Committee of Union and Progress

The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) was a conservative political party of the Ottoman Empire which was founded in 1889 and disbanded in 1918, affiliated with the right-wing of the Young Turks. The CUP was founded as a liberal and secular party, but they later morphed into conservative revolutionaries who advocated for the continuation of the monarchy. It called for democratization and reform in the empire, and the 1908 Young Turk Revolution brought them to power; the 1913 Raid on the Sublime Porte ended the rule of the rival Young Turk Freedom and Accord Party, and the "Three Pashas" Enver Pasha, Talaat Pasha, and Djemal Pasha became the de facto rulers of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. The CUP were staunch Japanophiles, as they were inspired by the Meiji Restoration and supported the modernization and the resurrection of the Ottoman Empire without sacrificing its identity. Some factions of the CUP advocated for Islamism, especially during World War I, when they sought to unite with the Muslim subjects of the British Empire in a jihad against the Entente. Originally "Ottomanists", the CUP developed nationalist ideals after the Balkan Wars humiliated the Turkish nation, and the CUP advocated for the Turkification of the empire's non-Turkish subjects. During World War I, the CUP government exterminated the empire's Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks after accusing them of disloyalty amid the war with the Russians. After the war, many of the CUP leaders were court-martialled, fled into exile (where many would be killed by survivors of the Armenian Genocide), or were executed for their failed attempt to assassinate Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Members who survived continued their political careers with Ataturk's big tent Republican People's Party and its opposition parties.