“We Do Not Want Spies Anymore”: The Abolition of Spying after the Young Turk Revolution

Abstract

[EN] One of the first measures taken by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), after assuming power in 1908, was to abolish spying. This has been mostly treated as a simple outcome of the change of power. However, this article offers a different perspective on the abolition of spying in 1908 and the subsequent exile of the spies in 1909. This study focuses on the abolition of spying in the Ottoman Empire as a significant idea shaped since the earlier years of the Young Turks’ opposition to the rule of Abdülhamid II and followed strictly as a policy after they assumed power. Rather than treating abolition of spying and the exile of spies as a byproduct of the 1908 Revolution, this study takes it as one of the pillars of the Young Turks’ ideological discourse and a central policy of the CUP. The article maintains a thread from the origins of Young Turk aversion to spying to the exile of the spies in 1909 following the 31 March Incident. This research aims to contribute to the social history of the late Ottoman historiography by placing the abolition of spying into a larger context together with its agents – the spies