ABSTRACT
Mustafa Kemal came to Libya on two occasions, in the autumn of 1908, right after the Young Turk Revolution, the Committee of Union and Progress sent him to that province to look into its social, political and security problems; while there he visited both Tripoli and Benghazi. As a representative of the Young Turks in 1908, Kemal tried to propagate their doctrine among the Libyans and to encourage a cross-section of the population to participate in Young Turk politics. Kemal's 1908 visit to Libya raises the question of army intervention in politics, common practice in the era of the Young Turks, many of whose leaders were officers on active duty. One of the main purposes of Kemal's 1908 visit was to organize Young Turk political activity. The contemporary reports by the British and Italian consuls describing Kemal's 1908 visit can be regarded as objective primary sources, unbiased by internal Ottoman conflicts and unblurred by later events.
