Whereas Turkish liberalism is commonly studied in the context of a general – and implicitly Western – European model, liberalism in the late-Ottoman and early-Republican eras is better understood in comparison with its Russian counterpart. I seek to define Turkish liberalism in its proper historical context by exploring the works of Ottoman liberals from the Second Constitutional Period to the crucible of early Republican days. On either side of the Republican divide, liberalism did not form a homogenous movement with a single cohesive ideology and social philosophy. Instead, it was a somewhat awkward alliance of potentially divergent trends – a platform where Ahmed Emin, Halide Edip, Kopruluzade Fuad, Dr. R?za Nur, and Ahmet Agaev (Agaoglu) were able to find a common ground in their opposition against social conformity, arbitrary commands of the Young Turk regime and, later, the moral pressures of the new Kemalist community. This picture bears a strong resemblance to that of Russia, where liberalism was not a concession to popular democracy, but a fusion of legalist and classical-liberal principles that emphasized subjective rights and sought to safeguard them against government regulation and control. I argue that Turkish intellectuals of the late Ottoman Empire saw liberalism as the closest approximation to the idea of Gesselschaft, representing a complex but potentially coherent view of man and social institutions. Turkish liberalism’s parallels with its Russian contermporay are crystal clear in the party manifestos of Prince Sebahaddin’s Ahrar Firkasi and the zemstvo liberals. Similarities between the Hürriyet ve ?tilaf F?rkas? and the Constitutional Democratic Party in Russia are equally intriguing. Modernity and progression from the liberals’ perspective were neither based on entirely euro-centric visions nor state-sponsored evolutionary designs, but a rational process of legal transformation that would last well into the 20th century. In contrast with the traditional approach of Turkish historians, I look at Russia and Russian liberals to demonstrate what was unique and definitive in Turkey’s experiment with liberalism.