A Trauma of Committee of Union and Progress: Reconsidering the First Balkan War (1912 – 1913)

    • Cover Conference Prague
    • Presentation speakers
      • Hikmet Çağrı Yardımcı, Hasan Kalyoncu University, Gaziantep, Turkey

    Abstract:

    As Ottoman Empire was collapsing many nations who had lived under Ottoman rule began to riot underway to establish their own independent states. Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) (İttihat ve Terakki Partisi), which was an opposed group founded to transform the monarchic Ottoman system into constitutional democracy, undertook the protector status of the state at these times. CUP, as a political group, which had several bureaucrats at the top of the Ottoman hierarchical frame, was more institutionalized and organized structure of Young Turks. CUP gave a big importance to the Balkan issues since Young Turks’ political and intellectual settlement had started from these lands. Thus a big effort made to tie Balkan nations, who rebelled to Ottoman Empire, with –recently- centralized Ottoman Empire. Even if these efforts worked to some extent, with Balkan wars CUP faced with its one of the biggest traumas. Then CUP’s point of view to the Balkans has totally changed in the direction of hatred, the opposite way round to previously. This study is twofold: Firstly it aims to reexamine the Balkan Wars regarding to CUP and its centralized policies. On the other hand, as a different perspective, this work focuses on emotional cues of CUP that are contains contradictory feelings, especially ‘love and hate’. Based on this, an inter-disciplinary approach of the Balkan wars history will be reevaluated by linking centralization policies of CUP and traumatic results of these moves.