The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order: 1905-1922

by Edmond Taylor

A few months after his accession Abdul Hamid, on December 23, 1876, proclaimed the constitution for which the Young Ottomans and their sympathizers had been clamoring. The move was beautifully timed; an international conference — which the Ottoman Empire had not been invited to attend, but to which it was the involuntary host — was then sitting in Constantinople. It had been called by Queen Victoria’s subtle Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, following some specially frightful Turkish massacres in Bulgaria, with the double objective of protecting the Christian minorities and of dissuading the Russians from seizing the Dardanelles in a fit of righteous indignation. The delegates of the European Concert, meeting in the Russian embassy, were within a few commas of completing a joint ultimatum to the Sublime Port demanding autonomy for the Christians of Bulgaria and Bosnia when an artillery salvo announced the proclamation of a constitution — the first one in Ottoman history. That salvo blew up the conference; the constitution gave the Sultan’s subjects all the guaranties they could ask for — on paper — and after such a gesture there could be no further question of international sanctions.

Christians talked a muslim leader into giving people rights