Mehmed VI Vahideddinin

Mehmed VI Vahideddin ( ''Meḥmed-i sâdis'' or ''Vaḥîdü'd-Dîn''; or /; 14 January 1861 – 16 May 1926), also known as ''Şahbaba'' () among the Osmanoğlu family, was the last sultan of the Ottoman Empire and the penultimate Ottoman caliph, reigning from 4 July 1918 until 1 November 1922, when the Ottoman sultanate was abolished and replaced by the Republic of Turkey on 29 October 1923.

The half-brother of Mehmed V Reşâd, he became heir to the throne in 1916 following the death of Şehzade Yusuf İzzeddin, as the eldest male member of the House of Osman. He acceded to the throne after the death of Mehmed V on 4 July 1918 as the 36th ''padishah'' and 115th Islamic Caliph.

Mehmed VI's chaotic reign began with Turkey suffering defeat by the Allies Powers with the conclusion of World War I nearing. The subsequent Armistice of Mudros legitimized further Allied incursions into Turkish territory, resulting in an informal occupation of Istanbul and other parts of the empire. An ardent anglophile, Sultan Vahdeddin hoped a policy of close cooperation with Britain could result in a less harsh peace treaty. An initial process of reconciliation between the government and Christian minorities over their massacres and deportations by the government ultimately proved fruitless, when the Greeks and Armenians, via their patriarchates, renounced their status as Ottoman subjects by the end of 1918, spelling a definitive end of Ottomanism. During the Paris Peace Conference, Mehmed VI turned to Damat Ferid Pasha to diplomatically outflank Greek territorial demands on Turkey through Allied appeasement, but to no avail. Unionist elements within the military, discontent with the government's appeasement in the face of partition, and the establishment of war crimes tribunals, began taking actions into their own hands by establishing a nationalist resistance to resume war. Mehmed's most significant act as Sultan was dispatching Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) to reassert government control in Anatolia, which actually resulted in the further consolidation of anti-appeasement actors against the court, and consequently, the end of the monarchy.

With the Greek Occupation of Smyrna on 15 May 1919 galvanizing the Turkish nationalist movement and beginning the Turkish War of Independence, by October the sultan's government had to give in to nationalist demands with the Amasya Protocol. The Allies militarily occupied Istanbul on 16 March 1920, and pressured Sultan Mehmed VI to dissolve the Nationalist dominated Chamber of Deputies and suspend the Constitution, when the Turkish nationalists stood against Allied designs for a partition of Anatolia. Kemal Pasha responded by establishing a provisional government known as the Grand National Assembly based in Ankara, which dominated the rest of Turkey, while the Sultan's unpopular government in Istanbul was propped up by the Allied powers and effectively impotent. Mehmed VI condemned the nationalist leaders as infidels and called for their execution, though the provisional government in Ankara claimed it was rescuing the Sultan-Caliph from manipulative foreigners and ministers. The Sultan's so-called Istanbul government would go on to sign the Treaty of Sèvres, a peace treaty which would have partitioned the remainder of the empire, leaving a rump Turkish state.

With Ankara's victory in the independence war, the Sèvres Treaty was abandoned for their Treaty of Lausanne. On 1 November 1922, the Grand National Assembly voted to abolish the Sultanate and to depose Mehmed VI as Caliph and he subsequently fled the country. His cousin Abdul Mejid II was elected Caliph in his stead, though he too, and the entire Osmanoğlu family were soon exiled after the abolition of the Caliphate. On 29 October 1923, the Republic of Turkey was declared, with Mustafa Kemal Pasha as its first president, ending more than 600 years of Ottoman suzerainty. Mehmed VI died in exile in 1926 in San Remo, Italy, having never acknowledged his deposition.

Early life

Mehmed Vahdeddin was born in Dolmabahçe Palace on 14 January 1861. His father was Sultan Abdul Mejid I, who died five months after he was born. Abdul Mejid had 42 children and Vahdeddin was his last child, putting him tenth in line to the succession. All of his siblings were half-siblings from different consorts and concubines, but Vahdeddin had a full sister who lived to adulthood: Mediha Sultana. His mother Gülistû Kadın was of Georgian- Abkhazian origin, the daughter of Prince Tahir Bey Chachba. Vahdeddin became an orphan when she died from one of the many cholera outbreaks of the time when he was four years old.

After his mother's death, Vahdeddin Efendi was adopted by Şâyeste Hanım, another of his father's consorts. The Şehzade had a rough time with his overbearing adoptive mother, and at the age of sixteen he left his adoptive mother's mansion with the three servants who had been serving him since childhood. He grew up with nannies, servant girls, and tutors.

Vahdeddin educated himself by taking lessons from private tutors. He read a great deal, and was interested in various subjects, including the arts, which was a tradition of the Ottoman family. He took courses in calligraphy and music and learned how to write in the naskh script and to play the qanun. He became interested in Sufism and, unknown to the Palace, he attended courses at the madrasa of Fatih on Islamic jurisprudence, Islamic theology, interpretation of the Quran, and the Hadiths, as well as the Arabic and Persian languages. He attended the dervish lodge of Ahmed Ziyaüddin Gümüşhanevi, located not far from the Sublime Porte, where Ömer Ziyaüddin of Dagestan was the spiritual leader, and he became a disciple of the Naqshbandi order. Time to time, the Sheikh-ul-Islam would have to contend with Vahdeddin demanding an amendment on a fatwa which did not follow ''fiqh''.

Physically he had a weak constitution, something he may have inherited from his father. As he grew older he developed atrophy in one of his lungs and heart palpitations.

In his youth he collected pistols and carried one on him throughout his life. He enjoyed skeet shooting and was a good shot. His closest friend was Şehzade Abdul Mejid (to be proclaimed as Caliph Abdul Mejid II), the son of his uncle, Sultan Abdul Aziz. Their friendship went against the prevailing Mejidian–Azizian feud within the Ottoman family. Abdul Aziz's children believed their father was murdered following the 1876 coup d'état, and were suspicious Abdul Mejid I's children orchestrated it. They went on hunting trips together in the forests beyond the Bosphorus. Their bond would later be tied by marriage when Vahdeddin's daughter Sabiha married Abdul Mejid's son Ömer Faruk -the two fell in love before lobbying their parents for an uncommon cousin marriage. In the years to come however, the two cousins have an intense falling out over the politics of the Turkish War of Independence, reactivating the feud between their respective branches. Before moving to the Feriye Palace, the Şehzade had lived briefly in the mansion in Çengelköy owned by Şehzade Ahmed Kemaleddin.

During the 33-year reign of Abdul Hamid II, Vahdeddin was considered to be the sultan's closest half-brother. He gave him an allowance to supplement the money he received from the state, and gifted him his own mansion in Çengelköy which bore his name: the Vahdettin Pavilion. Vahdeddin built another house next to it on the estate for his adoptive mother Şâyeste. Sabiha explained her father's uncommonly close relationship with Abdul Hamid due to his distaste towards family intrigues, something in common with Abdul Hamid's personal paranoia. When he ascended to the throne, this closeness greatly influenced his political attitudes, such as his intense dislike of the Young Turks and the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), his sympathy for the British, and a wait-and-see policy to political problems.

Much of Vahdeddin's princedom, especially under Abdul Hamid II, was spend in luxurious peace, without care for politics or conflict. After all, during Abdul Hamid's reign, he was behind the dethroned Sultan Murad V, Reşad Efendi, Kemaleddin Efendi, Süleyman Efendi, and Yusuf İzzeddin Efendi in the succession. At Feriye he liked to host guests, and frequently organized music parties with his fasıl orchestra, which consisted of musician apprentices whom he personally took care of in training. Many of the most popular contemporary Ottoman musicians of the time frequented his Çengelköy Pavillion. While Vahdeddin was not one for pomp and flamboyancy, he did care for fashion. He was one of the best dressed princes of the royal family, and his first consort Nazikeda Hanım made sure their daughters dressed in the most contemporary styles, which invited compliments from Abdul Hamid and other members of the royal family.

In 1909, at the age of 46, he took his first steps outside of Istanbul when he accompanied his half-brother, the new Sultan Mehmed V Reşad on a tour of Bursa. He accompanied him for another royal tour of Edirne a year later.

One of his first conflicts with the CUP was when he harbored an anti-Unionist, Şaban Efendi, in his palace in the aftermath of the 1913 coup d'état. Mahmud Şevket Pasha obtained an arrest warrant for the man, and had Vahdeddin's palace surrounded. Vahdeddin didn't consent to the soldiers entering his palace, saying he would shoot dead anyone who attempted to enter in order to arrest an innocent man taking refuge in his palace. He was able to facilitate Şaban's escape to Egypt. Vahdeddin's attitude during this situation made Şevket Pasha furious, and their dispute could only be mulled over by Abdul Mejid's mediation. Nevertheless, under the Unionist dictatorship, Vahdeddin's happy-go-lucky life in Çengelköy moved on, save for the spies and surveillance officers which were reporting his activities to the CUP's Central Committee.

He held a quiet rivalry with his half-brother Crown Prince İzzeddin and repeatedly requested that Sultan Mehmed V retract İzzeddin as heir apparent. In the end İzzeddin unexpectedly committed suicide on 1 February 1916, putting Vahdeddin on track to succeed his brother upon his death.

Harem

One day in 1884, Vahdeddin visited his half-sister Cemile Sultana, where he discovered one of her ladies-in-waiting, Emine Nazikeda Hanım, an Abkhaz noblewomen from the Marshan family. It was love at first sight. But when he asked Cemile for Emine's hand in marriage, she flat out refused, for she treated Nazikeda like a daughter, and thought her company was irreplaceable during her daughter's tragic bout with tuberculosis. After more than a year pleading with Cemile she finally gave her blessing on the condition she would be Vahdeddin's only wife. Vahdeddin and Nazikeda's marriage was held on 8 June 1885. The groom was 24 and the bride 19. The couple was popular among the high society. They lived in one of the palaces of Feriye, but when it was destroyed in a fire they moved to the Çengelköy Pavilion. They enjoyed horseback riding together in the wilderness of their estate. Their first daughter was born three years after their marriage: Fenire Sultana, who died a few weeks later. They had two daughters that survived to adulthood: Fatma Ulviye Sultana, (1892–1967), and Rukiye Sabiha Sultana (1894–1971), who were gifted mansions known as the Twin Palaces in Nişantaşı. After Sabiha's birth Nazikeda was informed by doctors that she could not have any more children.

Even though Vahdeddin was far in the line of succession, he wanted a son on the off chance he could become Sultan and change the succession law to agnatic primogeniture. He took new wives with the consent of Nazikeda, breaking his oath to Cemile after 20 years of monogamy. In 1905 he married İnşirah Hanım but this marriage wasn't happy and he permitted her a divorce in 1909. In 1912 Şehzade Mehmed Ertuğrul was born from his second consort: Müveddet Kadın (m. 1911). In 1918 he married Nevvare Hanım -Müveddet's niece. Vahdeddin did not have a harem in Çengelköy, so when he moved to Dolmabahçe Palace and Yıldız, he chose to keep some of Mehmed V's ''kalfa''s and servents instead of establishing a new harem. One of these ''kalfa''s was Nevzad Hanım who he married soon after being officially deposed, though he never gave her a title.

When he did ascend to the throne in 1918, Vahdeddin's biological and adoptive mothers (Gülistû and Şâyeste) -who could have become Valide Sultanas- were already dead, leaving Nazikeda the most prominent lady of the court. Vahdeddin bestowed upon her the title BaşKadın and she was known as "The Last Empress".

Crown prince

As crown prince he represented Mehmed V at the funeral of the Austro-Hungarian emperor Franz Joseph I in 1916. CUP leader Talât was concerned by Veliahd Vahdeddin's surprisingly popular conduct in the funeral.

When he was invited by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany to make a state visit in 1917, he was accompanied by his aide-de-camp, Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk). They first met on 13 December 1917. Kemal Pasha was on leave after resigning from Yıldarım Army Group command due to his conflict with Erich von Falkenhayn and received the invitation to accompany the crown prince from Enver Pasha. Colonel Naci invited Mustafa Kemal to meet the crown prince at his palace. Kemal was immediately unimpressed by what can only be described by Vahdeddin's awkwardly egotistical and arrogant behavior towards his guests, such as closing his eyes the entire time, and when they departed from the train station the next day, Kemal had to remind him to wave to the army detachment. On the train, he was invited to another audience with Vahdeddin; this time he apologized for his behavior to Kemal the day before and expressed gratitude for his role in the Gallipoli campaign and the two had a long and fruitful conversation, making him cautiously optimistic of the veliahd. On the way back from Berlin, Kemal advised Vahdeddin to request a field command and that he could be his chief of staff if he wants to boost his popularity. The crown prince demurred at this request, giving the excuse that the government would refuse. Biographer Murat Bardakçı provides probable skepticism of these stories told in Falih Rıfkı Atay's accounts, who was Kemal's secretary, as Kemal would have breached several layers of protocol addressing an imperial crown prince this way. Nevertheless, this story generally corroborates other accounts of Vahdeddin's mannerisms. On the other hand, writing of this first encounter Vahdeddin described Mustafa Kemal as loyal and having a bright mind, who was fiercely anti-German and critical of Enver Pasha. Six years later, Mustafa Kemal would declare a republic after deposing his sovereign in 1922.

Enthronement

On 3 June 1918, Talât Pasha, now the Grand Vizier, called Vahdeddin to tell him of Sultan Reşad's death. Even though he was the crown prince and eligible to become the new Sultan as the eldest male of the Ottoman family, he was greatly shaken by the news and did not immediately accept his entitlement over this call. Later that day Talât, Enver, and Hayri, the Sheikh-ul-Islam, visited Vahdeddin in his palace, and he again wavered over becoming Sultan, suggesting they should focus on his half-brother's funeral, raising anxieties. Following a long night of contemplation, prayer, and even some sleep, Vahdeddin let Talât know he was ready to become Sultan during the funeral. They held an enthronement ceremony at Topkapı Palace. He delivered an oath to the National Assembly and Constitution, and he took the regal name Mehmed VI, though like his predecessor he was known by the people, and in modern Turkey, by his personal name, Vahdettin. He held his sword girding ceremony on 31 August.

Part of the reason for his hesitation was knowing that the Great War was going poorly for Turkey and her allies, and the compounding problems at home the CUP was inept at tackling. In addition, the last few sovereigns from his family had a bad track record ruling the empire: his uncle Abdul Aziz was deposed and died in suspicious circumstances, Murad V and Abdul Hamid II were also deposed, and Mehmed V never could wield power. He would later write that he decided to become Sultan because he believed it was his national duty and he didn't trust Abdul Mejid, but that this decision was a mistake. Sabiha recounted how her, her nurse, and her mother couldn't hold back their tears as they moved to the Dolmabahçe Palace, and had to be admonished by the foremen and eunuchs to compose themselves otherwise entering the palace may bring bad luck.

Reign

(1918 AD)
Mehmed Vahdettin ascended to the throne at the age of 57 with little experience in statecraft. Though he detested the Unionists and was ideologically an absolutist, for four months he had to maintain the Sultanate's subservience to the CUP. Vahdeddin reappointed Talât Pasha as Grand Vizier for another term. This awkward fact aside, he was happy to allow the Unionists to take responsibility for their crimes, troubles, and mishaps, and for now there wasn't too many problems between him and the CUP.

Mustafa Kemal's first audience with Vahdeddin as Sultan was on 5 August 1918, where he implored his sovereign to dismiss Enver Pasha as Deputy Commander-in-Chief and hinted that he should be his chief of staff. Vahdeddin would give vague and non-committal answers. Several more audiences of this nature later, and Kemal understood he was going nowhere. At some point he asked Vahdeddin for Sabiha's hand in marriage, but he told him off, telling him that she loved someone else. He was soon assigned to once again take command of Seventh Army (Ottoman Empire), Seventh Army on the crumbling Syrian front by the sultan himself, which seemed to be orchestrated by Enver. One small consolation for Kemal was that instead of serving under von Falkenhayn, it was Liman von Sanders as commander of Yıldırım Army Group, though his relations with him were not much better. All of his meetings with Sultan Vahdeddin came to crooked fruition when the Sultan took the title of Commander in Chief himself and installed his son-in-law İsmail Hakkı Pasha, a graduate of the Prussian War Academy, chief of a private staff organization attached to Yıldız Palace. Mustafa Kemal soon understood after arriving to his command that his troops, demoralized and badly under-equipped, stood no chance to repel a British attack. Three weeks after arriving to his assignment, on 19 September, the British attacked in the Battle of Megiddo and smashed through Turkish lines. Perhaps as a way to motivate him, Vahdeddin made Mustafa Kemal Pasha his honorary aid-de-camp on 22 September. Over the course of October, one major Levantine city after another fell to the British, while Istanbul attempted to negotiate ceasefire terms. With the tides of war turning against Turkey, Talât Pasha resigned, the CUP dissolved itself, and the Ottomans exited World War I with the signing of the Armistice of Mudros on 30 October 1918, which was a turning point for Vahdettin's reign.

The First World War was a disaster for the Ottoman Empire. Turkey's entry into the war was initiated by the CUP dictatorship. British and Allied forces captured Baghdad, Damascus, and Jerusalem during the war, and most of the Turkey was set to be partitioned amongst the Allies. As part of the armistice terms, much of the empire beyond the armistice lines was also to be under occupation, including the Sultan's own capital: Constantinople. Now dealing with an existential crisis over the Turkish state, Sultan Mehmed VI hoped to pursue the traditional policy of close cooperation with Britain and France in order to rehabilitate Turkey into the international community and sign a lighter peace treaty. He earnestly believed in a natural alliance between Britain, France, and Turkey, or, as he said: friendship with Britain, closeness with France, which had a precedence from the Crimean War. However this strategy did not turn out to be successful, as despite the leadership change, the Allies considered the participation of Turkey during the Great War -and its trend in the last decade towards political instability- akin to a rogue state that deserved punishment. Therefore, Entente statesmen sought to elevate Greece as a responsible Eastern Mediterranean Great Power in Turkey's place. The French leg of this strategy was abandoned due to the overwhelming British leverage over the Ottomans by the wars end. In an interview with ''The Morning Post'' in 21 June 1919, Sultan Vahdeddin said: "I have always been a friend of England, like my father Abdul Mejid. I believe that England will provide mercy and justice."

Mehmed VI witnessed many of the monarchies of Europe experiencing their demise or extreme shakeup with the end of the Great War. The German Hohenzollerns, Austrian Habsburgs, and Russian Romanovs all met their end due to the Great War, and Greece and Bulgaria's monarchies also experienced great instability due to the war. The highest priority for the Sultan was to safeguard his dynasty's interests, which soon came into conflict with his empire's national interest.

Domestically, he hoped to rely on Grand Viziers that were connected to the royal family by marriage ties. Damat Ferid Pasha was Vahdeddin's full-brother-in-law, or imperial ''damat'', for his marriage to his sister Mediha. Even though Ferid Pasha would eventually be appointed to the premiership five times, Vahdeddin had a terrible relationship with his ''damat''. He would write of Ferid "...he was very ignorant about domestic issues. He fell victim to the cunning of the British and Mustafa Kemal Pasha and led us to a complete defeat. Poor Ferid Pasha was looking at the world through the British glasses. May God forgive him." When asked by Abdul Mejid his thoughts of appointing Ferid Grand Vizier he answered "Brother, am I crazy? Neither his personality nor his disposition suits me. I would pay him a compliment for the sake of my sister. Otherwise, would I ever appoint him as Grand Vizier." But in a conversation with his daughters, the Sultan believed he no one else to appoint as Grand Vizier but him due to his supposedly good relations with the British. Ahmed Tevfik Pasha was his in-law through his son İsmail Hakkı's marriage to Vahdeddin's daughter Ulviye Sultana. He was a capable, though elderly, statesman from the Hamidian regime, who often had to "clean up" Ferid's mess.

Armistice era

With Talât Pasha's resignation and the CUP's self-liquidation at end of the Great War, Sultan Vahdeddin was given the opportunity to reassert the Sultanate, in contrast to his deceased half-brother who was accommodating to the CUP. He could now appoint a new Grand Vizier. His first choice was his in-law Ahmed Tevfik Pasha, a senile Hamidian that everyone objected to and couldn't present a government, so he dropped the matter. Mustafa Kemal Pasha sent a telegram to the Sultan, asking him to appoint Ahmed İzzet Pasha (the Sultan's new aide-de-camp) and make himself War Minister. İzzet Pasha wooed the Sultan by promising to 'secure the dynasty's 'legitimate rights' and restore justice in the nation'. The sultan assigned the task of forming the government to İzzet, though Mustafa Kemal was excluded from the new cabinet, as well as any minorities. In his speech for the opening of the new legislative year of the parliament, he wished for peace along the lines of Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, and that he accordingly wanted peace with the appropriate honour and dignity of the state.

When İzzet's naval minister Hüseyin Rauf (Orbay), reluctantly signed Armistice of Mudros, the Sultan said the following of the cease-fire terms: "Let’s accept these conditions, even though they are very harsh. I think that the friendship and the condescending policy of the English in the East, which has continued for centuries, will not change. We will gain their tolerance later.” Rauf himself believed the many loopholes of the terms wouldn't be exploited due to his trust in English diplomatic credit and Admiral Calthorpe. Instead, the allies exploited Article VII to continue occupying Ottoman territory, to much dismay from Ottoman anglophiles. Writing of the armistice terms during his exile, Vahdeddin believed Rauf to be responsible for all of the occupations of territory following Mudros, and Mustafa Kemal for exasperating the ensuing crisis.

Sultan Vahdeddin soon requested the resignation of İzzet, which was unconstitutional, and assigned Tevfik Pasha to form a government. Two days later, the allies occupied Istanbul, though Tevfik Pasha was able to receive a vote of confidence from a disgruntled parliament afterwards. Vahdeddin disliked the sight of the massive Allied fleet anchored in the Bosphorus from Dolmabahçe Palace, and retired to Yıldız Palace, passing Dolmabahçe to Abdul Mejid the crown prince. Sultan Vahdeddin made a press statement absolving the Ottoman people of collective guilt stating that the CUP was solely responsible for the war and its excesses, such as the Armenian genocide. He requested of his government to establish tribunals to try war criminals and that he would work with all his might to maintain friendship with England. The Chamber of Deputies, dominated by Unionists elected back in 1914, objected that only the chamber has the authority to establish special tribunals. It looked like the Chamber was drawing up a motion to censure Tevfik, Vahdeddin and the Grand Vizier decided to dissolve the Chamber on 21 December 1918. The Sultan postponed elections until a peace treaty could be signed, even though they were constitutionally mandated to occur four months after parliament's dissolution, on the grounds that the country was under occupation.

The question which immediately dominated Turkey was the fate of the war criminals and the Unionists. Sultan Vahdeddin asked Tevfik Pasha to resign and assigned him to form a new government in order to purge Unionist sympathizers from the government. The escape and suicide of the former governor of Diyarbekir, Reşid Bey, from prison (25 January 1919) renewed British interest in prosecuting war criminals. Britain ended up cooperating with the Turkish government in these arrest campaigns, though controversially demanded extradition of some criminals. British and French demands on war criminals increasingly mounted on the Tevfik Pasha government, and after the Sultan complained about the lack of progress on the matter in the last three and a half months, he resigned, and Damad Ferid Pasha was appointed Grand Vizier on 4 March 1919.

A new government, consisting of members of the Freedom and Accord Party, arrested the leaders of the CUP, including one of the former grand viziers, Said Halim Pasha. The trial of Boğazlıyan

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