From The Arab Awakening, George Antonius, G P Putnam's Sons, 1946.

A secret association formed in Salonica by the Young Turks with the object of overthrowing the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid, the Committee of Union  and Progress was a medley of races and creeds, in which Turks predominated and Jews came second, followed by Ottoman nationals of other race, with political refugees and exiles abroad in the background. While the motives which prompted the party were as mixed as its composition, its first object was to put an end to Abdul Hamid's autocratic rule and secure good government for the empire on the basis of racial fusion as envisaged by the Constitution of 1876.  The military members were influential in the councils of the party, as became a generation in which military education was held in high honor, and it was perhaps inevitable that it should have resorted, for its sudden coup d'état, to a revolution claimed by the army,