Decentralizing Centralists,or the Political Language on Provincial Administration in the Second Ottoman Constitutional Period

The centralization–decentralization controversy has been considered the key to understanding Second Ottoman constitutional politics. The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) is considered to be centralist, while the opposition is regarded as decentralist under the intellectual influence of Prens Sabahattin with the support of non-Turkish ethnic groups. In actuality, both the CUP and the opposition emphasized the need for administrative decentralization (or the delegation of authority) while they rejected political decentralization, considering it as a first step toward the dismemberment of the Empire. Non-Turkish politicians shared this general state of mind as well. Therefore, the political bipolarization and its causes during this period needs to be reconsidered from a different viewpoint.