ABSTRACT
In April 1909, partisans of ‘Abdul Hamid’s absolutist regime launched a counter-revolutionary coup. A great number of young officers and other adherents of the constitutional movement were massacred, parliament was raided and several deputies murdered. The policies of Young Turk junta were given a veneer of respectability by adoption of a new ideology known as pan-Turkism or pan-Turanianism. Gokalp’s philosophy was coloured by the Turkish military disasters of late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Turks had been set upon by Russian, British and Italian imperialists and driven from their ancient dominions in Balkans, Mediterranean and North Africa. Therefore the Turks must take refuge in their ancient national traditions, and be proud, instead of being ashamed, of their Turkic ancestry. The open dominance of Germany over the Ottoman armed forces aroused resentment among rival foreign governments. It was partly to counter this feeling that the Young Turks ostensibly agreed to a new scheme for reform in eastern, Armenian provinces.
