Committee of Union and Progress
통일진보위원회
A revolutionary organisation and political party of the Ottoman Empire, founded as a secret society by students of the Imperial Military School of Medicine in Istanbul in 1889. It restored constitutional rule in the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 and, after the coup of 1913, ruled the empire as a dictatorship under Talat, Enver and Cemal Pasha until 1918, leading it into the First World War and pursuing policies that resulted in the genocide of Armenians and others. It dissolved itself after the defeat of 1918, and the remaining Unionists were purged after the İzmir affair of 1926.
In depth
According to the Turkish-language source, on 21 May 1889 students of the Military School of Medicine including İshak Sükûti, İbrahim Temo and Abdullah Cevdet founded a secret organisation called the Committee of Ottoman Union, aiming to restore the constitution and overthrow the regime of Abdul Hamid II. After a coup plot was uncovered in 1896 and its leaders at home were exiled, the émigré organisation centred on Ahmet Rıza in Paris carried on. At the First Young Turk Congress in 1902 the movement split between the centralist Ahmet Rıza and the decentralist Prince Sabahaddin.
The Ottoman Freedom Society, founded in Salonica in September 1906 by Talat and others, merged with the Paris organisation on 27 September 1907 to form the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress, which thus also acquired a military character; Mustafa Kemal joined in October 1907. The revolution began in July 1908 when Niyazi Bey took to the hills at Resne, and on 24 July the constitution was put back into force, opening the Second Constitutional Era. The committee at first controlled governments from outside, and after suppressing the 31 March Incident of 1909 it deposed Abdul Hamid II.
It won the 1912 "Election of Clubs", but pressure from a group of officers forced its cabinet to resign; on 23 January 1913 an armed group led by Enver raided the Sublime Porte and seized power. After Mahmud Şevket Pasha was assassinated in June 1913 the committee became the ruling party and established a dictatorship under Grand Vizier Said Halim Pasha, and Enver, Talat and Cemal Pasha became the leaders of the party. On 2 August 1914 the committee leadership concluded an alliance with Germany without informing the government or the sultan, bringing the empire into the First World War. The English-language source says the Unionist regime, with the help of its paramilitary Special Organisation, enacted policies resulting in the genocide of Armenians, Pontic Greeks and Assyrians.
As defeat became certain Talat's cabinet resigned in October 1918, and at an extraordinary congress on 1 November the committee dissolved itself. Enver, Talat and Cemal Pasha left Istanbul on a German torpedo boat. According to the English-language source several leaders were assassinated in 1920–1922 in Operation Nemesis by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, while most remaining Unionists joined Mustafa Kemal's national movement and the Republican People's Party. Kara Kemal briefly revived the committee in 1922, but the remaining Unionists were purged after the alleged İzmir assassination plot of 1926.