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Updated: May 13, 2025
In Turkey liberals actually headed the government during much of the generation between the Crimean War and the despotism of Abdul Hamid, and Turkish liberal ministers like Reshid Pasha and Midhat Pasha made earnest though unavailing efforts to liberalize and modernize the Ottoman Empire. Even the dreadful Hamidian tyranny could not kill Turkish liberalism.
Thus, Arminius Vambéry, revisiting Constantinople in 1896, was astounded by the liberal evolution that had taken place since his first sojourn in Turkey forty years before. Although Constantinople was subjected to the severest phase of Hamidian despotism, Vambéry wrote, "The old attachment of Turkey for the absolute régime is done for.
He points out that the early sultans had their "Divan," or assemblage of high officials, meeting regularly to give the sultan information and advice, while more recently there have been a Council of State and a Council of Ministers. Also, there were the parliaments of 1877 and 1878. Abortive though these were and followed by Hamidian absolutism, they were legal precedents, never forgotten.
When the Hungarian Orientalist Vambéry returned to Constantinople in 1896 after forty years' absence, he stood amazed at the changes which had taken place, albeit Constantinople was then subjected to the worst repression of the Hamidian régime.
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