Young Turk Revolution
The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 reversed the suspension of the Ottoman parliament by Sultan Abdul Hamid II, marking the onset of the Second Constitutional Era. A landmark in the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the Revolution arose from an unlikely union of reform-minded pluralists, Turkish nationalists, Western-oriented secularists, and indeed anyone who accorded the Sultan political blame for the harried state of the Empire.
The Revolution restored the parliament, which had been suspended by the Sultan in 1878. However, the process of supplanting the monarchic institutions with constitutional institutions and electoral policies was neither as simple nor as bloodless as the regime change itself, and the periphery of the Empire continued to splinter under the pressures of local revolutions.
As a result of the revolution, all political prisoners of the Ottoman Empire were freed, including ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Once freed from house arrest, he eventually (in 1910) embarked on a momentous three-year journey to Egypt, Europe, and North America, spreading the Bahá’í message throughout these lands.
