The Shaping of the Young Turk Ideology in the Balkan Trauma and Its Reflection on the Cup Policy Towards the Ottoman Middle East

There is a causal link between the incidents that occurred in the late 19th, early 20th century Ottoman Balkans, and the policies of the Committee of Union and Progress in the Middle East. The members of the Committee who would become the Ottoman ruling elite from the Second Constitutional period onwards had gone through a tragic and traumatizing experience in the era of Balkan nationalisms. Serving as young officers and the bureaucrats of the Sultan they lived through one of the worst episodes of their lives and careers which caused them to look at the Ottoman subjects in the remaining Ottoman territories. The political outcome of the era of Balkan nationalisms was a distrust towards the non-Muslim and in particular non-Turkish Ottoman subjects in the Middle East and the consequential introduction of centralism and an identity politics which evolved gradually from Ottomanism to Islamism and finally to Turkish nationalism. The aim of this study is to analyze the main factors shaping the emergence of the early CUP ideology in the era of Balkan nationalisms and to discuss the outcome of the Balkan trauma on policies of the Committee of Union on the Arab subjects of the empires remaining territories in the Middle East.