The deposed Sultan Abdulhamid was hurriedly removed from his place of exile and taken to Beylerbeyi Palace in Istanbul. The unexpected occupation of Tripoli added to the other events caused a political crisis in Istanbul and the CUP were ousted from power for a period of some six months, from July 1912 until the famous `Raid on the Sublime Porte' in January 1913 led by Enver Pasa. After the liberation of Edirne in July 1913, Enver was made Minister of War, and it was he who set up the alliance with Germany the following year which brought Turkey into the First World War on the side of the Central Powers.

• The Special Organization

Nevertheless, these stark facts of the Ottoman demise mask truly heroic efforts on the part of numbers of largely unsung heroes to maintain its wholeness and regain the independence it had bartered away to the European powers over a period of some hundred years. One of the main organizations to undertake this at this time was the Teskilat-i Mahsusa, or Special Organization. The Special Organization has remained little known in Turkey even, and it is thanks to the publishing enterprises of the historian Cemal Kutay to whom its founder and chief, Esref Sener Kuscubasi (1873-1964), Ieft all his memoirs and papers that we learn of the prominent role Bediuzzaman played in the Organization.

It will be recalled that when Bediuzzaman first visited Istanbul in 1896 it was in the residence of Esref Kuscubasi’s father, Mustafa Bey, that he stayed. His close friendship with Esref Bey began at this time. According to one source, Esref Bey founded the Special Organization together with Baytar Miralay Rasim Bey the following year in Mecca. Its purpose was to gather intelligence for the cause of Islamic Unity, and it was opposed to Abdulhamid's despotism. Another source states that he founded the Organization in 1903 as a clandestine revolutionary society working for the restoration of the Constitution.s After the dethronement of Abdulhamid, the new Sultan, Mehmet Resad, made it an official intelligence service by imperial rescript working for national security and unity. It became the Empire's main security organization, and played an important