Ahmed İzzet Pasha

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Ahmed İzzet Pasha

Ahmet İzzet Pascha or, after the enactment of the naming law, Ahmet İzzet Furgaç (* 1864 in Nasliç near Bitola ; † March 31, 1937 in Istanbul ) was an Ottoman officer and statesman of Albanian descent and grand vizier in the last days of the First World War .

Life

Military career

Ahmet İzzet Pascha comes from one of the oldest aristocratic families in Albania. In 1884 he graduated from military school and the following year from higher military school. Between 1891 and 1894 he was in Germany, where he received further military training. It was used in Macedonia , Syria and the Hejaz . As brigadier general, he was in front of the Ottoman army in Yemen from 1903 to 1906 .

After the revolution of 1908 he was immediately appointed chairman of the general staff. He remained in this office until 1914. He played an important role in modernizing the Ottoman army with the help of German advisors.

From 1911 to 1912 he was charged with suppressing the Imam Yahya uprising in Yemen. During this time he awakened in the then major İsmet İnönü the love for classical western music, as it emerges from the memoir İnönü.

In the last days of the Balkan Wars he returned from Yemen and led the army as lieutenant general. When Mahmut Şevket Pasha was murdered on June 11, 1913 , he was appointed Minister of War.

However, since he did not comply with the demands of the Committee for Unity and Progress to change the leadership of the army, he was forced to resign in January 1914.

At the beginning of 1913 thought was given to appointing Ahmet İzzet Pasha as prince of the newly established Albanian state. But with the intervention of the European states, the German Prince Wilhelm zu Wied was appointed Prince of Albania.

He was a great opponent of entering the First World War and therefore did not perform any military tasks for a while. In 1916 he was appointed commander of the 2nd Ottoman Army on the front in Eastern Anatolia. He suffered heavy losses against the advancing Russians.

Ahmet Izzet Pasha (rear seat right) is leaving on September 29, 1918, Cemal Pasha , the city Damascus shortly before the arrival of Allied troops

The office of the Grand Vizier

After the resignation of Talat Pasha's government on October 7, 1918, Ahmet İzzet Pasha was appointed Grand Vizier. A few days earlier, the Ottoman army suffered great losses on the front in Palestine and Syria, so that they lost Damascus. Bulgaria also surrendered to the Allies. It became clear that the war would shortly be lost.

The Committee on Unity and Progress resigned and disbanded. In the newly formed government of İzzet Pasha, members of the Committee for Unity and Progress held offices who were not involved in war crimes, corruption and murders during the war. These included people like Rauf Orbay , Fethi Okyar and Cavit Bey .

İzzet Pascha was also Minister of War as Grand Vizier. However, Mustafa Kemal was to become Minister of War after his return from the front. This emerged from the contemporary press and later memoirs. In a letter from the front, Mustafa Kemal proposed to the Sultan to found a cabinet with himself, Messrs. Rauf, Fethi, Vasıf and Cavit.

The most important act of İzzet Pasha's government was to end the war with the Mudros Armistice of October 30, 1918. The Minister of the Navy, Rauf Orbay, signed the armistice on behalf of the government.

The secret escape of Talat Paschas, Enver Paschas and Cemal Paschas abroad on the night of November 3rd caused a major domestic political crisis. İzzet Pasha's cabinet was accused of not preventing the escape, and so he resigned after 25 days on November 8, 1918. İzzet Pasha had spent a large part of these 25 days in bed because he had the Spanish flu .

During the liberation war

Ahmet İzzet Pasha was on May 19, 1919 on the orders of Sultan Mehmed VI. appointed Minister of War in the cabinet of Damat Ferid Pasha . According to his own statement, he took important steps to reorganize the army, which has been withdrawing more and more since the armistice, and to prepare it for the resistance. After Damat Ferid resigned, Ahmet İzzet negotiated with representatives of the national movement from Sivas during the reign of Ali Rıza Pasha .

On December 5th, he and the former Grand Vizier Hulusi Salih Pasha met with Mustafa Kemal in Bilecik. The purpose was to mediate between the new government in Ankara and England, thus ending the Greek occupation and changing the Treaty of Sevres. But Mustafa Kemal forbade them to return to Istanbul and held them in Ankara for three months.

When İzzet Pasha returned to Istanbul in 1921, he became Foreign Minister in the cabinet of Ahmed Tevfik Pasha . He remained in office until the dissolution of the Ottoman administration on November 4, 1922.

Since he was a minister despite a promise not to take office in the Istanbul government in Ankara, he was severely criticized by Ataturk in his speech (tr: Nutuk ) and referred to as defender of the caliphate until the end of his life.

After the establishment of the republic, he lived on a pension. In 1934 he became a board member of the Istanbul Electricity Company. In 1937 he died in his home in Moda. He is buried in the Karacaahmet cemetery.

personality

After Ali Fuat Cebesoy , Izzet Pasha was a soldier with a philosophical and literary education. He spoke Turkish, German, French, Arabic and Persian. His son Süheyl Furgaç studied electrical engineering in Stuttgart and there defeated a National Socialist in a duel.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ İbnülemin Mahmud Kemal İnal: Son Sadrazamlar, IV.2020. Ali Fuat Cebesoy considers the Nasliç family to be of Turkish origin
  2. ↑ Son Sadrazamlar, IV.1979.
  3. ↑ Son Sadrazamlar, IV.1994.
  4. ↑ MK Ataturk, Nutuk (edition 1938), p. 376.
  5. ↑ Son Sadrazamlar, IV.2020.
predecessor Office successor
Talat Pasha Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire
October 14, 1918 - November 8, 1918 		Ahmed Tevfik Pasha
personal data
SURNAME Ahmed İzzet Pasha
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ahmet İzzet Furgaç
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Ottoman statesman, grand vizier
DATE OF BIRTH 1864
PLACE OF BIRTH Nasliç near Bitola
DATE OF DEATH March 31, 1937
Place of death Istanbul