Damad Ferid Pasha

Damad Ferid Pasha (1919)

Damad Ferid Pascha (2nd from left) with three signatories of the Treaty of Sèvres . To his right Rıza Tevfik Bölükbaşı , to his left the Ottoman Minister of Education Bağdatlı Hadi Pasha and the Ambassador Reşad Halis. The photo was taken on the ship that brought them to France for the peace negotiations. All four people lost their citizenship after the Turkish War of Independence and were listed among the 150 personae non gratae in Turkey.

Damad Ferid Pascha , full name Damad Mehmed Adil Ferid Pascha ( Ottoman داماد محمد عادل فريد پاشا, * 1853 in Istanbul ; †  October 6, 1923 in Nice ) was an Ottoman statesman who was Grand Vizier twice under the last Sultan Mehmed Vahideddin from March 4, 1919 to October 2, 1919 and from April 5, 1920 to October 21, 1920 .

He formed five cabinets and is thus counted five times as grand vizier. The title Damad he received (son) by marrying Mediha Sultan, a daughter of Sultan Abdülmecids I . Through this marriage he became the brother-in-law of Sultan Mehmed Vahideddin.

biography

Ferid Pascha was born in Istanbul in 1853 as the son of Seyyid Hasan İzzet Efendi, a member of the State Council (Şûrâ-yı Devlet) , whose family came from the village of Potoci near Pljevlja in present-day Montenegro . Ferid Pascha worked in the Ottoman Foreign Ministry and at the embassies in Paris , Berlin , Petersburg and London . Like his father, he became a member of the Şûrâ-yı Devlet in 1884 and received the title of vizier. When he was denied the post of ambassador in London by Sultan Abdülhamid II , he retired from public office and only returned as a member of the Senate ( Heyʾet-i Aʿyān ) in 1908 .

During his first term of office as Grand Vizier, the occupation of Izmir by Greek troops and the ensuing unrest fell. As the successor to Yusuf Franko Pasha, he was also Foreign Minister (Hariciye nazırı) . On June 11, 1919, Ferid publicly admitted the crimes against the Armenian minority in the Ottoman Empire, now known as the Armenian Genocide , and sentenced those primarily responsible to death in the war crimes trials that he initiated immediately after the First World War . The only culprits, in his view, were “ Talât , Enver and Cemal ” and “a handful of secondary accomplices”. Not only Christians were persecuted. Three million Muslims also felt the terror of the Committee for Unity and Progress. The Turkish nation is completely innocent. The "degenerates" who committed the crimes were nothing but Bolsheviks. He was dismissed from office on September 30, 1919, but after two short-lived governments under Ali Rıza Pasha and Hulusi Salih Pasha , the Sultan had to reappoint him and form a government that took office on April 5, 1920. It was his government that signed the Treaty of Sèvres in August 1920 . Damad Ferid Pascha remained Grand Vizier until October 17, 1920, when he formed two further cabinets.

In his second term as Grand Vizier, he was at least nominally responsible for sending Mustafa Kemal Pascha (Ataturk) to Anatolia in May 1919, which marked the beginning of the Turkish War of Liberation . With the signing of the Sevres Peace Treaty , which imposed very harsh conditions on the country, he caused a sharp dispute over his person, to which he responded by becoming increasingly hostile to the national movement of Mustafa Kemal Pasha in Ankara and more and more with cooperated with the occupying powers. He initiated the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye (the caliphate army ) and supported uprisings against the national counter-government in Ankara.

After the victory of the Ankara government over the Greeks in the Greco-Turkish War , he fled to Europe on September 21, 1922. The Ankara Independence Court sentenced him to death for treason. He died in Nice on October 6, 1923.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gunnar Heinsohn: Lexicon of Genocides . 2nd edition, Rowohlt Taschenbuch, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1998, p. 80.
2. ↑ RECOGNIZING THE 81ST ANNIVERSARY OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE . United States Government Printing Office . Retrieved March 3, 2016
3. ↑ Taner Akçam: A Shameful Act. The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility. London 2007, p. 239.
4. ↑ ibid., P. 300.

predecessor	Office	successor
Ahmed Tevfik Pasha	Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire March 4, 1919–2. October 1919	Ali Rıza Pasha
Hulusi Salih Pasha	Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire April 5, 1920-21. October 1920	Ahmed Tevfik Pasha