While in power, the Young Turks carried out administrative reforms, especially of provincial administration, that led to more centralization. They were also the first Ottoman reformers to promote industrialization. In addition, the programs of the Young Turk regime effectuated greater secularization of the legal system and provided for the education of women and better state-operated primary schools. Such positive developments in domestic affairs, however, were largely overshadowed by the disastrous consequences of the regime’s foreign policy decisions. An overly hasty appraisal of Germany’s military capability by the Young Turk leaders led them to break neutrality and enter World War I (1914–18) on the side of the Central Powers. Ottoman troops made an important contribution to the Central Powers’ war effort, fighting on multiple fronts. In 1915, members of the Young Turk government directed Ottoman soldiers and their proxies in Eastern Anatolia, near the Russian front, to deport or execute millions of Armenians in an event that later came to be known as the Armenian Genocide.
Upon the end of the war, with defeat imminent, the CUP cabinet resigned on October 9, 1918, less than a month before the Ottomans signed the Armistice of Mudros.