Armenians and Young Turks: the Armenian Revolutionary Federation Constitutionalism in Ottoman Empire, 1895 1908

The history of the role of Armenians in the 1908 constitutional revolution in the Ottoman Empire. What was the nature of the relationship between the Young Turks, whose members would go on to form and lead the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) which would carry out the Armenian Genocide beginning in 1915, and the Armenian revolutionaries of the late Ottoman Empire? Based on rich Armenian, Ottoman, British and other archival documents and periodicals, this book reveals the complex dynamics and relations that Armenian organizations, most importantly the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), maintained with the Young Turks between 1895-1908, when relations were transformed from mutual suspicion to closer collaboration. Put in the context of the worsening conditions for Ottoman-Armenians in the eastern provinces of the empire, the book reveals the internal debates of the ARF about collaboration with Young Turk cadres in an effort to improve conditions for their people, as well as the role that Armenian revolutionaries played in CUP calculations and aims for toppling the regime of Sultan Abdulhamid. The book thus reveals the complex and gradual development of relations between the groups before the outright anti-Armenian policies of the CUP would culminate in the Armenian Genocide. It also reveals the ARF’s commitment to the constitutional project and the difficult choices it faced in pursuing those aims.