Abdul Hamid II in the context of "Second Constitutional Era"

The First Constitutional Era (Ottoman Turkish: مشروطيت; Turkish: Birinci Meşrutiyet Devri) was a period of constitutional monarchy in the Ottoman Empire from 23 December 1876 until 14 February 1878. It began with the promulgation of the Ottoman constitution, written by members of the Young Ottomans. The Young Ottomans were dissatisfied by the Tanzimat and pushed for a constitutional government similar to that in Europe. The constitutional period started with the dethroning of Sultan Abdul Aziz. After Murad V's ephemeral reign, Abdul Hamid II took his place as Sultan. The era ended with the suspension of the Ottoman Parliament and the constitution by Sultan Abdul Hamid II, with which he restored absolute monarchy.

The first constitutional era did not include a party system. At the time, the Ottoman Parliament (known as the General Assembly of the Ottoman Empire) was seen as the voice of the people but not as a venue for the formation of political parties and organizations. The elections for the Parliament were held in accordance with the provisional electoral regulations. The General Assembly of the Ottoman Empire was composed in two houses. The lower house of the bicameral legislature was the Chamber of Deputies, while the upper house was the Senate, or Chamber of Notables. The initial selection of deputies was made by administrative councils in the provinces (also called Meclis-i Umumi).

Hussein bin Ali al-Hashimi (Arabic: ٱلْحُسَيْن بِن عَلِي ٱلْهَاشِمِي, romanized: al-Ḥusayn bin 'Alī al-Hāshimī pronunciation; 1 May 1854 – 4 June 1931) was a Hejazi leader from the Banu Qatadah branch of the Banu Hashim clan who was the Sharif and Emir of Mecca from 1908 and, after proclaiming the Great Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire, King of the Hejaz, even if he refused this title, from 1916 to 1924. He proclaimed himself Caliph after the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924 and stayed in power until 1925 when Hejaz was invaded by the Sultanate of Nejd. His Caliphate was opposed by the British and French empires, the Zionists and the Wahhabis alike. However, he received support from a large part of the Muslim population of that time and from Mehmed VI. He is usually considered as the father of modern pan-Arabism.

In 1908, in the aftermath of the Young Turk Revolution, Hussein was appointed Sharif of Mecca by the Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II. His relationship with the Ottoman government deteriorated after the Committee of Union and Progress took power, particularly because of their policies of Turkification and persecution of ethnic minorities, including Arabs. In 1916, with the promise of British support for Arab independence, although it is debated as to what extent the British were influential in his choice, he proclaimed the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire, accusing the Committee of Union and Progress of violating tenets of Islam and limiting the power of the sultan-caliph. While his armies, led by his sons, were engaged in fighting the Ottoman and German troops in the Middle East, Hussein supported the Armenians during the Armenian genocide and saved up to 4,000 of them. In the aftermath of World War I, Hussein refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, in protest of the Balfour Declaration, a document supporting the Jewish settlers in Palestine, and the establishment of British and French mandates in Syria, Iraq, and Palestine. His sons Faisal and Abdullah were made rulers of Iraq and Transjordan respectively in 1921.

The Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress (CUP, also translated as the Society of Union and Progress; Ottoman Turkish: اتحاد و ترقى جمعيتی, romanized: İttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti, French: Union et Progrès) was a revolutionary group, secret society, and political party, active between 1889 and 1926 in the Ottoman Empire and in the Republic of Turkey. The foremost faction of the Young Turks, the CUP instigated the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, which ended absolute monarchy and began the Second Constitutional Era. After an ideological transformation, from 1913 to 1918, the CUP ruled the empire as a dictatorship and committed genocides against the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian peoples as part of a broader policy of ethnic erasure during the late Ottoman period. The CUP and its members have often been referred to as "Young Turks", although the Young Turk movement produced other Ottoman political parties as well. Within the Ottoman Empire its members were known as İttihadcılar ('Unionists') or Komiteciler ('Committeemen').

The organisation began as a liberal reform movement, and the autocratic government of Sultan Abdul Hamid II (r. 1876–1909) persecuted it because of its calls for constitutional government and reform. Most of its members were exiled and arrested after a failed coup-attempt in 1896 which started a period infighting among émigré Young Turk communities in Europe. The CUP's cause revived by 1906 with a new "Macedonian" cadre of bureaucrats and Ottoman army contingents based in Ottoman Macedonia which were fighting ethnic insurgents in the Macedonian Struggle. In 1908 the Unionists revolted in the Young Turk Revolution, and forced Abdul Hamid to re-instate the 1876 Constitution, ushering in an era of political plurality. During the Second Constitutional Era, the CUP at first influenced politics from behind the scenes, and introduced major reforms to continue the modernisation of the Ottoman Empire. The CUP's main rival was the Freedom and Accord Party, a conservative party which called for the decentralisation of the empire, in opposition to the CUP's desire for a centralised and unitary Turkish-dominated state.

Starting in the 19th century the Ottoman Empire's governing structure slowly transitioned and standardized itself into a Western style system of government, sometimes known as the Imperial Government. Mahmud II (r. 1808–1839) initiated this process following the disbandment and massacre of the Janissary corps, at this point a conservative bureaucratic elite, in the Auspicious Incident. A long period of reform known as the Tanzimat period started, which yielded much needed reform to the government and social contract with the multicultural citizens of the empire.

In the height of the Tanzimat period in 1876, Abdul Hamid II (r. 1876–1909) turned the Empire into a constitutional monarchy by promulgating the Empire's first Constitution, which established the short First Constitutional Era and also featured elections for a parliament. Defeat in the 1877–1878 War with Russia and dissatisfaction with Abdul Hamid lead to the "temporary" suspension of the constitution and the parliament, resulting in a modern despotism/autocracy of Abdul Hamid, during which internal reform continued. The Young Turk Revolution in 1908 started the longer lasting Second Constitutional Era and forced Abdul Hamid to reinstate the constitution, recall the parliament, and hold elections again which this time which featured political parties. However, by 1913 the Ottoman Empire was a dictatorship of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), led by the Three Pashas (Talat Pasha, Enver Pasha, and Cemal Pasha). This dictatorship capitalized on the developed bureaucracy created through a century of reform and centralization by undertaking genocide against Christian minorities. The CUP also undertook many reforms relating to social structure, religion, and education, which would be continued and more far reaching under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's regime. The Union and Progress dictatorship lasted until the end of World War I, which lead to the Empire's collapse and subsequent abolition by Turkish nationalist forces led by Atatürk.

The Constitution of the Ottoman Empire (Ottoman Turkish: قانون أساسي, romanized: Kānûn-ı Esâsî, lit. 'Basic law'; French: Constitution ottomane) was in effect from 1876 to 1878 in a period known as the First Constitutional Era, and from 1908 to 1922 in the Second Constitutional Era. The first and only constitution of the Ottoman Empire, it was written by members of the Young Ottomans, particularly Midhat Pasha, during the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II (r. 1876–1909). After Abdul Hamid's political downfall in the 31 March Incident, the Constitution was amended to transfer more power from the sultan and the appointed Senate to the popularly-elected lower house: the Chamber of Deputies.

In the course of their studies in Europe, some members of the new Ottoman elite concluded that the secret of Europe's success rested not only with its technical achievements but also with its political organizations. Moreover, the process of reform itself had imbued a small segment of the elite with the belief that constitutional government would be a desirable check on autocracy and provide it with a better opportunity to influence policy. Sultan Abdulaziz's chaotic rule led to his deposition in 1876 and, after a few troubled months, to the proclamation of an Ottoman constitution that the new sultan, Abdul Hamid II, pledged to uphold.

The Young Turk Revolution (July 1908; Turkish: Jön Türk Devrimi) was a constitutionalist revolution in the Ottoman Empire. Revolutionaries belonging to the Internal Committee of Union and Progress, an organization of the Young Turks movement, forced Sultan Abdul Hamid II to restore the Constitution, recall the parliament, and schedule an election. Thus began the Second Constitutional Era which lasted from 1908–1912 and also the Turkish Revolution, an era of political instability and social change which lasted for more than four decades.

The revolution took place in Ottoman Rumeli in the context of the Macedonian Struggle and the increasing instability of the Hamidian regime. It began with CUP member Ahmed Niyazi's flight into the Albanian highlands. He was soon joined by İsmail Enver, Eyub Sabri, and other Unionist officers. They networked with local Albanians and utilized their connections within the Salonica based Third Army to instigate a large revolt. A string of assassinations by Unionist Fedai also contributed to Abdul Hamid's capitulation. Though the constitutional regime established after the revolution eventually succumbed to Unionist dictatorship by 1913, the Ottoman sultanate ceased to be the base of power in Turkey after 1908.

The Young Turks (Ottoman Turkish: ژون تركلر, romanized: Jön Türkler, also كنج تركلر Genç Türkler) formed as a constitutionalist broad opposition-movement in the late Ottoman Empire against the absolutist régime of Sultan Abdul Hamid II (r. 1876–1909). The most powerful organisation within the movement, and the most conflated, was the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP, founded in 1889), though its ideology, strategies, and membership continuously changed. By the 1890s, the Young Turks were mainly a loose and contentious network of exiled intelligentsia who made a living by selling their newspapers to secret subscribers. Beyond opposition, exiled writers and sociologists debated Turkey's place in the East–West dichotomy.

Included in the opposition movement was a mosaic of ideologies, represented by democrats, liberals, decentralists, secularists, social Darwinists, technocrats, constitutional monarchists, and nationalists. Despite being called "the Young Turks", the group was of an ethnically diverse background; including Turks, Albanian, Aromanian, Arab, Armenian, Azeri, Circassian, Greek, Kurdish, and Jewish members. Besides membership in outlawed political committees, other avenues of opposition existed in the ulama, Sufi lodges, and masonic lodges. By and large, Young Turks favored taking power away from Yıldız Palace in favour of constitutional governance. The movement was popular especially among young, educated Ottomans and military officers that wanted reforms. They believed that a social contract in the form of a constitution would fix the empire's problems with nationalist movements and foreign intervention by instilling Ottomanism, or multi-cultural Ottoman nationalism.

The Bosnian Crisis, also known as the Annexation Crisis (German: Bosnische Annexionskrise, Turkish: Bosna Krizi; Serbo-Croatian: Aneksiona kriza, Анексиона криза) or the First Balkan Crisis, erupted on 5 October 1908 when Austria-Hungary announced the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, territories formerly within the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire but under Austro-Hungarian administration since 1878.

This unilateral action – timed to coincide with Bulgaria's declaration of independence from the Ottoman Empire on 5 October – sparked protestations from all the Great Powers and Austria-Hungary's Balkan neighbors, Serbia and Montenegro. In April 1909, the Treaty of Berlin was amended to reflect the fait accompli and bring the crisis to an end. Although the crisis ended with what appeared to be a total Austro-Hungarian diplomatic victory, it permanently damaged relations between Austria-Hungary and its neighbors, especially Serbia, Italy and Russia, and in the long term helped lay the grounds for World War I. Austro-Serbian relations – harmed by the annexation's inflaming of Serbian nationalists – continued to be strained to the point of declaring war on each other in 1914.

The General Assembly (Ottoman Turkish: مجلس عمومی, romanized: Meclis-i Umûmî; French romanization: "Medjliss Oumoumi" or Genel Parlamento; French: Assemblée Générale) was the first attempt at representative democracy by the imperial government of the Ottoman Empire. Also known as the Ottoman Parliament (French: Parlement Ottoman), it was located in Constantinople (Istanbul) and was composed of two houses: an upper house (Senate, Meclis-i Âyân), and a lower house (Chamber of Deputies, Meclis-i Mebusân).

The General Assembly was first constituted on 23 December 1876 and initially lasted until 14 February 1878, when it was dissolved by Sultan Abdul Hamid II.