Namık Kemal was an Ottoman writer, poet, democrat, intellectual, reformer, journalist, playwright, and political activist who was influential in the formation of the Young Ottomans and their struggle for governmental reform in the Ottoman Empire during the late Tanzimat period, which would lead to the First Constitutional Era in the Empire in 1876. Kemal was particularly significant for championing the notions of freedom and fatherland in his numerous plays and poems, and his works would have a powerful impact on the establishment of and future reform movements in Turkey, as well as other former Ottoman territories. He is often regarded as being instrumental in redefining Western concepts like natural rights and constitutional government.

The Young Ottomans were a secret society established in 1865 by a group of Ottoman intellectuals who were dissatisfied with the Tanzimat reforms in the Ottoman Empire, which they believed did not go far enough. The Young Ottomans sought to transform the Ottoman society by preserving the Empire and modernizing it along the European tradition of adopting a constitutional government. Though the Young Ottomans were frequently in disagreement ideologically, they all agreed that the new constitutional government should continue to be at least somewhat rooted in Islam. To emphasize "the continuing and essential validity of Islam as the basis of Ottoman political culture" they attempted to syncretize an Islamic jurisprudence with liberalism and parliamentary democracy. The Young Ottomans sought for new ways to form a government like the European governments, especially the constitution of the Second French Empire. Among the prominent members of this society were writers and publicists such as İbrahim Şinasi, Namık Kemal, Ali Suavi, Ziya Pasha, and Agah Efendi.