Young Ottomans

The Young Ottomans were a secret society established in 1865 by Ottoman intellectuals who believed the Tanzimat reforms did not go far enough. They sought to preserve and modernize the Empire through constitutional government on the European model, kept rooted in Islam; among them were the writers İbrahim Şinasi, Namık Kemal, Ali Suavi and Ziya Pasha. In 1876 Midhat Pasha conspired with them to overthrow Sultan Abdul Aziz, and Abdul Hamid II reluctantly promulgated the Ottoman constitution of 1876, opening the First Constitutional Era. Abdul Hamid suspended it in 1878, but the Young Turks later repeated their efforts in the Young Turk Revolution of 1908.