Ittihadism () was the ideology of the Committee of Union and Progress, which undertook the Young Turk Revolution in 1908 and ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1918.
Turkish nationalism
The Central Committee of the Committee of Union and Progress was made up of intense Turkish nationalists, but until the defeat in the First Balkan War in 1912–13, the CUP did not publicly stress its Turkish nationalism to avoid offending the non-Turkish population of the empire. A further problem for the CUP was that the majority of the Ottoman Empire's ethnic Turks did not see themselves at all as Turks but rather simply as Sunni Muslims who happened to speak Turkish. The Turkish historian Taner Akçam wrote that at the time of the First World War. "It is even questionable whether the broad mass of Muslims in Anatolia at the time understood themselves as Turks, or Kurds, rather than as Muslims". Though the CUP was dedicated to a revolutionary transformation of Ottoman society by its "science-conscious cadres", the CUP were conservative revolutionaries who wished to retain the monarchy and Islam's status as the state religion as the Young Turks believed that the sultanate and Islam were essential parts of the glue holding the empire together.
Cult of science
The CUP believed that the secret behind Western success was science, and the more scientifically advanced nations were the more powerful ones. According to the Turkish historian Handan Nezir Akmeşe, the essence of the CUP was the "cult of science" and a strong sense of Turkish nationalism. Strongly influenced by French intellectuals such as Auguste Comte and Gustave Le Bon, the CUP had embraced the idea of rule by a scientific elite. For the Young Turks, the empire's basic problems were its backward, impoverished status and the illiteracy of most of its Muslim population, which meant that most Ottoman Muslims could not learn about modern science even if they had wanted to. The CUP had an obsession with science, especially the natural sciences (CUP journals devoted much text to chemistry lessons), and its members often described themselves as "societal doctors" who would apply modern scientific ideas and methods to solve all social problems. The CUP saw itself as a scientific elite, whose superior knowledge would save the empire; one member later recalled the atmosphere, "Being a Unionist was almost a type of God-given privilege".
Social Darwinism
Alongside the unbounded faith in science, the CUP embraced Social Darwinism and the , scientific racism that was so popular at German universities in the first half of the 20th century. In the words of the sociologist Ziya Gökalp, the CUP's chief thinker, the German racial approach to defining a nation was the "one that happened to more closely match the condition of 'Turkishness', which was struggling to constitute its own historical and national identity". The French racist Arthur de Gobineau, whose theories had such a profound impact upon 19th-century German thinkers, was also a major influence upon the CUP. Akçam wrote that the CUP was quite flexible about mixing pan-Islamic, pan-Turkic, and Ottomanist ideas as they suited its purposes, and the CUP at various times would emphasise one at the expense of the others, depending upon the exigencies of the situation. To the CUP, ideologies were secondary to the end goal of a powerful predominantly-Turkish Ottoman Empire.
The Young Turks had embraced Social Darwinism and pseudo-scientific biological racism as the basis of its philosophy, with history being seen as a merciless racial struggle with only the strongest "races" surviving. For the CUP, the Empire of Japan had ensured that the "Japanese race" were strongest in East Asia, and it was the duty of the CUP to ensure that the "Turkish race" became the strongest in the Near East. For the CUP, just as it was right and natural for the superior "Japanese race" to dominate "inferior races" like the Koreans and the Chinese, likewise it would be natural for the superior "Turkish race" to dominate "inferior races" like the Greeks and the Armenians. Th Social Darwinist perspective explains how the CUP so ferociously criticised of Western imperialism, especially if it was directed against the Ottomans, and so much supported Japanese imperialism in Korea and China. When Japan annexed Korea in 1910, the Young Turks supported the move under the Social Darwinist grounds that the Koreans were a weak people, who deserved to be taken over by the stronger Japanese for their own good and that of the Japanese Empire. Along the same lines, the Social Darwinism of the CUP led it to see the Armenian and Greek minorities, who tended to be much better educated, literate and wealthier than the Turks and dominated the business life of the empire, as threats to its plans for a glorious future for the "Turkish race".
The CUP's ideas of Turkish superiority were contrary to Islamic doctrine, which teaches that all humans are equal on the grounds of ethnicity and race. For the purpose of gaining public support from a Turkish public, which was, for the most part, devoutly Muslim and to avoid alienating those Ottoman Muslims who were not Turks, like the Arabs, the Albanians and the Kurds, the CUP's pseudo-scientific theories about the "Turkish race" were usually not publicly proclaimed.
Pan-Islamism During the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, Pan-Islamism had become an important part of the state ideology, as Abdul Hamid had often stressed his claim to be the caliph. That claim would make him the political and spiritual leader of all Sunni Muslims which spread within the Ottoman Empire but also the rest of Dar-al-Islam (the "House of Islam", i.e. the Islamic world), especially in British India. The fact that Indian Muslims seemed to have far more enthusiasm for the Ottoman Sultan-Caliph than for the British King-Emperor was a matter of considerable concern for British decision-makers. The fear that the Sultan-Caliph might declare jihad against the British and thereby plunge India into a revolt by its Muslims were constant factors in British policy towards the Ottoman Empire.
The CUP endorsed Abdul Hamid's legacy upon his death in February 1918 even though it had launched a revolution against him in 1908 and ultimately deposed him in 1909. Şükrü Hanioğlu asserts that the CUP generally appealed to Islam simply whenever it was convenient. For the CUP, keeping the Sultanate-Caliphate not only reinforced the loyalty of Ottoman Muslims to the empire but also was a useful foreign policy tool. As in 1909, Crete decided to leave the Ottoman Empire and join Greece instead, the CUP warned the European powers to support such an endeavour, as it would lead to a strong opposition from the Muslim communities worldwide.Landau, Jacob M. (1990).p.88 Similarly, the CUP sent a delegation to the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in 1909 to raise support for its opposition to the European aggression. To forge further support to an eventual Pan-Islamic alliance, the CUP supported the creation of the Islamic association Ittihad-ol-Islam in Iran in 1910 and managed to establish Pan-Islamist ties in Iraq despite the Shia-Sunni divide.Landau, Jacob M. (1990).p.91
Modernisation and secularism
While the CUP eventually relied on Pan-Islamism, there was always a secular culture within the Sacred Committee. The CUP heavily cracked down on religious fanaticism following the 31 March incident, which strained its relationship with the ulema, but at the same time, it used Islamist fervour for its benefit during the First World War. Nevertheless, the CUP saw itself as a modernizing force for bringing Ottoman, Turkish and Muslim society to European standards, which mandated social reform. An example of pre-Kemalist social reform was the controversial "Temporal Family Law", passed in 1917, which was a significant advance in women's rights and secularism in Ottoman matrimonial law. Women's right to divorce was expanded, and polygamy was restricted.
Influence of Goltz
The primary influences on the CUP were the French scientist Gustave Le Bon and the German General Baron Colmar von der Goltz. Le Bon argued that democracy was only just mindless mob rule and that the best form of the government was a rule by a scientific elite.
Equally important because of the large number of army officers in the CUP was the influence of Goltz, who trained an entire generation of Ottoman officers, the so-called "Goltz generation". Goltz was a militarist, Social Darwinist and ultranationalist, who saw war as something necessary, desirable and inevitable. He wrote, "It [war] is an expression of the energy and self-respect which a nation possesses.... Perpetual peace means perpetual death!" Goltz's most important idea, which would greatly influence the Unionists, was that in modern war, the side that could mobilise best the entire resources of its society would now be the one that would win and sp the best thing that could done was to militarise one's society in peacetime to ensure that it would be a "nation in arms" when the inevitable war came. Goltz, who spoke fluent Turkish and was very popular with the officers whom he trained, expressed a great deal of admiration for the Turks as a naturally-warlike people. That was in contrast to his country, where he believed that hedonism had made the next generation of young German men unfit for war.
Goltz was also an intense Anglophobe, who believed that the great struggle of the coming 20th century would be a world war between Britain and Germany for the mastery of the world. He consered it to be self-evident that the world was just too small for the British and German Empires to co-exist, and he urged his protégés in the Ottoman Army to ensure that the empire fought on the side of Germany when the inevitable Anglo-German war would break out.
Japanophilia
As great as the influences of Goltz and Le Bon were on the Unionists, the primary example for them was Japan. Germany was the role model for the technical and organisational aspects of modernisation, and Japan was the overall societal model. Already within the early 20th century, the Japanese had started to champion the ideology of Pan-Asianism, under which all of the Asian peoples were to united under the leadership of Japan, the strongest of the Asian nations and as the "great Yamato race", the most racially superior of the Asian peoples as a justification for Japanese imperialism. The CUP was greatly influenced by Japanese Pan-Asianism, which served as a template for its ideology of Pan-Islamism in which all of the world's Muslims would united in the Ottoman Empire, which would certainly be led by the "Turkish race". An American historian, Sven Saaler, noted the "important connections" between the Japanese pan-Asian and the Ottoman pan-Islamist movements in the early 20th century and the "astonishing parallels" between the two movements.. The ultimate aim of the CUP was to modernise the Ottoman Empire to recapture its former greatness, and just as the modernised Japan had defeated Russia in 1905, the modernised Ottomans would defeat the Western nations.