Revolutionaries belonging to the Internal Committee of Union and Progress, an organization of the Young Turks movement, forced Sultan Abdul Hamid II to restore the Constitution, recall the parliament, and schedule an election.

Though the constitutional regime established after the revolution eventually succumbed to Unionist dictatorship by 1913, the Ottoman sultanate ceased to be the base of power of the empire after 1908.

After an attempted monarchist counterrevolution known as the 31 March incident in favor of Abdul Hamid the following year, he was deposed and his half-brother Mehmed V ascended the throne.

Some Young Turks wished for a federation of nations under an Ottoman monarch, as exemplified in Prince Sabahaddin's movement, though after his failed coup attempt in 1903 his faction was discredited.

[4] Throughout this period, the Ottoman Empire's weak economy and Abdul Hamid's distrust of the military meant the army was in constant pay arrears.

The defense of their empire was a matter of great honor within the Ottoman military, but the terrible conditions of their service deeply affected morale for the worse.

Those stationed in Macedonia were outraged against the sultan, and believed the only way to save Ottoman presence in the region to join revolutionary secret societies.

With the conclusion of the IMRO's left-wing congress in May–June 1908, the CUP reached a deal for the left's support and neutrality from their right, but the Macedonian-Bulgarian committee's disunity and their late decision also meant no joint operations between the two groups during the revolution.

[11] The event that triggered the revolution was a meeting in the Baltic port of Reval between Edward VII of the United Kingdom and Nicholas II of Russia on 9–12 June 1908.

The Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 brought shaky British-Russian relations to the forefront by solidifying boundaries that identified their respective control in Persia (eastern border of the Empire) and Afghanistan.

[13] On July 3 Major Ahmed Niyazi began the revolution by raiding the Resne (Resen) garrison cache of money, arms, and ammunition and assembled a force of 160 volunteers to the mountains surrounding the city.

From there he visited many villages around the predominantly Muslim Albanian area to recruit for his band and warn of impending European intervention and Christian supremacy in Macedonia.

Niyazi would highlight the government's (not the sultan) weakness and corruption as the reason for this crisis, and that a constitutional framework would deliver the systematic reform necessary to negate Western intervention.

[14] He informed the palace of his arrival in the city at the local telegraph station, and as he walked out of the building he was assassinated by a Unionist fedai, Âtıf Kamçıl.

The rapid momentum of the Unionist's organization, intrigues within the military, discontent with Abdul Hamid's autocratic rule, and a desire for the Constitution meant the sultan and his ministers were compelled to capitulate.

[16] Under pressure of being deposed, on the night of 23–24 July 1908, Abdul Hamid II issued the İrade-i Hürriyet, reinstating the Constitution and calling an election to great jubilation.

[17] There after, a number of decrees are issued, which defined freedom of speech, press and organizations, the dismantlement of intelligence agencies, and a general amnesty to political prisoners.

[18] Between the revolution and the 31 March Incident, the CUP's emerged victorious in a power struggle between the palace (Abdul Hamid II) and the liberated Sublime Porte.

The Senate of the Ottoman Empire reconvened for the first time in over 30 years on 17 December 1908 with the living members like Hasan Fehmi Pasha from the First Constitutional Era.

His quest to revive the Sublime Porte of the Tanzimat proved fruitless when CUP soon censored him with a no-confidence vote in parliament,[21][22] thus he was replaced by Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha who was more in-line with the committee's ways.

Abdul Hamid maintained his throne by conceding its existence as a symbolic position, but in April 1909 attempted to seize power (see 31 March Incident) by stirring populist sentiment throughout the Empire.

[clarification needed] On 13 April 1909, army units revolted, joined by masses of theological students and turbaned clerics shouting, "We want Sharia", and moving to restore the Sultan's absolute power.

No longer was power exercised by a small governing elite surrounding the Sultan, the Sublime Porte's independence was restored and a new young clique of bureaucrats and officers gradually took control of politics for the CUP.

Those intellectual Unionists that spent years in exile, such as Ahmed Rıza, would be sidelined in favor of the new professional organizers, Mehmed Talât, Doctor Nazım, and Bahaeddin Şakir.

[19] 5 of these years would be a dictatorship established in the aftermath of the 1913 coup and Mahmud Shevket Pasha's assassination, during which they drove the empire to fight alongside Germany during World War I and commit genocide against Ottoman Christians.

The revolution continued to destabilize the subservient Sharifate of Mecca as several claimed the title until November 1908, when the CUP recognized Hussein bin Ali Pasha as Emir.

[25] Though these non-Turkish nationalists cooperated with the Young Turks against the sultan, they would turn on each other during the Second Constitutional Era over the question of Ottomanism, and ultimately autonomy and separatism.

The fall of Abdul Hamid II foiled the rapprochement between Serbia and Montenegro and the Ottoman Empire which set the stage for their alliance with Bulgaria and Greece in the Balkan Wars.

Discontent in the Greek military saw a secret revolutionary organization explicitly modeled from the CUP which overthrew the government in the Goudi Coup, bringing Eleftherios Venizelos to power.

Historian Ronald Grigor Suny states that the revolution had no popular support and was actually "a coup d'état by a small group of military officers and civilian activists in the Balkans".