In the aftermath of the proclamation of Constitutionalism in July 1908, villagers in Anatolia and the Balkans interpreted “freedom” (hürriyet)—one of the major slogans of the 1908 Ottoman constitutional revolution—as meaning liberation from large land estate (çiftlik) owners and began to occupy and claim usufruct of çiftlik lands. The spread of these “çiftlik occupations” generated panic and anxiety among landowners and state authorities who described the villagers’ actions as “encroachments on property rights.” This paper shifts the urban-centric historiographical focus of the 1908 revolution to a rural geography. It will examine rural land occupations and the actors involved in the resulting disputes, including çiftlik capitalists, villagers, the central and provincial governments, and provincial administrative councils, to comprehend the meaning and rural experience of the constitutional revolution. I will show that what was described as "encroachment” was in fact a form of collective rural protest led by previously dispossessed villagers, who were deprived of collective access to and control of common pastures, lands, and woodlands at the turn of the 20th century. The paper will begin by examining the wave of enclosures of pastures and woodland commons by çiftlik capitalists in the last quarter of the 19th century and the consequent dispossession of villagers from access and control. I approach the çiftlik occupations as a repertoire of rural revolution that aimed at recommoning previously enclosed lands, contesting the meaning of property, environment, and constitutionalism. Secondly, the paper will demonstrate how çiftlik owners organized their power in the post-revolutionary state via the provincial administrative councils, succeeding in mobilizing the state and its means of violence on their behalf to reclaim the çiftlik lands from the “occupiers.” By authorizing the administrative councils with “administrative expulsion,” to intervene in land disputes and outlaw land occupations, the Ottoman government reestablished the property rights of çiftlik owners at the expense of villagers’ free and collective access by 1913, which marked a moment of counter-revolution. By analyzing peasant protests, this paper, ultimately, reveals the limits of Constitutionalism in the rural geography and argues that the post-revolutionary ruling elites shied away from breaking pre-existing social structures and instead relied upon them, making them incapable of solving the many social and political problems that the revolution inherited from the past.