| Summary/Abstract |
In 1908, the Ottoman Third Army marched from Macedonia to Istanbul and forced the sultan to restore the constitution, introduced in 1876 and suspended in 1878 under the duress of war with Russia. In 1909, chanting crowds of religious students (softas) and turbaned clerics, along with disaffected soldiers, swarmed through the streets of Istanbul, demanding an end to constitutional government and the introduction of sharia law. Revolution had been followed by a counterrevolution, but the army struck back and sent the sultan into exile. Dervis Vahdeti, head of the Muhammadan Society and publisher of the newspaper Volkan (Volcano), was hanged — along with many others — for his central role in instigating the uprising. In 1923, the revolution was consolidated with the establishment of the Turkish Republic. It took shape according to the vision of its founder, Mustafa Kemal “Ataturk,” and thus was modernizing and secular, confining religion to the mosque and the home, and emancipating women. The state was also one-party and authoritarian, driving political Islam and Kurdish identity underground, only for them to rise to the surface again decades later.
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