It was a secret circle of liberal-minded students in the imperial military medical school in Istanbul who aspired to overthrow the autocratic regime of Sultan Abdülhamit II.It was transformed into a political organisation by Bahaeddin Sakir aligning itself with the Young Turks in 1906, during the period of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. At the end of World War I most of its members were court-martialled by the sultan Mehmed VI known as Vahidettin.