Comparison Between Abdulhamid II and CUP`s Arab Policies: Shifting from Pan-Islamism to Nationalism

Abstract

The entire 19th century was the most controversial years of the Ottoman Empire. It was the time period that the Ottoman Empire, as once one of the great powers in the world, had to struggle with the great western powers. This struggle ended with the disintegration of the Empire and several nation-states were conceived of in the Middle East immediately after the First World War. Within this century, transformation from traditional social, political and philosophical structures to modernization had been severely felt by the last decades of the Empire. While this transformation had been a significant motive on both domestic and foreign policies of the centre, peripheries of the Empire did not follow the same ideals with the centre, especially Arab provinces. This paper seeks to depict the transformation in the Arab provinces. To crystalize, the eras of Abdulhamid II with pan-Islamist and of the CUP with secular modernist would be compared via tracing policy changes in the Arab provinces.