a squadron of Ottoman frigates at the Turkish Black Sea port of Sinop on 30 November 1853. The destruction of the Turkish fleet and heavy Ottoman casualties raised alarm in both Great Britain and France. In late March of 1854, after Russia ignored an Anglo-French ultimatum to withdraw from the Danubian Principalities, Great Britain and France declared war. The Kingdom of Sardinia later joined the conflict.
Before Allied troops ever reached the Crimea, the war's decisive moment on the Danube front came at Silistria, an Ottoman fortress in what is now Bulgaria. From 11 May to 23 June 1854, a Russian army of roughly 90,000 men besieged a garrison of only 12,000 to 18,000 Ottoman and Egyptian troops. Two British volunteer officers, Captain James Butler and Lieutenant Charles Nasmyth, joined the defense and took over command after the Ottoman commander, Musa Hulusi Pasha, was killed by shrapnel while praying on 2 June; Butler himself died of his wounds eleven days later. The garrison held. Wary of a trap and aware that French and British forces were massing at Varna, the Russians abandoned the siege and withdrew from the Danubian Principalities, ending the war's first phase before the Allies had fired a shot.
In September 1854, Allied troops landed in the Crimea, and after a year-long siege, Sevastopol surrendered in September 1855. Major battles, such as Alma, Balaklava, and Inkerman, occurred in 1854, while the Russians made gains in eastern Turkey, capturing Kars in November 1855. The defense of Kars had lasted from June to November under the British commissioner William Fenwick Williams, who organized the garrison to repel three major Russian assaults before cold, starvation, and a cholera outbreak forced its surrender; the Russians allowed the defenders to march out under arms in recognition of their resistance.
With Tsar Alexander II's ascent to the Russian throne, the capture of Sevastopol, and Austria's threat to join the war on the side of the Allies, peace negotiations took place, resulting in the Treaty of Paris in March 1856. Rather than losing territory, the Ottoman Empire came out of the war with its pre-war boundaries restored and its independence and territorial integrity formally guaranteed by the signatory powers; Russia was made to return Kars and Ardahan, which it had captured during the war, and to cede Bessarabia to Moldavia. The main cost to the Ottoman Empire was financial rather than territorial: the war's expense had already forced the empire, on 25 August 1854, to take its first-ever foreign loan, £3 million arranged through British bankers at a steep discount and 6 percent interest, secured against Egyptian tribute revenue. Further loans followed in 1855, 1858, and 1860, beginning a cycle of foreign borrowing that would culminate, two decades later, in default.
After the end of the Crimean War, the Tanzimat reforms were bolstered by a comparable statute issued in February 1856, known as the Islâhat Hatt-ı Hümâyûnu (Imperial Reform Edict), enacted partly under diplomatic pressure from Britain and France as the price of their wartime support. This edict pledged to uphold equality in education, government appointments, and the administration of justice for all, irrespective of their religion or race. It abolished the centuries-old cizye poll tax on non-Muslims and opened military conscription to them in principle, though in practice most non-Muslim men continued to pay an exemption fee, the bedel-i askeri introduced the following year, rather than serve. It drew inspiration from the contemporary European ideals of the era.
During the reign of Sultan Abdülaziz, who succeeded Abdülmecid, reforms continued under the guidance of two capable chief ministers, Fuat Pasha and Ali Pasha. However, the Empire's economy was deteriorating rapidly, exacerbated by imprudent expenditures such as the construction of palaces along the Bosphorus, including the Beylerbeyi and Çırağan palaces, and a growing debt burden that by 1875 had reached some £200 million, with interest and repayment consuming more than half the state's annual revenue. Chaos prevailed in the Balkans due to Russian-sponsored uprisings driven by nationalist motives, compounded by a drought in 1873 and floods in 1874 that brought famine to the countryside. Abdülaziz found it increasingly difficult to manage these pressures, leading to heightened public discontent. Consequently, his ministers deposed him on 30 May 1876, replacing him with his nephew Murad V, and his death a few days later was officially attributed to suicide.
Among Abdülaziz's significant achievements were the modernization of the Ottoman Navy, which, by 1875, ranked third in the world after the British and French navies. He also established the first Ottoman railroad network.
While the Tanzimat era had its share of successes, it raised serious doubts about the Ottoman state's ability to handle ethnic uprisings. Greece had declared its independence in 1829, and the reforms failed to quell the growing nationalism in the Danubian Principalities and Serbia, which had enjoyed semi-independence for nearly six decades. Moldavia and Wallachia moved further from Ottoman control in 1859, when both principalities elected the same man, Alexandru Ioan Cuza, as their ruling prince, uniting them in all but name as the foundation of what would become Romania. By 1875, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Wallachia, and Moldova all proclaimed their independence from the Empire.
Abdülhamid’s Reign
Sultan Mehmed Murad V's reign lasted only 93 days before he was deposed due to mental illness. His breakdown followed closely on the death of his uncle Abdülaziz, whose body Murad is said to have viewed within days of his own accession; already prone to melancholy, he suffered a collapse that court and foreign physicians alike judged incurable. He was succeeded by his brother Sultan Abdülhamid II, who would be the final Sultan to wield autocratic power. Abdülhamid assumed the throne during a period of domestic and international crises. Ethnic tensions persisted in the Balkans, and they had flared up among Armenians in Eastern Anatolia, causing increased anxiety within Muslim communities. Terrified refugees were fleeing from territories that had broken away from the Empire, and conflicts were widespread. The turmoil resulting from military operations had led to famine in certain regions, and the Treasury was in dire straits.
Abdülhamid recognized the limitations of his position and attempted to navigate the crises by exploiting the differences among his domestic and foreign adversaries. He pitted Russia against Britain and played Germany against both. He established tribal regiments among the Kurds, known as the Hamidiye, following the model of the Russian Cossacks, as a means of co-opting and placating unruly Kurdish tribes. These regiments helped keep Armenian nationalists in check, but they also carried out much of the violence that followed. Between 1894 and 1896, Ottoman troops, Hamidiye cavalry, and local mobs killed Armenians across Eastern Anatolia and in Istanbul itself, beginning with the killings at Sassoun in 1894 and culminating in the reprisals that followed an Armenian raid on the Ottoman Bank in August 1896. Abdülhamid's strategies had failed to provide an effective substitute for stable governance.
During that period, a faction of nationalist intellectuals was gaining influence within the bureaucracy. This group, known as the Yeni Osmanlılar (Young Ottomans), was founded in 1865 by writers and journalists, chief among them Namık Kemal, Ziya Pasha, and İbrahim Şinasi, and advocated for a constitutional and parliamentary government. They were dissatisfied with the bureaucratic absolutism of the Tanzimat, as they believed that the emulation of Western norms did not align well with the political culture of the Ottoman Empire. Midhat Pasha, a senior Tanzimat statesman and provincial governor known for his reformist administration, did not belong to the original circle but became the movement's most powerful ally within the government, eventually using his position as Grand Vizier to put its constitutional program into practice.
Sultan Abdülhamid II collaborated with the Young Ottomans to establish some form of constitutional framework. As a result, the constitution, known as the Kânûn-ı Esâsî, was proclaimed on 23 December 1876, and the Parliament convened on 19 March 1877. This marked the first comprehensive Ottoman constitution and was a pioneering development in the Islamic world. The constitution retained full executive powers for the Sultan, with individual ministerial responsibility. In the legislative process, the Sultan was aided by a two-chamber Parliament, consisting of the indirectly elected lower house, Heyet-i Mebûsan, and the upper house, Heyet-i Âyan, whose members were nominated by the ruler.
The constitution, however, failed to quell the turmoil in the Empire. Instead of pacifying the Russians, the Parliament only accelerated the Russian declaration of war, which came in April 1877. The conflict that followed, known in Turkish as the "93 Harbi" after the year 1293 in the Ottoman calendar, was fought on two fronts. In the Balkans, an Ottoman army under Osman Pasha held the fortress town of Plevna, in present-day Bulgaria, against repeated Russian and Romanian assaults for five months, from July to December 1877, before starvation forced a breakout attempt that failed; wounded, Osman Pasha surrendered his sword to a Romanian colonel. His defense was admired even by his enemies: the Tsar had the sword returned to him, and the Sultan granted him the title Gazi.
Further south, Russian troops and Bulgarian volunteers fought a monthslong battle for the Shipka Pass through the Balkan Mountains, a position Ottoman forces under Süleyman Pasha never managed to retake despite repeated attempts. In the Caucasus, Russian troops captured Kars and Ardahan, the same fortresses that had been returned to the Ottomans only two decades earlier under the Treaty of Paris. Once Plevna fell, Russian forces advanced through Bulgaria and Thrace largely unopposed and reached San Stefano, a village on the outskirts of Istanbul, by the end of January 1878. Abdülhamid II exploited the war as a pretext to suspend the constitution and indefinitely close the Parliament. He also exiled its architect, Midhat Pasha.
The war concluded with an Ottoman defeat, formalized in the Treaty of San Stefano on 3 March 1878. Its terms were severe: the Sublime Porte was compelled to recognize the full independence of Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania, and to accept the creation of a large autonomous Bulgarian principality stretching from the Danube to the Aegean, widely seen as a Russian client state.
Alarmed at the prospect of Russian influence reaching so deep into the Balkans, Britain and Austria-Hungary forced a renegotiation at the Congress of Berlin in June and July 1878, chaired by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. The Congress cut the new Bulgarian principality to a fraction of its San Stefano size, restored a strip of territory to Ottoman administration, and placed Bosnia and Herzegovina under Austro-Hungarian administration, though nominally still under Ottoman sovereignty, laying the groundwork for Austria's outright annexation thirty years later. Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania retained their independence. In a side deal struck separately with Britain that same June, Abdülhamid ceded the administration of Cyprus in exchange for British support at the Congress, retaining only nominal Ottoman sovereignty over the island. While the Berlin revisions reduced the considerable advantages gained by Russia, they marked the end of centuries of Ottoman sovereignty in the Balkans.
Abdülhamid adopted ruthless and frequently repressive authoritarian measures to address separatist tendencies. He concentrated much of the Empire's administration into his own hands but also continued reforms in various sectors, including telegraph communications, railways, and education. He believed that the only means to save the Empire was to formulate a new and more relevant ideological principle. This involved reshaping the concept of the Ottoman Sultan as Caliph, commanding the allegiance of not only Ottoman subjects but all Muslims. He considered his role as Caliph to be superior to that of Sultan, emphasizing Islamism over Ottomanism. The objective was to secure the loyalty of non-Ottoman Muslims and challenge the encroachment of European colonial powers.
The empire found itself in an irreversible state of decline, and this ideological shift proved insufficient to halt the ongoing deterioration. Territorial losses continued to mount: in 1878, Cyprus came under British control; France, which already held sway over Algeria, invaded Tunisia in 1881; Britain took control of Egypt's government; Crete united with Greece in 1908; Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia in the same year, and Bulgaria declared its independence.
These territorial losses were primarily a consequence of the empire's weakening, stemming from its failure to adapt to the Industrial Revolution and its eventual dissolution in the face of rising nationalism triggered by this revolution.
Abdülhamid's concentration of power in his own hands epitomized his profound apprehension regarding the decentralization of authority. He believed this would pave the way for the Balkan provinces to secede from the Empire. His fears extended to a deep-seated dread of being deposed, which over time metamorphosed into paranoia. He established an intricate network of spies and agents, overseeing an extensive system of intelligence gathering. He retreated to the Yıldız Palace, seldom making public appearances. His apprehensions, in fact, proved to be well-founded. In addition to coup attempts in the earlier years of his reign, opposition groups sought to oust him in 1895, 1896, 1902-03, and assassination plots were hatched in 1899 and 1905. Abdülhamid was well aware of the conspirators and dissidents. Some were imprisoned, others exiled, some removed from their positions, and many were coaxed into submission.
The murder of Midhat Pasha was an extraordinary event. Abdülhamid received intelligence indicating that Mehmed Murad V had fully recovered, and that Midhat Pasha, the reformist, was plotting to return him to the throne, a position he could hold for only three months. Abdülhamid fabricated excuses, accusing a group of individuals, including Midhat, of being responsible for the death of Sultan Abdülaziz. He alleged that Abdülaziz had not taken his own life, but had been murdered. The suspects were brought to trial and sentenced to death; however, Abdülhamid subsequently commuted their death sentences, and Midhat Pasha was exiled to Taif, a city in the Mecca province, which is part of modern-day Saudi Arabia. In 1884, Midhat Pasha was found strangled to death. Abdülhamid claimed that he had never issued such an order, but suspicions about his involvement lingered for the remainder of his life. Midhat's friend and the patriotic poet Namık Kemal were imprisoned for a few months, with Namık Kemal being appointed as the governor of one of the Aegean islands.
Abdülhamid’s style of rule was characterized less by overt brutality and more by calculated political maneuvering. However, in the later stages of his 33-year reign, his autocratic authority increasingly came under challenge. Opposition emerged from a coalition of intellectuals, students, and reform-minded military officers who demanded the reinstatement of the Constitution, a movement that became organized under the banner of the Jön Türkler (Young Turks).
PAGE LAST UPDATED ON 7 AUGUST 2026