page_title: History of the Ottoman Empire
section_title: Defeat and dissolution (1908–1922)
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Ottoman Empire / Defeat and dissolution (1908–1922)
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Déclaration au palais de la révolution des Jeunes-Turcs&#160;: chefs arméniens, grecs et musulmans, 1908 English: Young Turk Revolution Declaration - Armenian, Greek Orthodox &amp; Muslim religious leaders
context_page_description: The Ottoman Empire was founded by Osman I as a small beylik in northwestern Asia Minor just south of the Byzantine capital Constantinople. The Ottomans first crossed into Europe in 1352, establishing a permanent settlement at Çimpe Castle on the Dardanelles in 1354 and moving their capital to Edirne in 1369.
  As Sultan Mehmed II conquered Constantinople in 1453, the state grew into a mighty empire, expanding deep into Europe, northern Africa and the Middle East. With most of the Balkans under Ottoman rule by the mid-16th century, Ottoman territory increased under Sultan Selim I, who assumed the Caliphate in 1517 as the Ottomans turned east and conquered western Arabia, Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Levant, among other territories. Within the next few decades, much of the North African coast became part of the Ottoman realm.
  The Empire reached its apex under Suleiman the Magnificent in the 16th century when it stretched from the Persian Gulf in the east to Algeria in the west, and from Yemen in the south to Hungary and parts of Ukraine in the north.
context_section_description: The Ottoman Empire had long been the "sick man of Europe" and after a series of Balkan wars by 1914 had been driven out of nearly all of Europe and North Africa.  It still controlled 28 million people, of whom 17 million were in modern-day Turkey, 3 million in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, and 2.5 million in Iraq. Another 5.5 million people were under nominal Ottoman rule in the Arabian peninsula.
  The Second Constitutional Era began after the Young Turk Revolution (3 July 1908) with the sultan's announcement of the restoration of the 1876 constitution and the reconvening of the Ottoman Parliament. It marked the beginning of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. This era is dominated by the politics of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), and the movement that would become known as the Young Turks. Although it began as a uniting progressive party, the CUP splintered in 1911 with the founding of the opposition Freedom and Accord Party (Liberal Union or Entente), which poached many of the more liberal Deputies from the CUP. The remaining CUP members, who now took a more dominantly nationalist tone in the face of the enmity of the Balkan Wars, dueled Freedom and Accord in a series of power reversals, which ultimately led to the CUP (specifically its leadership, the "Three Pashas") seizing power from the Freedom and Accord in the 1913 Ottoman coup d'état and establishing total dominance over Ottoman politics until the end of World War I.
  Profiting from the civil strife, Austria-Hungary officially annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908, but pulled its troops out of the Sanjak of Novi Pazar, another contested region between the Austrians and Ottomans, to avoid a war.  During the Italo-Turkish War (1911–12) in which the Ottoman Empire lost Libya, the Balkan League declared war against the Ottoman Empire. The Empire lost the Balkan Wars (1912–13). It lost its Balkan territories except East Thrace and the historic Ottoman capital city of Adrianople during the war. Some 400,000 Muslims, out of fear of Greek, Serbian or Bulgarian atrocities, left with the retreating Ottoman army. The Baghdad Railway under German control was a proposal to build rail lines into Iraq. The railway was not actually built at this time but its prospect worried the British until that issue was resolved in 1914. The railway did not play a role in the origins of World War I.
caption: Declaration of the Young Turk Revolution by the leaders of the Ottoman millets.
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