ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the ideology of the Young Turks and the Ottoman regime responsible for the Genocide. The ideology of the Young Turks, more specifically the Ittihad ve Terakke Jemiyeti (Committee of Union and Progress or CUP), has presented a special interest to historians. One obvious reason is that the leaders bear primary and ultimate responsibility for the planning and execution of the tragedy that befell the Armenians during the First World War. For Young Turks, who engineered and supervised the transitional stage, the creation of a new Turkish nation-state out of the old Ottoman Empire passed through the prism of the homogenization of the population. The Young Turks began their career by sharing values with Young Ottomans: willingness to liberalize the regime and accommodate non-Turkish and, initially, non-Muslim elements. In its 1910 and 1911 secret congresses in Salonika, the CUP seems to have decided on the Turkification of Anatolia, leaving the use of military means for the appropriate moment.
