Abstract:

As the Ottoman parliamentary system was in its infant stage during the Second Constitutional Era, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) and its political party, the Union and Progress Party, in the Chamber of Deputies (Meclis-i Mebusan), encountered opposition both within and outside the party circles. In this study, the division within the Union and Progress Party is explained in the context of Hizb-i Cedit movement led by the opponent and mostly conservative members of the parliament. This division cultivated the first seeds of the Freedom and Accord Party (Hurriyet ve Itilaf Firkasi) to be founded in November 21, 1911. Due to the lack of records in the Office of the Prime Minister Archives’ classifications, newspaper collections during the years of 1911-1912, various memoirs and secondary sources constitute the main data resources of this study. In conclusion, in the 1911 spring, the CUP and the Union and Progress Party encountered and got through a danger of division due to the Hizb-i Cedit movement. The Tripolitanian War that started in the fall of 1911 became the opportunity space for the CUP cadres to overcome this danger of division