Incident of March 31st
The incident of March 31, 1909 ( Ottoman اوتوز بیر مارت وقعه سی Otuz-bir Mart Vaḳʿası ) was a rebellion in the Ottoman Empire , in which supporters of Sultan Abdülhamid II revolted against the Young Turks . It happened on April 13, 1909 , which corresponds to March 31 in the Rumi calendar . The aim of the rebellion was to end the second Ottoman constitutional period , which began in 1908 when the Young Turks came to power.
background
The background to the incident on March 31st are interpreted differently. The Committee for Unity and Progress (KEF) declared the rebellion a reactionary movement because it was directed against the achievements of the Young Turkish Revolution of 1908. Although many factors contributed to the growing displeasure against the committee, the motivations for the uprising have so far not been adequately explained. The supporters of the committee described the uprising as reactionary because it planned the abolition of the liberal constitutional regime and wanted to reinstate Sultan Abdülhamid II as absolute monarch . On the other hand, it should be noted that the KEF called all opponents "reactionary" and used the term reaction as a synonym for opposition.
Course and consequences
On April 7, 1909, the journalist Hasan Fehmi Bey, who was critical of the government, was murdered by the newspaper Serbestī ("Independence"). On the night of April 13th, soldiers loyal to the cult ( Alaylı ) took over the leadership of a coup against the Young Turkish movement. Around 5,000 to 6,000 soldiers and hundreds of students and hodjas gathered in Istanbul on Sultan Ahmed Square , demanding the introduction of Sharia and paying homage to Sultan Abdülhamid as Padishah . Young Turkish politicians were murdered all over the city. The uprising was put down after a few days by troops under the command of Mahmud Şevket Pasha , who were called the "intervention army " (حرکت اوردوسو / Ḥareket Ordusu ) marched into Istanbul from Saloniki . On April 14, 1909, there was a massacre against the Armenian civilian population in Adana . As a result of the revolt, Grand Vizier Hüseyin Hilmi Pascha resigned with the entire cabinet and was replaced at short notice by Ahmed Tevfik Pascha . The KEF decided to depose Sultan Abdülhamid, and on April 27, his younger brother and heir to the throne Reschid Effendi was proclaimed the new Sultan Mehmed V , who was no more than a puppet .
In 1911, the Freedom Monument was erected in the Şişli district of Istanbul in memory of the 74 soldiers who fell during the uprising .
Friedrich Schrader , deputy editor-in-chief of Ottoman Lloyd and correspondent for the Frankfurter Zeitung in Constantinople, published a detailed German-language contemporary witness report of the events of April 13, 1909 in the left-liberal German political-literary magazine März on May 4, 1909.
“The year 1908 came and the country was suddenly given freedom. 'Yes, freedom - what kind of thing is that?' the Anatolian farmers asked themselves. 'Freedom', they themselves answered the question that came to their minds under the influence of the Hodjas, 'is the greater freedom of the previously bound religion, which has had to renounce the implementation of the most sacred regulations up to now.' The modest amount of concessions that ancient Turkey had made to modern state ideas and modern society seemed to the rural people and their leaders to be far too extensive. Their sufferings, the harassment they were exposed to under absolutism, they now saw from this point of view and hoped that freedom would bring them the desired relief and the introduction of the law of scheria .
The Macedonians came to avenge the cowardly slaughtered officers and to punish this hopefully last attempt of absolutism to rise to rule on the shoulders of the priests and the people they led, as it deserved. "
Individual evidence
- ^ Şükran Vahide: Islam in Modern Turkey.
- ↑ Klaus Kreiser, Christoph K. Neumann: Small history of Turkey . Reclam, Stuttgart 2003, licensed edition for the Federal Agency for Civic Education : Bonn 2005, p. 360
- ↑ a b Friedrich Schrader : The Constantinople mutiny of April 13th . In: März , Edition 3, Issue 9, May 4, 1909, März-Verlag, pp. 169–180