Since we use "Islamist" to describe religion as the basis of government, like ISIS or Saudi Arabia, it's the wrong word here, used to tie the Three Pashas to Gabbards war on terror bullshit. But I've seen people calling the genocidaires "secular" and that's not quite right either https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1386103621608099842
In a late 19th century where the Most Serene State couldn't win wars and faced increasing European interference in its affairs, ottoman sultan and victorian pantomime villain Abdul Hamid II increasingly relied on Islamic rabble-rousing to shore things up.

https://twitter.com/broom_error/status/1386401874530639872?s=20
This bent to state ideology- less "Islamist" as in strict sharia or something and more pan-Islamic in the sense of the Sultan representing all Muslims as Caliph and thus having some authority- led, among other things, to massacres of Armenians in the 1890s, largely by Kurds.
While effective in keeping abdulhamid on the throne, it failed to stop Ottoman territorial losses, and in 1908 the liberalish/modernizing "Young Turk" movement forced the Sultan to reinstate the long-suspended constitution and run a multiparty democracy.
The Young Turks aimed to foster a sense of Ottoman Nationalism that included all creeds and national groups in the hopes of forestalling sectarianism and European great power wedge-driving based on confessional differences, thus theoretically strengthening the empire.
But not long after the revolution and a failed hamidian counter-revolution- the Young Turk government fought and lost a disastrous war against the Balkan states, which showed how you can't manufacture nationalism overnight. The cosmopolitan constitutionalist dream appeared dead.
Crucially, the war also shifted the demographics of the empire. What had been a majority European empire was now much more Muslim, Arab, and Turkish. When the Three Pashas seized power in a coup, this change- and the poor showing of the secularized military- was front of mind.
The Pashas- Enver, Talaat, and Cemal- prioritized regaining military strength. This meant bringing back military imams, dusting off hamidian panislamist rhetoric, and- maybe most fatefully- aligning with Germany and its world-beating army.
So it was that the Empire marched off to WW1 more Muslim than even 10 years earlier. National minorities were more suspect than ever as European meddling continued up til 1914, particularly the Armenians, many of whom deserted the army to join pro-russian nationalist guerillas.
This became a vicious cycle, as distrust caused ill treatment of ottoman Armenians and increased desertions. As Enver led the army to disastrous defeats in the caucasus- 25000 Turks froze to death- he predictably blamed Armenian treason, and the death marches weren't far behind.
So much was religious about the genocide, from the confessional differences that underlay it, to the fact that Enver created an "Army of Islam" to carry on the fight in the Caucasus, to the Christian basis of Russian support for ottoman Armenians. But "Islamist"? Not really.
Some Armenians have also told half-truths about 1915. Many accounts describe the Armenians as a model minority massacred purely for religion, which boosts Holocaust comparisons and feeds the Tulsis of the world, but also erases armenian resistance. https://twitter.com/Cnut_real/status/1386412618739421186?s=19
In the heroic defense of Van, for instanc, guerillas held off 5 times their number and saved countless lives- in a siege that may have been instigated by the ottomans to justify the massacres. But does the Warsaw Uprising mean the Holocaust was self-defense? It's spurious stuff.
So the Three Pashas were Westward-looking would-be modernizers who saw Islam as a tool to hold the Empire together and win wars. Modern Islamists would probably have utterly despised them. But if they weren't "Islamists", what were they?
Donald Quataert (and maybe others lol idr) has settled on the awkward but effective term "Muslim Nationalism", which conveys how religion was of great importance as a basis of identity and state formation, but not necessarily a state ideology like islamism entails.
But that's not snappy, and doesn't fit in with bullshit war on terror era binaries of good liberal plural secularism and bad Islamist sectarianism, both of which are incredibly recent inventions, and doesn't help Tulsi Gabbards foreign policy goals.
Not a very neat conclusion, but I guess the lesson is to beware very modern labels given to historical phenomena, which always tell you that the speaker isn't actually talking about what they claim to be talking about. Includes calling tolerant past leaders "secular"! /thread.
https://twitter.com/n0nmanifest/status/1386417026793566208?s=20 This is a good point- in using "Islamist" to describe fundamentalist salafis, which is what I think Gabbard means by it, I myself used it incorrectly! Not all political islam is Islamism, and the Islamist Brothers get smeared with that brush on purpose.
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