Around this period , the CUP 's relationship to the Armenian Genocide shifted . Early on , Armenians had perceived the CUP as allies ; and the beginnings of the Genocide , in the 1909 Adana massacre , had been rooted in reactionary Ottoman backlash against the Young Turks . But during World War I , the CUP ’s increasing nationalism began to lead them to participate in the genocide . In 2005 , the International Association of Genocide Scholars affirmed that scholarly evidence revealed the CUP " government of the Ottoman Empire began a systematic genocide of its Armenian citizens and unarmed Christian minority population . More than a million Armenians were exterminated through direct killing , starvation , torture , and forced death marches . " Another guiding principle for the Young Turks was the transformation of their society into one in which religion played no consequential role , a stark contrast from the theocracy that had ruled the Ottoman Empire since its inception . However , the Young Turks soon recognized the difficulty of spreading this idea among the deeply religious Ottoman peasantry and even much of the elite , as the Ottoman Empire had not experienced the Enlightenment in the same way that Western Europe had . The Young Turks thus began suggesting that Islam itself was materialistic . As compared with later efforts by Muslim intellectuals , such as the attempt to reconcile Islam and socialism , this was an extremely difficult endeavor . Although some former members of the CUP continued to make efforts in this field after the revolution of 1908 , they were severely denounced by the Ulema , who accused them of " trying to change Islam into another form and create a new religion while calling it Islam "
Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide
Young Turks