Mehmed VI
Mehmed VI Vahideddin, 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 Allied 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 with Christian minorities over their massacres and deportations failed, when the Greek and Armenian patriarchates, renounced their flocks' status as Ottoman subjects, marking a definitive end of Ottomanism. During the Paris Peace Conference, Mehmed VI turned to Damat Ferid Pasha to outflank Greek territorial demands on Turkey diplomatically 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, established a nationalist resistance to resume war. Mehmed's most significant act as Sultan was dispatching Mustafa Kemal Pasha to reassert government control in Anatolia, which backfired when Mustafa Kemal emerged as the leader of the Turkish national movement against the Sultan's wishes.
With the Greek Occupation of Smyrna on 15 May 1919 galvanizing the Turkish nationalists 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 occupied Istanbul militarily 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. A civil war erupted when Mehmed condemned the nationalist leaders as infidels and called for their execution, though the Ankara government claimed it was rescuing the Sultan-Caliph from manipulative foreigners and ministers. The Sultan's Istanbul government went on to sign the Treaty of Sèvres, a peace treaty which would have partitioned the empire, and left the remainder of the country without sovereignty.
With Ankara's victory in the independence war, the Sèvres Treaty was abandoned for the 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 the Ottoman monarchy. 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 forty-two 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, save for 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. 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.
Vahdeddin educated himself by taking lessons from private tutors, becoming a man of intellect and deep religious knowledge. 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. From time to time, the Sheikh-ul-Islam would have to contend with Vahdeddin demanding an amendment on a fatwa which did not follow fiqh. Before moving to the Feriye Palace, the Şehzade had lived briefly in the mansion in Çengelköy owned by Şehzade Ahmed Kemaleddin.
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, the son of his uncle, Sultan Abdul Aziz. They went on hunting trips together in the forests beyond the Bosphorus. Their bond was later 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 unprecedented cousin marriage within the Ottoman family. Their friendship went against the prevailing Mejidian–Azizian feud. 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. In the years to come however, the two cousins had an intense falling out over the politics of the Turkish War of Independence, reactivating the feud between their respective branches.
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 his own mansion in Çengelköy, designed by the architect Alexandre Vallaury, 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, 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 spent in luxurious peace, without care for politics or conflict. After all, during Abdul Hamid's reign, he was behind Reşâd Efendi, Kemaleddin Efendi, Süleyman Efendi, and Yusuf İzzeddin Efendi in the succession, so it did not seem likely he would ever come to the throne. 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 Pavilion. 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 forty-six, he took his first steps outside of Istanbul when he accompanied his half-brother, the new Sultan Mehmed V Reşâd 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, Şabân 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 did not 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 greatly infuriated Şevket Pasha, 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.
There was a quiet rivalry with his half-brother Crown Prince İzzeddin and he repeatedly requested that 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.