ABSTRACT

In 1859 in what has become known as the Kuleli incident a group calling itself the Society of Martyrs (Fedailer Cemiyeti) tried to initiate a coup against the Ottoman government. Although this attempt to topple Sultan Abülmecid I (1839-61) was

a complete failure, it gained some attention by the fact that it was the first major act of political contestation in the Ottoman capital since the janissary revolt in 1826. Taking place after over thirty years of modernisation of Ottoman institutions and twenty years after the Tanzimat decree had been issued, almost inevitably contemporaries and modern scholars alike have seen the conspiracy in the wider framework of how the reform policy was understood and reacted to from the political elites as well as the people. Ottoman dissidents like Namık Kemal, but also nineteenth century

European observers like the Hungarian orientalist and traveller Arminius Vambéry or Edouard Engelhardt praised the members of the conspiracy for their liberal attitudes and even attributed constitutionalist thoughts to them. Writers with a Young Turk background like Yusuf Akçura and Ahmed Bedevi Kuran recognised in the conspirators the forerunners of their opposition to the regime.1