The Young Turks (Ottoman Turkish: ژون تركلر, romanized: Jön Türkler, also كنج تركلر Genç Türkler) formed as a constitutionalist broad opposition-movement in the late Ottoman Empire against the absolutist régime of Sultan Abdul Hamid II (r. 1876–1909). The most powerful organisation within the movement, and the most conflated, was the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP, founded in 1889), though its ideology, strategies, and membership continuously changed. By the 1890s, the Young Turks were mainly a loose and contentious network of exiled intelligentsia who made a living by selling their newspapers to secret subscribers. Beyond opposition, exiled writers and sociologists debated Turkey's place in the East–West dichotomy.

Included in the opposition movement was a mosaic of ideologies, represented by democrats, liberals, decentralists, secularists, social Darwinists, technocrats, constitutional monarchists, and nationalists. Despite being called "the Young Turks", the group was of an ethnically diverse background; including Turks, Albanian, Aromanian, Arab, Armenian, Azeri, Circassian, Greek, Kurdish, and Jewish members. Besides membership in outlawed political committees, other avenues of opposition existed in the ulama, Sufi lodges, and masonic lodges. By and large, Young Turks favored taking power away from Yıldız Palace in favour of constitutional governance. The movement was popular especially among young, educated Ottomans and military officers that wanted reforms. They believed that a social contract in the form of a constitution would fix the empire's problems with nationalist movements and foreign intervention by instilling Ottomanism, or multi-cultural Ottoman nationalism.

In 1906, the Paris-based CUP fused with the Macedonia-based Ottoman Freedom Society under its own banner. The Macedonian Unionists prevailed against Sultan Abdul Hamid II in the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. With this revolution, the Young Turks helped to inaugurate the Second Constitutional Era in the same year, ushering in an era of multi-party democracy for the first time in the country's history. In power, the CUP implemented many secularizing and centralizing reforms, but was criticized for pursuing a pro–Turkish ideology. In the wake of events which proved disastrous for the Ottoman Empire as a body-politic (such as the 31 March Incident of April 1909, the 1912 coup, and the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913), the country fell under the domination of a radicalized CUP following the 1913 Raid on the Sublime Porte. With the strength of the constitution and of parliament broken, the CUP ruled the Ottoman Empire in a dictatorship, and orchestrated the entrance of the empire into World War I in October 1914 on the side of the Central Powers. The genocides of 1915 to 1917 against Ottoman Christians were masterminded within the CUP, principally by Talat Pasha, Enver Pasha, Bahaeddin Şakir, and others.

The term Young Turk is now used to characterize an insurgent impatiently advocating reform within an organization, and various groups in different countries have been designated "Young Turks" because of their rebellious or revolutionary nature.

The term "Young Turks" comes from the French Jeunes Turcs, which international observers tagged various Ottoman reformers of the 19th century. Historian Roderic Davison states that there was not a consistent ideological application of the term; statesmen which wished to resurrect the Janissary corp and derebeys, conservative reformers of Mahmud II, and pro-Western reformers of Abdul Mejid, are all referred to as the party of Jeunes Turcs by different observers. Davison concludes that a Young Turk party was identified in situations where an amorphous "Old Turk" faction was being confronted.

The Young Ottomans, the liberal and Islamist opposition movement to Fuad and Aali Pasha's regime, were also known as Jeunes Turcs, though they called themselves Yeni Osmanlılar, or New Ottomans. Historiographically, the group which became definitively known as the Young Turks was the opposition to Sultan Abdul Hamid II which surfaced after 1889, the Committee of Union and Progress being its standard bearer.

Inspired by the Young Italy political movement, the Young Turks had their origins in secret societies of "progressive medical university students and military cadets," namely the Young Ottomans, driven underground along with all political dissent after the Constitution of 1876 was abolished and the First Constitutional Era brought to a close by Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1878 after only two years. The Young Turks favored a reinstatement of the Ottoman Parliament and the 1876 constitution, written by the reformist Midhat Pasha.

Despite working with the Young Ottomans to promulgate a constitution, Abdul Hamid II dissolved the parliament by 1878 and returned to an absolutist regime, marked by extensive use of secret police to silence dissent, and massacres against minorities. Constitutionalist opponents of his regime, came to be known as Young Turks. The Young Turks were a heterodox group of secular liberal intellectuals and revolutionaries, united by their opposition to the absolutist regime of Abdul Hamid and desire to reinstate the constitution. Despite the name Young Turks, members were diverse in their religious and ethnic origins, with many Albanians, Arabs, Armenians, Circassians, Greeks, Kurds, and Jews being members.