The event that triggered the Young Turk Revolution had nothing to do with questions of equality or freedom, the principles in the name of which the revolution was made. Rather, it was a meeting in the Baltic port of Reval (today's Tallinn) between the king of England and the tsar of Russia in June 1908 that spurred the Committee of Progress and Union to act (it would later change its name to the “Committee of Union and Progress”). Fearing the meeting was a prelude to the partition of Macedonia, Unionist officers in the Balkans mutinied against Sultan Abdülhamid II and forced him to restore the constitution he had abrogated three decades earlier. A desire to preserve the state, not destroy it, motivated the revolutionaries. They believed the empire was weak for two reasons: its constituent peoples lacked solidarity, and the institutions of its state were undeveloped and decentralized. The Unionists' public formula for generating that solidarity was to restore the constitution and parliament and thereby give the empire's varied elements a stake in the empire's continued existence.

The Unionists' private views, however, were somewhat different. They placed little confidence in the ability of the people to pursue their best interests on their own and distrusted democratic politics. Instead, taking their cue from cutting-edge sociological theories from Europe that emphasized the utility of elitist administration, the leadership of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) trusted in the efficacy of marrying the power of scientific reason to the power of the state to guide, control, and transform society.