Satirikon (1908-1914) was of many Russian satirical journals that emerged after the 1905 Revolution. This illustration published on Satirikon’s cover in July 1908 depicts the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid. The caption says: “The birth of a new Constitutional Venus from the Bosphorus foam. Abdul Hamid: This is the only woman I do not wish to see in my harem.”
In 1908 the Ottoman empire, like Russia, was in a deep political crisis. The Young Turks revolution (July 1908) forced the sultan to restore the Ottoman constitution and establish the Second Constitutional Era.
Like the Greco-Roman Venus, the Ottoman “Constitutional” Venus is emerging from sea-foam. The Ottoman constitution limited monarch’s power and revived the Ottoman Parliament. This illustration is also an obvious nod to the political situation in Russia, where the 1905 Revolution led to the establishment of the State Duma but failed to produce a Constitution. After the 1907 Stolypin’s coup, the Russian government managed to limit Duma’s power by arresting and excluding many of government’s critics.