Ahmet Tevfik Pasha

Ahmet Tevfik Pasha
Ahmet Tevfik, c. 1906
Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire
In office 21 October 1920 – 4 November 1922
Monarch	Mehmed VI
Preceded by	Damat Ferid Pasha
Succeeded by	Office abolished İsmet İnönü, as Prime Minister of Turkey
In office 11 November 1918 – 3 March 1919
Monarch	Mehmed VI
Preceded by	Ahmed Izzet Pasha
Succeeded by	Damat Ferid Pasha
In office 13 April 1909 – 5 May 1909
Monarchs	Abdul Hamid II Mehmed V
Preceded by	Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha
Succeeded by	Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha
Foreign Minister of the Ottoman Empire
In office 1899–1909
Monarch	Abdul Hamid II
Prime Minister	Halil Rifat Pasha Mehmed Said Pasha Mehmed Ferid Pasha Kâmil Pasha Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha
Preceded by	Said Halim Pasha
Succeeded by	Mehmed Rifat Pasha
Personal details
Born	(1843-02-11)11 February 1843 Constantinople, Ottoman Empire
Died	8 October 1936(1936-10-08) (aged 93) Istanbul, Turkey
Nationality	Turkish
Spouse	Elisabeth Tschumi (1859-1949)
Children	5

Ahmed Tevfik Pasha (Ottoman Turkish: احمد توفیق پاشا‎; 11 February 1843 – 8 October 1936), later Ahmet Tevfik Okday after the Turkish Surname Law of 1934, was an Ottoman statesman of Crimean Tatar origin. He was the last grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire.^[1] He held the office three times, the first in 1909 under Sultan Abdul Hamid II, and from 1918 to 1919 and from 1920 to 1922 under Mehmed VI during the Allied occupation of Istanbul. In addition to his premiership, Ahmet Tevfik was also a diplomat, a member of the Ottoman Senate, and long time Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Ahmet Tevfik was born on 11 February 1845 in Istanbul. His father, Ferik Ismail Hakkı Pasha, was a Crimean Tatar descended from the Giray dynasty.^[2] He lost his mother shortly after his birth. His aunt took care of his education, allowing him to speak Persian, Arabic and French fluently.

Ahmet Tevfik entered military service but left after becoming a junior officer, entering government bureaucracy training. He left the military at the age of 22 and entered the Sublime Porte's Translation Office. After 1872, he held various foreign ministry posts. After serving as an ambassador in Rome, Vienna, St. Petersburg, and Athens, he served as the Ottoman chargé d'affaires and ambassador to Germany in Berlin from 1885 to 1895.^[2] He was a participant of the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War.

Tevfik Pasha signed for the Ottoman Empire in the Treaty of Constantinople, which ended the 1897 Greco-Turkish War. Sultan Abdul Hamid II, as a reward for his work, gifted him a mansion, known first as the Italian Ministry Mansion, then the Foreign Ministry Mansion, finally the Tevfik Pasha Mansion. It was a neoclassical eclectic structure made largely of wood, and it became the headquarters of the Foreign Ministry.

After returning to Istanbul, he served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs (Turkish: Hariciye Nazırı) from 1899 to 1909. After the proclamation of the Second Constitutional Era in 1908, Ahmet Tevfik Pasha was appointed to a seat in the revived Senate of the Ottoman Empire (Turkish: Ayan Meclisi), the upper house of the also-revived parliament, the General Assembly (Turkish: Meclis-i Umûmî).

Ahmet Tevfik Pasha's first period of office as grand vizier was one of the direct outcomes of the failed counterrevolutionary 31 March Incident (which actually occurred on 13 April) in 1909. When the absolutists declared the countercoup, they demanded and received the resignation of the previous Grand Vizier Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha. Although their preferred replacement was not Ahmet Tevfik Pasha, his appointment at least fulfilled their demands for the removal of Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha.^[3] Ahmet Tevfik Pasha, who had only reluctantly taken up the post at the urging of the pro-absolutist Sultan Abdul Hamid II, formed a government made up of mostly non-partisan and neutral members and took precautions to limit the growth of violence that had begun in Istanbul and Adana. After the Hareket Ordusu (English: Army of Action) entered Istanbul and restored the constitutional government, and Abdul Hamid was deposed, Ahmet Tevfik Pasha resigned and Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha returned as grand vizier. Afterwards he served as ambassador to the Court of St. James's.

After World War I and the resignation of Ahmed Izzet Pasha, Ahmet Tevfik Pasha was again appointed grand vizier on 11 November 1918. Two days after his term began, the Allies began their occupation of Constantinople. The Allies pressured Sultan Mehmed VI to dissolve the parliament on 21 December 1918, and for a few weeks, Ahmet Tevfik Pasha's government was dissolved as well. He formed his government again on 12 January 1919, but after the invaders forced him to dissolve it once more, he resigned as grand vizier on 3 March 1919.^[4] A political scandal that contributed to the fall of the government was the escape of Mehmed Reshid from prison and his subsequent suicide, who was high ranking CUP member who was known as the "butcher of Diyarbakır" during World War I. Damat Ferid Pasha accused Tevfik of being soft on the Unionists, which prompted Tevfik Pasha to arrest key committeemen after the event. Ferid Pasha succeeded Tevfik on the 4 March 1919.^[5]

After his second term as grand vizier, Ahmet Tevfik Pasha became the head of the Senate of the Ottoman Empire (which had not yet been dissolved, unlike the lower house). He then served as the president of the Ottoman delegation to the Paris Peace Conference ending World War I. Ahmet Tevfik Pasha's delegation refused the heavy terms of the proposed treaty, but another delegation sent by the Grand Vizier Damat Ferid Pasha accepted the terms and signed the Treaty of Sèvres.^[6]

On 21 October 1920, he was once more appointed grand vizier, replacing Damat Ferit Pasha. Meanwhile, the Turkish National Movement had established another government in Ankara, proclaiming itself to be the sole government of the nation and rejecting the sultanate. Ahmet Tevfik Pasha offered the nationalist Ankara government to join his monarchical Istanbul government to form one body at the Conference of London in 1921. However, the leader in Ankara, Mustafa Kemal, refused the offer, and the two governments sent separate delegations to the conference, with Ahmet Tevfik Pasha himself leading the Istanbul delegation and Bekir Sami Kunduh leading the Ankara delegation. However, once he arrived in London, Ahmet Tevfik Pasha, in a surprising move, proclaimed that the Ankara government indeed was the sole rightful government of Turkey and allowed Bekir Sami to be the only representative at the conference.

After the abolition of the Ottoman Sultanate on 1 November 1922, Ahmet Tevfik Pasha met with his government. With the Sultan Mehmed VI gone and unable to find a reason to hold their offices any longer, the government began to resign one by one, and Ahmet Tevfik Pasha resigned three days after the abolition on 4 November 1922.

Tevfik Pasha withdrew from politics after the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey. He turned his mansion in Ayaspaşa into a hotel in the 1930s, in accordance with his wife's wishes. The mansion became famous under the name "Park Otel" under the management of restaurateur Aram Hıdır.^[7] When his eyesight began to fail, Tevfik settled in the hotel. After the 1934 Surname Law, he adopted the last name "Okday". He died on 8 October 1936 in Istanbul at the age of 93, and is interred at the Edirnekapı Martyr's Cemetery.

His biography, written by his grandson Şefik Okday, was published in 1986 and is titled My Grandfather, the Last Grand Vizier, Ahmet Tevfik Pasha (Turkish: Büyükbabam Son Sadrazam Ahmet Tevfik Paşa).^[8]

While serving as chargé d'affaires in Athens, he met and married Elisabeth Tschumi, a Swiss woman working as a governess to the children of another diplomat. She changed her name to Afife following their wedding, but she chose to stay Protestant. However, a few days before Elisabeth's death in 1949, she decided to be buried next to her husband as a Muslim. They had five children together.^[2]

According to his grandson Şefik Okday, Tevfik Oktay's first two children, İsmail Hakkı Tevfik and Ali Nuri (father of Şefik), were secretly baptized. A daughter, Zehra Hanım, married Mazlum Bey, the son of Minister of Internal Affairs Memduh Pasha. Naile and Gülşinas died young. Ali Nuri Bey married Edibe (Ayaşlı) Hanım, the granddaughter of Sadullah Pasha, whom he met during Tevfik Pasha's tenure as Ambassador to Berlin. Their wedding was the first to be gender integrated in the Ottoman Empire.^[2]

İsmail Hakkı first married Ulviye Sultan, daughter of the Sultan Mehmed VI, making him a damat, or imperial in-law. This made İsmail Hakkı a son of a grand vizier and son-in-law of the sultan. He was one of the first officers to answer calls of resistance during the Turkish War of Independence.^[2] An apocryphal story has the officer of the imperial family meeting Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, whereupon the renegade asked him, "What news did you bring from your father and the sultan?", İsmail Hakkı answered "[that] I came to fight." Tevfik Pasha, informed of his son's escapade by the angered sultan replied, "he went to fulfill his duty." Mehmed VI enacted a divorce on the couple. Following the sultan's exile, İsmail Hakkı remarried with Ferhunde Hanım, the great aunt of Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit.^[2]

• List of Ottoman grand viziers
• Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ottoman Empire)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ahmed Tevfik Pasha.

• "Tewfik, Ahmed, Pasha" . Encyclopædia Britannica (12th ed.). 1922.