The milestone reforms of the Ottoman Empire are the Tanzimat, the First and Second Constitutions. The Tanzimat Charter made Ottomanism the dominant ideology, paved the way for secularisation and led to the cultivation of an illuminated youth idealizing the concepts of equal citizenship, freedom and constitution. Consequently, it both contributed to the intellectual accumulation of the Ottoman intelligentsia and formed the basis of their political opposition. The first intellectual opposition, Young Ottomans