Andrew Mango

Haus Histories

At One with Civilisation

(excerpt from From the Sultan to Ataturk: Turkey by Andrew Mango)

The Turks had been at war, almost without a break, since

1911, the year the Italians invaded Libya. The First World

War and the War of Independence, which followed, lasted

eight years. But after the Turkish victory at the end of August

1922, the pace quickened. A fortnight later, the Greek army

was out of Anatolia. A month after that an armistice was

signed with the Allies. It then took another two weeks to

sweep away the Ottoman monarchy, which had ruled the

country for seven centuries.

On 19 October 1922, a week after the signature of the

armistice at Mudanya, General Re’fet (Bele), one of Mustafa

Kemal’s original companions in the War of Independence,

arrived in Istanbul at the head of the force of Turkish gendarmes

(in fact, soldiers in gendarmerie uniforms) which was

to take over eastern Thrace. Turks in the Ottoman capital

received him enthusiastically. The Ankara government had

long had a representative in Istanbul with whom Allied High

Commissioners dealt. But with Re’fet Pasha’s arrival the relationship

changed, as power in the old capital slipped out of

the hands of the Allied authorities. Welcomed by the Sultan’s

ADC and the Grand Vizier, Re’fet made it clear that he recognised

Vahdettin as Caliph only and not as temporal sovereign,

and his government not at all. Mustafa Kemal had

already decided to abolish the monarchy, even though the

matter had not been debated in the National Assembly. Re’fet

waited ten days before visiting Vahdettin in Yıldız Palace. The

Sultan left this account of the audience: ‘This little man hid

his true intention behind grand aspirations, and said that if I

accepted a meaningless caliphate shorn of the constitutional

sultanate, which we had all sworn to uphold, and if I sent

a telegram to Ankara declaring that I recognised the law of

fundamental organisation [the provisional constitution voted

by the National Assembly in 1921] and the Ankara government,

I could save my person and position. I replied that I had

to think it over. But the following day when I read Mustafa

Kemal’s insults against my person and our dynasty, the time

came for a decision.’ Re’fet was reported to have said later: ‘I

crossed my legs in front of the Sultan and leaned back so far

that the tip of my shoes nearly touched his nose’.1 According

to the Grand Vizier, Tevfik Pasha, Re’fet told the Sultan:

‘Close the palace gates and don’t allow anyone in. Unsuitable

people are coming and going, and this leads to gossip.

You can go to the mosque and nowhere else.’ Nevertheless

the Sultan received in audience two trusted advisers who were

hated in Ankara – Mustafa Sabri, a clerical politician who

had served Damad Ferid as Sheikh al-Islam, and the journalist,

Ali Kemal, who had infuriated the nationalists by his fiery

articles denouncing the resistance movement in Anatolia.2

It was not the Sultan, but the Allies who forced a decision.

On 27 October, the Principal Allies – Britain, France and Italy

– invited both the Istanbul government of Grand Vizier Tevfik

Pasha and Mustafa Kemal’s Ankara government to send

delegations to a peace conference to be held at Lausanne in

Switzerland. In response, Tevfik Pasha suggested to Mustafa

Kemal that they should discuss the matter, but Kemal would

have none of it. There was only one Turkish government,

he insisted, the Ankara government formed by the National

Assembly. He did not need the help or advice of Tevfik Pasha

and his ministers. The Sultan’s government was defunct and

the time had come for him and his ministers to leave the stage.

On 30 October, Dr Rıza Nur, a maverick politician who

had opposed the CUP before joining Mustafa Kemal in

Ankara (and who was later to break with him and vilify

him in his memoirs), tabled a bill in the Assembly, declaring

that the Sultan’s government had ceased to exist when

the Allies forcibly closed down the Ottoman parliament on

16 March 1920. From that date, sovereignty, which had been

appropriated by the Ottoman dynasty, had reverted to the

Turkish nation. The Sultanate was now abolished, but the

dynasty would continue to exercise the function of Caliphate

at the discretion of the National Assembly. It was in Mustafa

Kemal’s mind a transitional arrangement, but he argued for

it eloquently, saying: On the one hand, the people of Turkey

will become daily stronger as a modern and civilised state,

and realise increasingly their humanity … and, on the other,

the institution of the Caliphate will be exalted as the central

link of the spirit, the conscience and the faith of the Islamic

world.3 Modernity and civilisation were synonymous.

Mustafa Kemal reminded his audience that there had been

shadowy Caliphs between the 10th and the 16th century when

temporal government was exercised by Sultans in the Islamic

world. The two functions could, therefore, be separated.

But the change of rhetoric was abrupt. When the Assembly

opened in Ankara on 23 April 1920, it had pledged loyalty to

the Sultan and Caliph. Now it denounced the monarchy and

praised a shadowy Caliphate. Inevitably, there was uneasiness

in the ranks of the deputies. Could the wording of the

bill perhaps be changed? Mustafa Kemal ended the argument

the following day, when the matter came up in committee.

In his speech in 1927, in which he gave his account of the

genesis of the Turkish republic, Mustafa Kemal said that he

stood on a bench in the committee room and told members:

Sovereignty and kingship are never decided by academic

debate. They are seized by force … Now the Turkish nation

has effectively gained possession of its sovereignty … This

is an accomplished fact … If those assembled here see the

matter in its natural light, we shall all agree. Otherwise, facts

will prevail, but some heads may roll. Thereupon, a member

said, ‘Sorry, we had approached the matter from a different

angle. Now you have set us right.’4 On 1 November, the full

Assembly passed the law abolishing the monarchy. There was

only one dissenting vote.

The minutes of the committee have never been published,

but whatever the exact words used by Mustafa Kemal, there

was no doubt about his intentions. The Grand Vizier took

the hint. On 4 November Tevfik Pasha submitted his resignation

to the Sultan. Moving into his office, Re’fet informed

the Allies that the administration of Istanbul was now in the

hands of the Ankara government.

The first consequence was far from reassuring. The nationalists’

hate figure, the journalist Ali Kemal (whose greatgrandson

Boris Johnson, also a journalist and polemicist,

was to be elected Mayor of London 85 years later) had tried

to make amends by admitting that he had been wrong and

the nationalists right. He had believed that salvation lay in

cooperation with the Allies. The nationalists had proved that

opposition to them was the right course. The tactics differed,

but the objective was the same. The admission did not save

him. He was kidnapped by nationalist agents in broad daylight

in the European heart of Istanbul and taken to İzmit,

where ‘bearded’ Nurettin now had his headquarters. After

abusing him as a traitor, Nurettin handed Ali Kemal over to

a lynch mob, which beat him to death. Mustafa Kemal made

no secret of his disgust at the fate meted out to his opponent.5

Soon afterwards Nurettin fell into disgrace. He came out as

a political opponent of Mustafa Kemal, who denounced him

at length in his 1927 speech, and belittled his military career.

Henceforth, repression was left to the courts.

News of Ali Kemal’s murder terrified Turks who had

cooperated with the Allies in Istanbul, and they hastened to

seek refuge in the embassies and consulates of Allied states.

The following year the peace treaty provided for a general

amnesty for political offences. At the same time, the Turkish

government undertook to draw up a list of no more than 150

political opponents who were to be exiled from the country.

Prominent critics of the nationalist cause could thus make

their way to safety abroad. Survivors among them were

allowed back into the country in 1938. This act of reconciliation

was one of Mustafa Kemal’s last political decisions. He

died later that year.

Fear of the new regime was keenest in the Sultan’s palace

at Yıldız. The ‘philosopher’ Rıza Tevfik, one of the Ottoman

signatories of the Sèvres Treaty, reports in his memoirs that

rumours had reached the palace that ‘Mustafa Kemal Pasha

will come to depose the Sultan and have him executed. After

all, this Turkish revolution is a replica of the great French

Revolution. What the French did to Louis XVI, the Turks

will do to Vahdettin. Revolutionaries have no other way.’6

The women and servants in the Sultan’s private apartments

were panic-stricken. ‘Come what may, ensure the escape of

our lord and master,’ they pleaded. But the Sultan had one

more matter to settle.

It was a tradition that when the throne was vacated, every

single person in the retinue of the late sovereign had to leave

the palace. Women in the harem were either married off or

entrusted to the care of their relatives. Only elderly servant

women who knew the palace ceremonial were allowed to

stay on. There had been 36 women in the harem of Vahdettin’s

brother and predecessor, Sultan Mehmed V (Mehmed

Reşad). Vahdettin did not have a harem of his own before his

accession, and he allowed 12 women of his brother’s harem

to stay on. One of them was a young girl, called Nevzad, who

celebrated her 19th birthday on 1 November 1922. Vahdettin

married her before leaving the country. She was his third

wife: the first had borne him two daughters, and the second

his only son and heir, Mehmed Ertuğrul, who was ten years

old in 1922, and was to die in Cairo in 1944. All three women

joined Vahdettin in exile in Italy.

Vahdettin had always been fearful for his safety. Even before

his accession to the throne he carried a handgun in his pocket,

and he continued to do so to the end of his life. His audience

was surprised one day when the gun fell noisily to the floor.

Indecisive in most matters, he was, it seems, a good shot. But

now safety had to be sought by other means. On 16 November

Vahdettin wrote this letter to the Allied Commander-in-

Chief General Harington: ‘I consider my life to be in danger

in Istanbul, and I therefore take refuge with the noble British

state and ask for transport from Istanbul to some other destination.’

7 He signed it Mehmed Vahdettin, Caliph of the

Muslims, and not Sultan. Forewarned, Harington had already

been authorised to make the necessary arrangements. The

following day at dawn an ambulance drew up at the gate of

Yıldız palace. Vahdettin was smuggled on board. There was a

delay on the way to the harbour as a tyre had to be changed.

Eventually, Vahdettin, his son, and a suite of ten courtiers

arrived at the quayside. It was raining heavily.

Harington was waiting to see off the last Ottoman Sultan.

Vahdettin took out a gold cigarette case and lit a cigarette

with trembling hands. Harington is said to have expected to

be given the cigarette case as a souvenir. But retentive to the

last, Vahdettin put it back in his pocket, as he asked Harington

to make sure that his wives joined him abroad. He

then embarked on the British battleship hms Malaya which

was standing by in the harbour. Asked whether he would be

happy to be taken to Malta, Vahdettin agreed. From Malta

he made his way to Mecca, ruled precariously by the British

protégé King Hussein, who had led a rebellion against the

Ottoman state. Mecca, which was about to fall to Ibn Saud,

did not provide an agreeable environment, and Vahdettin

went on to take up residence in a villa at San Remo on

the Italian Riviera. He died there in 1926. His young wife

Nevzad was at his bedside. It is said that the local Italian

court took the unusual step of sequestering Vahdettin’s coffin

in an attempt to secure payments of his debts. Somehow a

settlement was reached with his creditors, and the coffin was

shipped to Damascus where Vahdettin was finally buried.8

hms Malaya was to make a return visit to Istanbul in 1938.

On board was the British guard of honour which took part

in Mustafa Kemal’s funeral procession.

Superstitious observers noted that Vahdettin had brought

ill fortune on himself. He suffered from rheumatism and

walked with difficulty. When he entered the old palace at

Topkapı for his accession ceremony in 1918, he had asked for

his ebony walking stick. Told that it had been left behind, he

exclaimed ‘What a disaster!’ This word of ill omen, uttered at

the beginning of the reign, was bound to bring bad luck in the

end. The ebony walking stick was the last object Vahdettin

took with him when he left his palace for ever.9

As soon as he left the country, Vahdettin issued a statement

declaring ‘I have not fled. I have migrated’.10 It was a reference

to the Prophet Muhammad whose move from Mecca to

Medina in ad 622, known as the hijra, is the beginning of the

Muslim era. Vahdettin insisted that he had not abdicated and

that the Ottoman throne was still his by right. He pleaded in

vain. On 18 November, the day after his escape, the chief cleric