Ottoman Empire's gradual disintegration

Compiled By: Syed Ali Shahbaz
On April 13, 1909 AD, the Turkish military reversed the Ottoman countercoup of March 1909 to force the overthrow of Sultan Abdul Hamid II and replace him with his brother, Mohammad V. The Countercoup was an attempt to dismantle the Second Constitutional Era of the Ottoman Empire and replace it with an autocracy under Sultan Abdul Hamid II.
The Sultan's bid for a return to power gained traction when he promised to restore the Caliphate, eliminate secular policies, and revive the sharia-based legal system. A military coup in June 1908, led by the so-called Young Turks, had stripped Sultan Abdul Hamid II of his power, reconstituting the parliament and constitution the Sultan had suspended three decades earlier.
The Sultan, however, had maintained his symbolic position, and in March 1909 attempted to seize power once more by stirring populist sentiment throughout the Empire. Because the coup was an attempt to undermine the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, it became known as the Countercoup, which was largely made possible by the Ottoman Empire's gradual disintegration, especially the loss of Bulgaria to complete independence within a year of the Young Turk Revolution.
However, the failure of the Countercoup brought the Committee of Union and Progress back from disarray, ending the Arab-Turkish honeymoon, closing several Arab journals and outlawing Arab societies, including the Society of Arab-Ottoman Brotherhood. The Committee of Union and Progress, which was dominated by some influential Jews, made a major mistake in calling for "Turkification" of all the Arab subjects of the Empire. This stirred nationalist sentiments and moves for independence by the Arab population, making Britain skillfully exploit inter-Muslim differences to defeat the Ottomans in World War I and disintegrate the Empire.