The Old Elite Against The New State: The Fall of the Kıbrıslızade Family and Their Struggle with The Committee of Union and Progress

Abstract

In 1908, the constitutional revolution led by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) brought an end to Sultan Abdülhamid II’s autocratic rule. The restoration of constitutional life created a political vacuum into which multiple elite groups attempted to reassert themselves. Among them was the Kıbrıslızade family–descendants of Grand Vizier Mehmed Emin Pasha–who represented the Istanbul-based ancien régime. This article analyzes the conflict between the Kıbrıslızades, as an example of the traditional elite, and the CUP, which emerged as a new political class composed primarily of organized and ideologically driven military and civil officers of Rumelian origin. Grounded in Gaetano Mosca’s theory of the ‘political class’ and Vilfredo Pareto’s concept of ‘elite circulation’, the study explores how the CUP refused to share state power and employed various instruments, including legal manipulation and political violence, to suppress opposition. The rivalry culminated in the Raid on the Sublime Porte on 23 January 1913, during which Tevfik Bey of the Kıbrıslızade family was killed. Drawing on archival documents, contemporary press, and memoirs, this article examines how elite transformation in the late Ottoman Empire was marked not by a peaceful transition but by a deeply contested and violent power struggle.