Constitution of the Ottoman Empire

The Constitution of the Ottoman Empire, known in Ottoman Turkish as the Kanun-i Esasi or Basic Law, was the empire's first and only constitution, proclaimed on December 13, 1876 under Sultan Abdul Hamid II. It was drafted chiefly by Midhat Pasha and other reform-minded officials known as the Young Ottomans, who argued that constitutional government could check autocratic rule. The document created an appointed Senate alongside an elected Chamber of Deputies, beginning what is called the First Constitutional Era. Abdul Hamid II suspended the constitution on February 14, 1878, and it remained dormant until the Young Turk Revolution restored it in 1908, opening the Second Constitutional Era, during which amendments shifted power away from the sultan toward the Chamber of Deputies. The constitution governed, with interruptions, until the Ottoman Empire's dissolution and was finally superseded by the 1924 Constitution of the Republic of Turkey.