Medical professionalism and Committee of Union and Progress in the late Ottoman Empire.

Abstract

This article addresses the professionalisation of medicine in the Ottoman Empire at a period when the empire was undergoing major political changes. It also examines the impact of medical education on politicisation in the late Ottoman period. Specifically, the study focuses on the influence of the worldwide rise of modern medicine in the 19th century on the modernisation paradigm that dominated the the Military School of Medicine in Istanbul. This article is based on the memoirs of the Unionists, particularly those written by physicians, as well as on sources from the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives. A new generation of medical students in the period of Abdulhamid II (1876-1909) saw the modern medicine and newly rising modern shools as instruments of social and political mobility in the service of the Ottoman state in crisis. The solution to the crisis was reflected in the concepts of modernization and progress and evolved into a clear demand for a constitutional monarchy among some doctors and medical students during the Hamidian era. The secret organisation set up by medical students to solve the problem of strengthening the empire vis à vis the Western powers and the micro-nationalisms, transformed into the most important opposition force, the Committee of Union and Progress. The committee urged the sultan to reinstate the Constitution and the Parliament, which led to the major change in the Ottoman political history, known as the 1908 (or Young Turk) Revolution. The article focuses on the nationalist aspirations of physicians and how these aspirations interacted and overlapped with their professional identity.