Yıldız assassination attempt

A failed assassination attempted on Sultan Abdul Hamid II by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) at Yıldız Mosque took place on 21 July 1905 in the Ottoman capital Istanbul. The Times described the incident as "one of the greatest and most sensational political conspiracies of modern times." Armenians in the Ottoman Empire The assassination attempt was motivated by the events of the Hamidian massacres and Sultan Abdul Hamid II's anti-Armenian policies. Armenian resistance within the Ottoman Empire was planned by the Armenian national liberation movement, including the First Sassoun resistance of 1894, the First Zeitun Resistance in 1895, the Defense of Van in June 1896. The 1896 Ottoman Bank Takeover was the seizure of the Ottoman Bank on 26 August by members of the ARF in an effort to raise further awareness with twenty-eight armed men and women led primarily by Papken Siuni and Armen Karo who took over an enterprise largely employing European personnel from Great Britain and France. Generally, the ARF used the far-left tactics of that time, including direct action, guerilla fighting, assassination attempts against people seen as threats to the Armenian people or to the ARF. This would culminate later, during the Nemesis Operation, where the ARF killed some of the individuals responsible for the genocide. The ARF planned the assassination attempt on the sultan to enact vengeance. Dashnak members, led by ARF founder Christapor Mikaelian, secretly started producing explosives and planning the operation in Sofia, Bulgaria. During planning, the explosives were made at the improvised bomb-making factory in the village of Sablyar, near the Bulgarian town of Kyustendil. Mikaelian, alongside his friend Vramshabouh Kendirian, died in an accidental explosion. Despite losing the instigators of the operation, it continued as planned. Sultan Abdul Hamid Han would pray every Friday at the Yildiz mosque and would usually leave around the same time each time, creating a pattern in his movement.

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Related concepts (4)

Armenians in the Ottoman Empire

Ottoman Armenians were a significant ethnic population within the Ottoman Empire. Armenians in the empire mostly belonged to either the Armenian Apostolic Church or the Armenian Catholic Church. They were part of the Armenian millet until the Tanzimat reforms in the nineteenth century equalized all Ottoman citizens before the law. Armenians were a significant minority in the Empire. They played a crucial role in Ottoman industry and commerce, and Armenian communities existed in almost every major city of the empire.

Armenian genocide

The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily through the mass murder of around one million Armenians during death marches to the Syrian Desert and the forced Islamization of others, primarily women and children. Before World War I, Armenians occupied a somewhat protected, but subordinate, place in Ottoman society.