The Second Constitutional Period, 1908–1918
‘dissatisfaction’, effectively muzzled dissenting voices. Abetted by the spread-
ing practice of self-censorship, it turned newspapers and journals into official
mouthpieces, subsidised and directed by the palace. All this stunted intellec-
tual growth. Under Abd
¨
ulhamid II, a cultural, non-political form of Turkism
was allowed to flourish in Istanbul.
72
A benign form of scientism was like-
wise tolerated; it won many adherents among the intellectuals of the imperial
capital, who enthusiastically adopted the theses of mid-nineteenth-century
German Vulg
¨
armaterialismus.
73
But censorship dulled the political edge of the
ideological debates in the capital, which, consequently, lost its intellectual
pre-eminence to Beirut and Cairo. In the last decades of the nineteenth cen-
tury, Syria gained prominence as a centre of the Salafiyya movement. The
Balkans witnessed the acceleration of nationalist and socialist debates among
non-Muslims in towns such as Salonica and Monastir, while they lost their
importance as centres of Ottoman culture. The most explosive political ideas
came in the form of underground publications smuggled into the empire from
Europe and Egypt, but their circulation was limited.
The brief burst of revolutionary freedom after 1908 awakened the capital
fromthe thirty-year slumber imposedby the Hamidian censors. The revolution
unleashed pent-up intellectual potential, spawning a renaissance in the capital
and major towns of the empire. In the summer and fall of 1908, public debates
flared up over issues ranging from Islamic modernism to socialism, and from
materialism to feminism. The raucous debates of that moment of liberty
are recorded in a score of newspapers and journals that mushroomed in the
anarchic aftermath of the revolution, often publishing a single maiden issue,
only to disappear by the time of the elections of November–December 1908.
As in so many other domains, the CUP found itself restoring elements
of the very Hamidian regime against which it had railed in opposition. The
CUP leaders in power turned out to have no more tolerance for free polit-
ical debate than their predecessors. At first, they were not yet in a position
to suppress it. But after the elections, successive governments, aided by the
new Press Law, exercised more control over publications. Martial law, which
became increasingly standard amidst war, counter-revolution and rebellion,
reinforced the restrictions on freedom of expression. The CUP adopted a par-
ticularly harsh policy towards the opposition press. Though it has never been
72 See David Kushner, The Rise of Turkish nationalism, 1876–1908 (London: Frank Cass, 1977),
pp. 14 ff.
73 See M. S¸
¨
ukr
¨
u Hanio
˘
glu, ‘Blueprints for a future society: The Ottoman materialists on
science, religion, and art’, in Elisabeth
¨
Ozdalga (ed.), Late Ottoman Society: The Intellectual
Legacy (London: Routledge – Curzon, 2005), pp. 39 ff.
99