ABSTRACT
On the morning of June 23, 1908, a crowd of thousands took over the streets of Salonica, protesting the regime of Sultan Abdülhamid II and expressing support for the Young Turk movement and the clandestine opposition. By the following day, the sultan was forced to restore constitutional rule across the empire. In the years that followed, the Young Turk Revolution, as these events came to be known, led to the explosive expansion of the Ottoman public sphere, but also to political instability, ethnic tensions, and rapid deterioration in the empire’s international standing.
This chapter explores the history of Salonica during that tumultuous period. Established as the ‘Capital of the Revolution’, the city turned into a Young Turk stronghold in their battle against the supporters of the sultan. At the same time, the city became the birthplace of the Ottoman labour movement, thanks to the founding of the socialist, and predominantly Jewish, Workers’ Federation. Political polarisation and labour mobilisation eventually fractured the consensus of Salonica’s local elites, putting an end to a long period of economic growth. The empire’s defeat in the Balkan Wars and the city’s annexation by Greece signalled the end of Salonica as an Ottoman port-city.
