Mehmed Said Pasha

October 1879 can be accepted as the date when the political uncertainties of the beginning of Abdul Hamid's reign ended and the power without question passed to the palace. During Said Pasha's first grand viziership, he mostly dealt with financial and economic measures and tried to reduce government expenditures. He was dismissed from the position of grand vizier in June 1880.

He began his second term as Grand Vizier on September 12, 1880. The most important events of the premiership were the trial of Mithat Pasha in Yıldız Palace. Ottoman debts were then collected through the establishment of Ottoman Public Debt Administration with the Muharrem Decree. In 1881, France declared Tunisia a French colony a brief military campaign while in Egypt Urabi Pasha lost his nationalist struggle against the Europeans. Due to these events, Mehmed Said Pasha did not succeed in measures to reduce state debts and provide stability. He was dismissed as grand vizier on May 2, 1882, due to the direct intervention of the British in the Egypt issue.

However, two months later, the new grand vizier Abdurrahman Nureddin Pasha was dismissed as Grand Vizier since Abdul Hamid did not share his concern on the European attempts to invade Egypt, which started with the bombing of Alexandria in July. Mehmed Said Pasha was appointed grand vizier for the third time on 12 July 1882. This period began when Egypt came under British control. He was dismissed two months later on 30 November 1882 due to clashes between himself and the sultan. He was arrested three days later.

Portrait of a younger Said Pasha

He was brought back to the grand viziership for the forth time on 3 December 1882. This time his ministry lasted for 2 years and 2 months. In this period, he civil service reform. Recruitment, appointment, promotion and retirement of civil servants were reformed and reorganized. He also brought about educational reforms. First of all, importance was given to the opening of a large number of new schools in the country. However, he wanted to suppress the Bulgarian nationalist revolt that broke out in Eastern Rumelia, but Sultan Abdul Hamid thought that these troops could use them against him, so he vetoed the operation. On September 18, 1885, Eastern Rumelia was annexed by Bulgaria. He was dismissed from office a week later. For ten years he was without a job.

During the height of the Hamidian massacres, Western states demanded reforms. In order to implement these reforms, Said Pasha was brought to the grand viziership for the fifth time on 8 June 1895. This time, he was at odds with the Sultan because of the Armenians demonstrating in Istanbul. Said Pasha claimed that the War Mınıster Nazım Pasha was negligent in his duties of quelling unrest and demanded that he be removed from office. However, Abdul Hamid did not agree to this and dismissed Said Pasha after less than three months.

Two months later the took refuge at the British embassy in Constantinople, and, though then assured of his personal liberty and safety, remained practically under house arrest with his son for six years.[1]

Said Pasha in front of the San Stefanos Yacht Club, 10 May 1909

In November 1901, he was appointed grand vizier again after he wrote to the Sultan that he would serve as a Grand Vizier like a bailiff.[7] However this new interpretation of his role in government was too much for him and he complained that the premiership was reduced to being like a scarecrow.[8] After two years in this post, he had a disagreement with the War Minister Mehmed Rıza Pasha about the problems in the Rumelian army. He gave an ultimatum to the Sultan that if he did not arrest Rıza, he would resign. Said was instead dismissed one month after this resignation threat.

He came into temporary prominence again during the revolution of 1908.[1] On 22 July he succeeded Mehmed Ferid Pasha as grand vizier, and mediated the declaration of the Second Constitutional Monarchy. However, in the first two weeks, disagreements arose within the government delegation over who would be the minister of war and who would be the minister of the navy. Said Pasha was uneasy about the sultan's intervention in the establishment of this government. For this reason, he resigned on 6 August 1908, after two weeks of vizierate, citing the Sultan's interference in the cabinet list, and he was replaced by the more liberal Kâmil Pasha,[1] at the insistence of the Young Turks.

Also during 1908, Mehmed Said Pasha bought the famed Istanbul arcade in the Beyoğlu district, today known as Çiçek Pasajı ("Flower Passage"). The modern name became common in the 1940s; during Mehmed Said Pasha's ownership in the 1900s and 1910s, the arcade was known as Sait Paşa Pasajı ("Said Pasha Passage").[9]

Following the resignation of Ibrahim Hakkı Pasha in the wake of Italy's declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire in 1911, he was again called to the premiership. He attempted to resign on New Years Eve 1911 on disagreements with his cabinet on whether to dissolve parliament, but he was reappointed the same day. His time as Grand Vizier was under the de-facto rule of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) and the War Minister Mahmut Şevket Pasha.

In the "election of clubs" held in February 1912, he allowed the CUP to seize the parliament through egregious voter fraud and intimidation. However with Şevket Pasha's departure from government and another Albanian revolt, a military clique known as the Savior Officers who backed the defeated Freedom and Accord Party forced him to resign from the grand viziership for the last time.[10]

Following his departure Said Pasha became head of the Council of State and then as the head of the Ottoman Senate.