Ahmed Rızâ

Ahmed Riza

Ahmed Rızâ (* 1858 in Istanbul ; † February 26, 1930 ibid) was an Ottoman politician, one of the early leaders of the Young Turk movement and the first President of the Chamber of Deputies in the second Ottoman constitutional period .

Life

education

Ahmed Rızâ was the son of Naile Hanım of Austrian descent and the diplomat Ali Bey. Ali Bey, who because of his clothing style İngiliz  /انكليز / Was called 'Englishman' was a member of the Şürâyı Devlet and the Senate. After attending the Beylerbeyi Rüşdiyesi (about middle school), the Mahrec-i Aklâm (technical school for secretaries) and the Mekteb-i Sultânî , Ahmed Rızâ worked briefly in the translation office of the Sublime Porte . His sister was the feminist Selma Rızâ . In 1884 he finished his studies in agriculture in Thiverval-Grignon and became a civil servant in the Ottoman Ministry of Agriculture and later in the Ministry of Education.

exile

In 1889, Ahmed Rızâ went to Paris , where he published writings against the absolutist regime of Abdülhamid II and attended lectures on natural history and positivism at the Sorbonne . From 1895 he published the "revolutionary newspaper" Meşveret  /مشورت / 'Advice' and published the Mechveret Supplément Français in French , which made him the leader of the European Young Turks in exile. Due to his refusal to assassinate Abdülhamid II, however, Ahmed Rızâ distanced himself from the Istanbul Young Turks, so that Murad Bey, who wrote the newspaper Mîzân  / in Egyptian exileميزان / 'Libra', gradually gained influence on the Young Turks in the Ottoman Empire. At the Congress in December 1896, Murad Bey was elected chairman. At the first Paris Young Turks Congress (February 4-9, 1902), the Young Turks split under Prince Sabahaddin and İsmail Kemal Bey on the one hand and a minority under Ahmed Rızâ on the other. The latter, which strictly rejected a foreign intervention called for by Prince Sabahaddin and İsmail Kemal Bey, described themselves as the "Ottoman Society for Progress and Unity" ( Osmanlı Terakkî ve İttihâd Cemiyeti  /عثمانلو ترقى و اتحاد جمعيتى) and, due to their connections, especially in the Balkans , were able to take over the leadership of the Young Turkish movement.

Return from exile

After the successful "Young Turk Revolution" of 1908, as a result of which the constitution was de facto reinstated, Ahmed Rızâ returned, celebrated as the "Father of Liberals" ( Ebü'l-ahrâr  /ابو الاحرار / Abū al-Aḥrār ; Turkish hürriyetçilerin babası ), back to Istanbul. On December 17, 1908, the newly elected House of Representatives elected him President. His differences of opinion after the so-called " March 31st event " with the Central Committee of the Young Turks led to his exclusion in 1910. On April 18, 1912, he was elected a member of the Senate by the Sultan and strongly criticized the Committee for Unity and Progress . Finally he broke with the Young Turks after their attack on the Hohe Pforte on January 23, 1913.

In 1915 he was the only member of the Ottoman parliament who attacked the deportations of the Armenians as unconstitutional. On October 19, 1918, he was elected President of the Senate. He used his inaugural address to explain that the Turkish government was responsible for the murder of the Armenians in recent years.

After the loss of the First World War, Ahmed Rızâ went to Paris on June 22, 1919 on behalf of Mustafa Kemal to promote the “Turkish Cause” there. In 1926 he returned to the Republic of Turkey founded on October 29, 1923 , retired to his property in Vaniköy in the Istanbul district of Üsküdar and wrote his memoirs . On February 26, 1930, Ahmed Rızâ suffered a pelvic fracture as a result of a fall and died the same day in Şişli Etfal Hospital. He was buried in the Kandilli cemetery in Üsküdar.

literature

• Ziyad Ebüzziya: Ahmed Rızâ. In: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 2, TDV Yayını, Istanbul 1989, pp. 124-127 (Turkish).
• Serif Mardin: Religion, society, and modernity in Turkey. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York 2006, ISBN 978-0-8156-2810-1 , pp. 165 ff. (English).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Meyer's Large Conversational Lexicon . Vol. 10. Leipzig 1907, p. 376 ( online at zeno.org ).
2. ↑ Mehmet Hacısalihoğlu: The Young Turks and the Macedonian Question (1890-1918). Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2003, ISBN 978-3-486-56745-8 , p. 99.
3. ↑ Mehmet Hacısalihoğlu: The Young Turks and the Macedonian Question (1890-1918). Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2003, ISBN 978-3-486-56745-8 , p. 136.
4. ↑ Michael Schwartz , Ethnic "cleansing" in the modern age, p. 90.
5. ↑ Michael Schwartz, Ethnic "cleansing" in the modern age, p. 90.
6. ↑ Michael Schwartz, Ethnic "cleansing" in the modern age, p. 90.

Web links

Commons : Ahmed Riza Bey  - Collection of images, videos and audio files