Ottoman rule is famous for its secrecies and secret societies. Secret societies have existed in the Ottoman Empire since its earliest days, and they played an important role in shaping the empire's political, social, and cultural landscape. It starts with its foundation. There are legends which relate its foundation with a secret society named ‘white beards’. The Ottoman rulers were keeping secret police (Hafiyye-Tashkilat) to know well about their people. When it neared the end of the caliphate, more than their own societies, ottomans started suffering because of western secret societies and organizations. These societies were often formed in response to specific historical conditions and represented various interests and ideologies. Some were focused on religious or mystical practices, while others were more explicitly political or nationalist. Most of them were formed for the purpose of making an end to the Ottoman Caliphate.
The decline of the Ottoman Empire was a long process. While there were several factors that contributed to the decline of the Ottoman Empire, secret organizations also did play a role in shaping events during that time. While some secret societies aimed at reforms and modernization, others contributed to the instability and decline of the empire.
Secret societies contributed to the decline of the Ottoman Empire in a number of ways. First, they often challenged the authority of the central government contributing to internal strife and promoted separatism. For example, the Young Ottomans sought to establish a constitutional monarchy in the Ottoman Empire, while the Special Organization was involved in the Armenian Genocide and other acts of violence against ethnic minorities. Second, secret societies exacerbated sectarian and ethnic tensions within the empire. For example, the Special Organization fanned the flames of anti-Armenian sentiment, while the Young Ottomans appealed to Turkish nationalism. This contributed to the rise of nationalism and ethnic conflict in the Ottoman Empire, which ultimately led to its collapse. Third, secret societies weakened the Ottoman military by infiltrating its ranks and carrying out assassinations of high-ranking officers.
Secret societies were often influenced or manipulated by foreign powers seeking to weaken the Ottoman Empire. These foreign powers provided support, arms, and funding to various secret societies as part of their geopolitical strategies. The involvement of external actors worsened the empire's decline. Some secret societies were associated with specific ethnic, religious, or sectarian groups. For instance, the Bektashi Order, a Sufi order with many adherents among the Janissaries, had a strong influence on Ottoman politics. However, this could also lead to sectarian divisions within the empire, contributing to its weakening.
In some cases, members of secret societies within the Ottoman administration engaged in corruption and nepotism, exacerbating the empire's governance problems. This further eroded the state's effectiveness and credibility. Secret societies, particularly those with a military or paramilitary focus, sometimes organized revolts and uprisings against the Ottoman authorities. Secret societies sometimes became involved in power struggles and factionalism within the Ottoman government and military, leading to political instability and sometimes violent confrontations.
Freemasonry was one of the major secret societies present in the Ottoman Empire. It was a well-established organization which traces back to the stonemason guilds of medieval Europe. The stone masons of Europe were keeping secrecy among them. Its members jealously guarded their secrets and were selective about who they chose as apprentices. Freemasons were frequently sought out by monarchs or high-ranking church officials. The Masonic lodges began to exist even after the collapse of the masonic guilds. And they started to recruit non-masons to their organization. Later, this organization played key roles in world politics. It is considered as the largest worldwide secret society.
The presence of the Freemasonry in the Ottoman Empire was firstly noted in the eighteenth century. It seems that the first lodge in Istanbul was founded in the early 1720s by Sait Celebi, the son of Yirmisekiz Celebi, Ambassador of Ahmet III in Paris in 1720.[1] Istanbul, Izmir and Salonica remained the main centers of freemason activities. In the eighteenth-century, Masonic lodges of the Ottoman Empire comprised Europeans as well as local Christians and Jews, with only a few Muslims. Later, in the last third of the nineteenth century, lodges started to recruit an increasing number of Muslims in the Ottoman Empire, amongst them notable members of the local aristocracy, including members of the ruling Khedive family of Egypt and leading intellectuals such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad ‘Abduh, and the noted writer Ya’qub Sannu’.
Sultan Abdülhamid II (r.1876-1909) intended to ban the Masonic lodges, for experiencing their support to deposed Sultan Murad V who was also blamed to be a freemason since 1872. By this ban, Freemasons were compelled to go underground and pursue their activities in secret. Thus they became well organized as a secret society. These lodges played a crucial role in creating major chaos of Abdülhamid’s reign.
Freemasonry lodges of the Ottoman Empire provided a fertile partnership for Young Ottomanist thinkers and reformers such as Namık Kemal, and Freemasonry as an institution played a significant role along with other secret societies in drawing up the 1876 Ottoman Constitution.[2] In Egypt, freemasons have played a role in the ‘Urabi revolution also.
By supporting the Young Turks, freemasons declared their intention to the destruction of the Islamic Caliphate and to form a secular state instead. In Salonica, some of the so-called Young Turks exploited the local lodges to prepare their 1909 takeover of the empire's government, by which they deposed Sultan Abdülhamid II and brought the government under their control. Abdülhamid II was deposed by a committee of four deputies, all of them were freemasons. The anti- Abdülhamid initiatives of freemasons point to their role in the decline of the empire.
After the takeover of 1909 and the deposition of Sultan, Freemasons got wide recognition and the Masonic Lodges flourished throughout many parts of the empire. Many Muslims were also started to be recruited. The fast growing popularity of Freemasonry and its international relations made nationalists and other leaders suspicious. Enver, as Minister of War, banned it during the First World War. Following the war, however, the lodges resumed their activities in the Republic of Turkey, where, in 1930, no less than twenty three existed in Istanbul alone, numbering about 2,000 members besides those in Ankara. These comprised a varied membership, made up of foreigners, as well as Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Jews, Kurds, and Albanians. In 1935, Mustafa Kemal forbade freemasonic activities in the republic.[3]
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‘Young Ottomans’ was a society formed between 1860 and 1876. It was a response to the Ottoman Tanzimat reforms. Its members accused the government of using an autocratic bureaucracy led by the Ottoman elite. Instead, Young Ottomans promoted Ottomanism, which replaced loyalty to the sultan with loyalty to the state. The Young Ottomans were involved in a number of plots to overthrow the Ottoman sultan and establish a constitutional monarchy. In 1876, they helped to orchestrate the deposition of Sultan Abdul Aziz, which led to a period of political instability and turmoil in the empire. In 1876, civilians and military officials inspired by the Young Ottomans led a coup against Sultan Abdulaziz. But later, this movement and its leaders faced severe punishments from Sultan Abdülhamid II for disengaging in political matters. Its leaders were the primary cause for the Russo-Ottoman war of 1877.
The Young Turks Movement also played an important role in the decline of the empire. The Young Turks were a group of progressive intellectuals who wanted to modernize the Ottoman Empire and make it a more democratic and egalitarian state. The leaders of this movement were firstly acting secretly against Sultan Abdülhamid. In 1889, a group of students from the Military School of Medicine (Mekteb-i Tıbbiye-i Askeriye) in Istanbul founded a revolutionary organization called Ottomans' Union Committee (Ittihad-i Osmani-Cemiyeti) aiming to dethrone Abdülhamid II.[4] This Organization was later renamed as the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). In August 1896, the Committee decided to attempt a Military coup. However, the existence of the Committee was discovered by the network of spies and detectives of Abdülhamid. Thus they met the same fate as the Young Ottomans: Abdülhamid had them arrested and sent to exile. From there on, they fled to Europe and initiated new plans to defeat Abdülhamid from there. The prominent leader of the Young Turks, Ahmed Riza Bey was in Paris advising his followers in Turkey by Telegram. After the collapse of the organization, the Ottoman constitutionalist movement and the Young Turks had to wait until 1906 in order to establish once again an efficient and well-founded organization that was to be called the Ottoman Liberty Committee.
Being established as a secret society, Young Turks later turned out to be a political party which had contributed a lot to the empire’s history. This movement has a great role in the decline of the empire. Young Turks were joining hands with the freemasons who helped them to dethrone Abdülhamid, the last powerful caliph of the empire, and to gain power over the empire. They were spreading fake news and disinformation about Abdülhamid only to defame him in public. But, in fact they were preparing the ground for the European powers to intervene in domestic affairs of the empire, which will lead to the immediate collapse of the longest ruling Islamic empire.
The CUP rule over the empire marked the absence of a powerful sultan. They were accused of the Armenian Massacre and faced threats from other ethnicity problems. The decision to enter World War I was the stepping stone for the decline of the empire. Young Turks were not able to save the Ottoman Empire. The empire was already in decline, and the Young Turks were unable to implement the reforms that were needed to revitalize it. In addition, the Young Turks themselves were divided, and they were unable to provide the strong leadership that the empire needed.
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Greece was the lap of many secret societies. One of the major societies that arose from Greece was the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) which was founded in 1893 in Thessalonica. Its goal was to establish a Macedonian state in the wedge of land comprising the multi-ethnic Ottoman provinces of Kosovo, Monastir and Thessalonica. In 1895 IMRO had spawned a breakaway faction intent on liberating Macedonia from the Ottomans and making it part of a united Greater Bulgaria, and the recently-created states of Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece, bordering Macedonia.[5] It was a cause of real concern to Abdülhamid’s government. IMRO had also allied with CUP and participated in the takeover of 1909. After the evacuation of the Sultan, the palace was occupied on the evening of April 27. Among the occupiers were Yane Sandanski, IMRO’s leader and his gang.
Philikí Etaireía, (Greek: Friendly Brotherhood), was another Greek revolutionary secret society founded by merchants in Odessa in 1814 to overthrow Ottoman rule in southeastern Europe and to establish an independent Greek state.
The Black Hand (created in 1911) was the name of a Serbian terrorist group with nationalist aims, who sponsored the attack on Austrian Arch-Duke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 that both killed him and provided the spark for World War I. They had promoted their own nationalism and fought in both the first and second Balkan wars against Ottomans. Their intentions, which was to use violence to achieve a greater Serbia (all Serbs under Serb rule and a Serbian state that dominated the region) by attacking targets from the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires and their followers outside it. The key members of the Black Hand were mainly Serbian military and were led by Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijevic, or Apis. The violence was being achieved through guerrilla acts by cells of just handfuls of people.
The Carbonari were a secret society that originated in Italy in the early 19th century. The society's goals were to overthrow the foreign rulers of Italy and to establish a united Italian republic. The Carbonari quickly spread throughout Italy and other parts of Europe, including the Ottoman Empire.
The Carbonari were active in the Ottoman lands from the 1820s onwards. They were particularly active in the Greek-speaking regions of the empire, where they supported the Greek War of Independence (1821-1830). The Carbonari also had a presence in other parts of the Ottoman Empire, such as Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania. Carbonari's revolutionary ideas and nationalist movements continued to inspire people throughout the Ottoman Empire. The Carbonari played a significant role in the decline of the Ottoman Empire and in the eventual rise of new nation states in the Balkans.
The Jesuit order, also known as the Society of Jesus, played a significant role in the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Jesuits were active in the Ottoman lands from the 16th century onwards, and they were involved in a variety of activities, including education, missionary work, and political intrigue.
One of the most significant ways in which the Jesuits contributed to the decline of the Ottoman Empire was through their educational activities. Jesuits established schools and colleges throughout the Ottoman Empire, where they taught young people about Western culture and values. This education helped to create a new generation of Ottoman intellectuals who were more critical of the traditional Ottoman order.
Jesuits were also involved in missionary work among the Christian minorities in the Ottoman Empire. They worked to convert Orthodox Christians and Catholics to Catholicism. This missionary activity led to increased tension between the Ottoman state and the Christian minorities, and it contributed to the destabilization of the empire.
(To be continued..)
[1]Landau, Jacob. M. Muslim Opposition to Freemasonry. Brill
[2] Campos, Michelle. Freemasonry in Ottoman Palestine
[3] Landau, Jacob. M. Muslim Opposition to Freemasonry. Brill
[4] Arslan, Ozan. Ozen, Cinar. The Rebirth of the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress in Macedonia through the Italian Freemasonry. Istituto per l'Oriente C. A. Nallino
[5] Finkel, Caroline. (2005). Osman's Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire 1300–1923. Basic Books.