Abdul Hamid II

Abdul Hamid II was the thirty fourth sultan of the Ottoman Empire, reigning from 1876 to 1909 as the last sultan to exert effective control over the fracturing state. He came to power after Young Ottoman coups and promulgated the empire's first constitution, but his enthronement coincided with the Great Eastern Crisis, an unsuccessful war with Russia in 1877 and 1878, and the loss of Egypt, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Tunisia and Thessaly by 1882, followed by a successful 1897 war against Greece whose gains were curtailed by European intervention. In 1878 he suspended the constitution and parliament, purged the Young Ottomans and ruled as an autocrat for three decades, asserting the title of Caliph, building secret police organizations out of fear of overthrow, and pursuing modernization through railway construction, education reform and bureaucratic reorganization even as ethnic minorities organized national liberation movements and Armenians suffered massacres at the hands of the Hamidiye regiments; the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 forced him to restore the constitution, and he was deposed the following year after the 31 March incident.