This first Ottoman constitutional experiment ended soon after it began , however , when the autocratic Sultan Abdul Hamid II abolished the parliament and the constitution in favor of personal rule . Abdul Hamid ruled by decree for the next 30 years , stirring democratic resentment . The reform movement known as the Young Turks emerged in the 1890s against his rule , which included massacres against minorities . The Young Turks seized power in the 1908 Young Turk Revolution and established the Second Constitutional Era , leading to a pluralist and multiparty elections in the Empire for the first time in 1908 . The Young Turks split into two parties , the pro-German and pro-centralization Committee of Union and Progress and the pro-British and pro-decentralization Freedom and Accord Party . The former was led by an ambitious pair of army officers , Ismail Enver Bey ( later Pasha ) and Ahmed Cemal Pasha , and a radical lawyer , Mehmed Talaat Bey ( later Pasha ) . After a power struggle between the two parties of Young Turks , the Committee emerged victorious and became a ruling junta , with Talaat as Grand Vizier and Enver as War Minister , and established a German-funded modernisation program across the Empire
massacres against minorities
Hamidian massacres
History of the Middle East