Entangled Revolutions. The Russian Factor in the Young Turk Movement

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The Project "Transottomanica" has identified transcontinental dynamics of mobility as a research desideratum. Within this framework, the project "Entangled Revolutions. The Russian Factor in the Young Turk Movement" aims to make a contribution to a Russian-Ottoman entangled history, focusing primarily on the aspects of "reciprocal processes of migration" and "circulation of knowledge and ideas" described in the Project's outline. The specific case to be studied in the project are the protagonists of the Young Turk movement in the late Ottoman Empire, i.e. the political opposition movement against the Ottoman sultan Abdülhamid II. (r. 1876-1909) that included activists of different ethnic, social and religious background united by their common goal of establishing a constitutional regime achieved in 1908. Many of these Young Turks - Tatars and Armenians alike - came from the Caucasus and Transcaucasus, the Crimea or the Volga-Ural region, but were active as journalists and revolutionaries on both sides of the Russian-Ottoman border. The project aims to investigate how their Russian background - their education as well as individual and collective experience of Russian Tsarist rule - may have influenced these political actors' thinking and actions. It asks about their specific hopes and expectations regarding the Ottoman Empire given their Russian background. It further examines what impulses they brought back to their Russian-ruled regions of origin. This overall question is to be examined regarding four aspects: First, the Tatar and Armenian revolutionaries' transimperial networks and mobility across the Ottoman-Russian borders and beyond to the European and North African places of exile. Second, inquiring the intellectual history, the impact of their Russian origin - personal contacts, readings, education, experiences or events - on these protagonists' political thought and priorities as well as their geographical reference framework, thus possibly differing from their comrades originating from the Ottoman Empire. Thirdly, concerning the political practice, possible adoptions of Russian-inspired modes of political organization, style or self-representation, as well as mutual relations and interactions between the various groups (Ottoman or Russian Turks / Tatars and Ottoman or Russian Armenians). Fourth, the influences of the encounters and experiences in the Ottoman Empire on the ideas of the commuters or returnees to the Russian realms. The main sources for the study will be the writings of the Young Turk protagonists themselves: on the one hand their memoirs and exchange of letters, and, more importantly, on the other hand their numerous writings published in the newspapers the founded and directed, printed in Russian, Ottoman, Armenian, Tatar, Azeri and French.