Mehmed Fuad Pasha in the context of "Civil code"

Abdulaziz (Ottoman Turkish: عبد العزيز, romanized: ʿAbdü'l-ʿAzîz; Turkish: Abdülaziz; 8 February 1830 – 4 June 1876) was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 25 June 1861 to 30 May 1876, when he was overthrown in a government coup. He was a son of Sultan Mahmud II and succeeded his brother Abdulmejid I in 1861.

Abdulaziz's reign began during the Ottoman Empire's resurgence following the Crimean War and two decades of the Tanzimat reforms, though it was now reliant on European capital. The decade after his ascension was dominated by the duo of Fuad Pasha and Aali Pasha, who accelerated reorganization of the Empire. The Vilayet Law was promulgated, Western codes were applied to more aspects of Ottoman law, and the millets were restructured. The issue of Tanzimat dualism continued to plague the empire, however.

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.