Ahmet Rıza

Ahmed Rıza (1858 – 26 February 1930) was an Ottoman politician, educator, and a prominent member of the Young Turks, during the Second Constitutional Era of the Ottoman Empire.[1] He was also a key early leader of the Committee of Union and Progress.[2]

For the Arab literature scholar and linguist, see Ahmad Reda.
In this Ottoman Turkish style name, the given name is Ahmet Rıza, the title is Bey, and there is no family name.
Ahmet Rıza
Bey
President of the Chamber of Deputies
In office
17 December 1908 – 1911
DeputyMehmed Talaat,
Ruhi al-Khalidi
Senator
In office
18 April 1912 – 1919
Member of the Chamber of Deputies
In office
17 December 1908 – 18 January 1912
ConstituencyConstantinople
Personal details
Born1858
Constantinople, Ottoman Empire
Died26 February 1930
Istanbul, Turkey
Political partyCommittee of Union and Progress (1894–1910)

In 1908 he became the first President of the revived Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Ottoman Parliament, and in 1912, he was appointed as a Senator as well.[3] He was the leading negotiator during the failed agreement of coalition between the Ottoman Empire, France, and Britain for World War I. During the war, he was one of the only CUP politicians who opposed and condemned the Armenian genocide while it was ongoing.

Ahmet Rıza has been described as a polymath by some authors.[4]

Biography

Ahmet Rıza was born in Istanbul in 1858, the son of Ali Rıza Bey. His father was nicknamed İngiliz ("Englishman") because of his command of the English language and admiration of the British Empire. His mother, Fräulein Turban, was born in Munich but was of Hungarian origin. She moved to Vienna, where she met İngiliz, and converted to Islam to marry him, taking the name Naile Sabıka Hanım.[5] He graduated from Galatasaray High School in Istanbul and subsequently studied agriculture in France. As a young man, he sought to improve the condition of the peasantry in the Empire. He was concerned with the conditions of the farmers and wanted to implement agricultural methods, supporting the ideas of the French sociologist, Auguste Comte.

In 1894, he published a series of publications on unification of Islamic and Ottoman traditions of consultation. In 1895, Meşveret, the journal that he published, became a locus of the exiled Young Turks movement. Even though he was a Turkish nationalist, Rıza was horrified by the Hamidian massacres, which he blamed on the sultan and condemned as contrary to "the traditions of Islamicism and the precepts of the Koran".[6] Ahmet Rıza opposed the maverick Prince Sabahaddin's calls for revolution and European intervention in the empire at the 1902 Congress of Ottoman Opposition in Paris, as well as any autonomous status for the Armenian-populated eastern provinces. At the Second Congress of Ottoman Opposition in 1907, Ahmet Rıza at first reluctantly endorsed the use of violence to depose the sultan, but later reversed his position.[7]

Going to Paris

According to a customized book in 1889, on the pretext of participating in the exhibition organized for the centenary of the French Revolution, there was a customized letter, which indicated he escaped to Paris and did not return. He became an interpreter as he learned French. At the University of Paris, he continued his lectures on positivism, taught by mathematician Pierre Laffitte, as he was influenced by Laffitte's thoughts about Islam and Eastern civilization in particular.[8] Laffitte believed that Islam was the most advanced religion, so it was easy for Muslims to pass through positivism. Ahmet Rıza became one of the most active members of the Société Positiviste (Positivist Society), and since 1905 he has appeared as a "representative of Muslim communities" in the Comité Positif Occidental, establishing the spread of positivist international platitudes.

During his first years in Paris, he attempted to respond to various newspapers and magazines, which were writing unfavourably about the Ottoman Empire. In 1891, he wrote a letter to the postal and telegraph chronicle in Istanbul as he did not obey the instructions of the center of Paris to return to his country due to his use of the expression "liberty" in a lecture on Ottoman women and stated that he did not belong to any secret cemetery. Ahmet Rıza sent his thoughts to Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1893. He continued to send sheets upon the request of his encouraging response and continuation; he tried to convince him that the constitutional regime was not a bad thing. In the case of sending the sixth party, he began to write political writings in French, which was published by the former Syrian deputy Halil Ganem with whom he published a newspaper, Meşveret, in Paris.[9]

Second Constitutional Era

Later career
Like many of his other contemporary European progressives, Ahmet Rıza was opposed to colonialism, as well as class privilege.

In 1915, Rıza was one of the only Ottoman politicians who condemned the Armenian genocide. About a law to confiscate Armenian property, he stated in parliament: "It is also not legal to classify the goods mentioned by the law as abandoned goods because the Armenian owners of these goods did not abandon them willingly, they were exiled, expelled forcefully." Noting that such confiscation was contrary to the Ottoman Constitution, he added: "Strong-arm me, expel me from my village, then sell my property: this is never lawful. No Ottoman conscience or law can ever accept this."[10][11]

As an educator, he enacted the inauguration of the second high school for girls in Turkey, the Kandilli High School for Girls in 1916 in Istanbul (it was intended to be the first, but the outbreak of World War I delayed the execution of the project).[12]

During the armistice period, Sultan Mehmed VI Vahdettin appointed Ahmed Rıza as president of the Ottoman Senate, during which he informed the American diplomats of the Ottoman government's opposition to a League of Nation's mandate. Grand vizier Damat Ferid Pasha eventually outmaneuvered him, taking away his position. He defected to Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) Pasha's movement and went to Paris on 22 June 1919. He was instrumental in the negotiations between France and the Grand National Assembly government which led to the end of the Franco-Turkish War. He returned to Turkey in 1926.

After retiring from public life at the end of World War I, Ahmet Rıza wrote his memoirs. They were published more than 50 years after his death in 1988 under the title Meclis-i Mebusan ve Ayan Reisi Ahmet Rıza Bey’in Anıları ("The Memoirs of Ahmet Rıza, the President of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate"). He died on 26 February 1930 in Istanbul.

He was awarded Order of Karađorđe's Star.[13]

(in his early days)
(in his middle age)
(in his later years)

Works

Books
  • Layihalar, 1889
  • Vazife ve Mesuliyet series (Padishahs and Shehzades, Soldier, Woman)
  • Tolarance Muslumane (İslamiyet’te Serbesti-i Ayin), 1897
  • Meşveret diaries, 1903-1908
  • La Crise de I’Orient (Burhan-ı Şark), 1907
  • Echos de Turquie (Türkiye Haberleri), 1920
  • La Faillite Morale de la Politique Occidentale en Orient (Batının Doğu Politikasının Ahlaken İflası), 1922

Magazines
  • Revue Occidentale, 1896-1908
  • Positivist Review, 1900-1908

See also

References
  1. "Ahmed Rıza Bey".
  2. The Rise and Development of the Liberal Thought ın Turkey
  3. 1908 Devrimi Aykut Kansu İletişim Yayınları, ISBN 9789754705096, 2009
  4. Finkel, Caroline (2006). Osman's dream: the story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1923. Basic Books. p. 505. ISBN 0-465-02396-7. Retrieved 2010-06-07.
  5. Taglia, Stefano (2015). Intellectuals and Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Young Turks on the Challenges of Modernity. Routledge. p. 52. ISBN 9781317578635. Retrieved 8 August 2017.
  6. Suny 2015, pp. 149–150.
  7. Karal, Enver Ziya (1962). Osmanlı Tarihi Vol. 8. Ankara. p. 517.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  8. Özdalga, Elisabeth (2005). Late Ottoman Society: The Intellectual Legacy. Psychology Press. ISBN 9780415341646.
  9. Gavin Murray-Miller (December 2019). "Networks, Contact Zones and the Trans-Local Dimensions of the Imperial Mediterranean". Middle East - Topics & Arguments, Bd. 13. doi:10.17192/meta.2019.13.8075.
  10. Suny 2015, p. 308.
  11. Kieser 2018, p. 269.
  12. "Tarihce". Archived from the original on 2012-11-28. Retrieved 2012-11-08.
  13. Acović, Dragomir (2012). Slava i čast: Odlikovanja među Srbima, Srbi među odlikovanjima. Belgrade: Službeni Glasnik. p. 369.

Sources
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