The Young Turks in Opposition

Oxford University Press, 1995 — 408 p. ISBN: 0195091159 (eng).Hanioglu, an associate professor at Princeton University, has opened up a virtually new topic with his intensive research of the thinking, structure, and activities of the Young Turks between 1889 and 1902. He argues persuasively for the importance of this topic by pointing out that Young Turks ruled the Ottoman Empire for nearly all of the period 1908-18; that former members ran the country until 1960; and that even today, the official state ideology shows the influence of ideas dating to that period. Perhaps Hanioglu's most original conclusion concerns his argument that the Young Turks constituted three quite distinct movements.
The research base of "Young Turks in Opposition" deserves comment, being one of the most prodigious this reviewer has seen. Hanioglu's relatively slight text of 216 pages contains over 2,500 footnotes, or some twelve per page, or one every four lines. And what footnotes! The author has done extensive research in the archives of twelve countries, including those of Albania, Greece, Israel, and Sweden. His work in the Turkish archives includes not just the usual Istanbul documents, but with those located at the Ottoman embassies in London, Paris, and Rome. He searched out the private papers of twenty-four individuals in places as disparate as Thessaloniki, Edinburgh, and New Haven. The list of periodicals consulted runs to over five pages. This heroic scholarly apparatus is by no means for show purposes; quite the contrary, it closely undergirds the author's weighty and original study.