Ottomanism

(Osmanism), a political doctrine of the Ottoman Empire.

Ottomanism, advanced by the Young Turks at the end of the 19th century, orginally proclaimed “the equality of all Ottomans,” that is, of all subjects of the Ottoman Empire irrespective of their nationality and religion. But later, especially after the Young Turks came to power in 1908, it became an implement in their struggle against the national demands of the empire’s non-Turkish peoples; it was the ideological basis of the group’s assertion that these peoples must be assimilated so that a “single Ottoman nation” might be created. The growth of the national liberation movement among the empire’s non-Turkish peoples, as well as the Tripolitan War (the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–12) and the Balkan Wars of 1912–13, demonstrated Ottomanism’s inability to preserve an integral Ottoman Empire. The doctrine yielded to Pan-Islamism, revived by the Young Turks, and to Pan-Turkism.