Prominent Young Turks

The prominent leaders and ideologists included:

Pamphleteers and activists

• Yusuf Akçura, a Tatar journalist with a secular national ideology, who was against Ottomanism and supported separation of church and state


• Ayetullah Bey


• Nuri Bey


• Osman Hamdi Bey, painter and owner of the first specialized art school in Istanbul (founded 1883)


• Refik Bey


• Emmanuel Carasso Efendi, a lawyer and a member of the prominent Sephardic Jewish Carasso family


• Mehmet Cavit Bey, a Dönmeh from Thessalonica, Jewish by ancestry but Muslim by religion since the 17th century, who was Minister of Finance he was hanged for treason in 1926


• Abdullah Cevdet, a supporter of biological materialism, who later in his life promoted the Bahá'í Faith


• Marcel Samuel Raphael Cohen (aka Tekin Alp), born to a Jewish family in Salonica under Ottoman control (now Thessaloniki, Greece), became one of the founding fathers of Turkish nationalism and an ideologue of Pan-Turkism


• Agah Efendi, founded the first Turkish newspaper and, as postmaster, brought the postage stamp to the Ottoman Empire


• Ziya Gökalp, a Turkish nationalist from Diyarbakir, publicist and pioneer sociologist, influenced by modern Western European culture


• Talaat Pasha, whose role before the revolution is not clear


• Ahmed Riza, worked to improve the condition of the Ottoman peasantry; he served as agricultural minister, and later as education minister

Military officers

• Ahmed Niyazi Bey


• Enver Pasha


• Resat Bey