Ahmet Rñza Bey (1858 â 26 February 1930) was a Turkish activist, intellectual, politician, author, educator, polymath, and a prominent Young Turk. He was an early leader of the Committee of Union and Progress.
During the nearly twenty years he lived in Paris, he led the Paris branch of the Committee of Ottoman Union, which would later be named the Committee of Union and Progress, and together with Doctor Nâzñm Bey he founded the Meà Âveret, the first official publication of the society, where he was exiled. In addition to his work as an opposition leader, Rñza doubled as a positivist ideologue.
Following the 1908 revolution he was proclaimed as the "Father of Liberty" and became the first President of the revived Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Ottoman Parliament. By 1910 he distanced himself from the CUP as it turned more radical and authoritarian. In 1912, he was appointed as a Senator. He was the leading negotiator during the failed talks for a military alliance between the Ottoman Empire, France, and Britain for World War I. During the war, he was one of the only politicians who opposed and condemned the Armenian genocide while it was ongoing. In the Armistice Era he was appointed as president of the Senate and prosecuted his former Unionist comrades. After a falling out with Damat Ferid Pasha he once again went to France, where he supported Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk)'s Nationalists. He returned to Turkey after the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne.
Ahmed Rñza was born in Istanbul in 1858 to a family that was in public service for generations, the eldest of seven children. He was the son of a statesman and Senator. Ahmet's grandfather was the Minister of Agriculture and Mint, also named Ali Rñza. Ahmet's great-grandfather was Kemankeà  Efendi, Sultan Selim III's Sñr Kâtibi (Secret Secretary); His father was a Turkish kadñ that served in Egypt. Ahmet's father was nicknamed ðngiliz ("Englishman") because of his command of the English language and admiration of Britain. His mother, Fräulein Turban, was born in Munich but of Hungarian origin. She moved to Vienna, where she met ðngiliz while he was on a diplomatic mission, and converted to Islam to marry him, taking the name Naile Sabñka Hanñm. Among Ahmet's siblings, his youngest sister was Selma Rñza, who became the first female Turkish journalist.
Under his mother's influence he was raised with a Western education with private tutors. Having contracted asthma he was interested in poetry in his childhood and composed several poems in the family farm in Vaniköy. During this period he was interested in hunting and gardening, and even wrote the first book on hunting in Turkey.Ahmet Rñza received a Western style education, having attended the Beylerbeyi Rüà Âdiye, thereafter the Mahrec-i Aklâm and then the Mekteb-i Sultânî (modern Galatasaray High School). After graduation, he began a career in civil service by working at the Sublime Porte's Translation Office. With the dissolution of the Ottoman Parliament, Ahmet joined his father to his exile to Ilgñn, Konya. While accompanying his father to his exile, he saw the poor conditions of the peasants. The journey made Rñza concerned of their well-being and he wished to introduce them to modern cultivation methods, which led him to study agriculture in France. In 1884 he graduated from Grignon University with a degree in agricultural engineering. While in Paris he discovered the positivist ideas of Auguste Comte and Jean-François Robinet.
He returned to the Ottoman Empire when he heard of the death of his father right before he was to take his final exams. He tried to use his education to establish an enterprise using the latest agricultural techniques, but he wasn't successful. He applied for a civil service position at the Ministry of Agriculture, but his efforts were unsuccessful. Rñza was appointed as a principal and chemistry teacher at a school in Bursa, and soon became director of education of the city. But being pessimistic about significant reform he decided to go back to France to begin an opposition movement.
In 1889 Rñza moved to Paris where he found an apartment on Rue Monge in the 5th arrondissement, arriving to participate in the exhibition organized for the centenary of the French Revolution. Rñza initially maintained a quiet life making a living as a translator in the French judicial system. At Sorbonne University, he attended Pierre Laffitte's lectures on positivism and natural history. This wasn't the first time he encountered positivism, he had earlier read Jean-François Eugène RobinetâÂÂs biography of Auguste Comte. He was influenced by Laffitte's thoughts about Islam and Eastern civilization in particular. Laffitte believed that Islam was the most advanced religion, so it was easy for Muslims to embrace positivism. Ahmet Rñza became one of the most active members of the Société Positiviste, and served as a Muslim or Ottoman representative in conferences meant to spread positivism internationally, or to create a "United States of Europe".
During his first years in Paris, he attempted to respond to various newspapers and magazines which were writing unfavorably about the Ottoman Empire. In 1891, the Ottoman government ordered Rñza to return to the empire due to the "liberal" language he used in a conference about Ottoman women, but he did not comply. He wrote a letter to the Ministry of Post and Telegraphs in Istanbul, stating that he was not a member of a secret society and that when it was necessary to defend the interests and rights of the country and nation, he could do so through articles he published in Parisian newspapers.
Though patriotic of his country, Rñza attempted to find out why the Ottoman Empire was so backward compared to the progress made by the rest of Europe and determined the antidote was education and positive sciences. In 1893, Ahmed Rñza sent multiple petitions to Sultan Abdul Hamid II where he outlined the benefits of a constitutional regime and its sacredness according to the Islamic principle of consultation. This being part of a larger suggested reform package, he initially received interest from the Sultan. But discouraged after no response to his sixth petition, he began publishing his reform proposals in the French newsletter La Jeune Turquie edited by Khalil Ghanim, in the form of a pamphlet under the name Lâyiha ve Mektub (Petition and Letter) in London. The Hamidian regime attempted to intimidate Rñza with censorship, bribes, offers of amnesty, and threats to friends and family, but he stubbornly persevered until the regime's collapse in 1908.
Rñza started corresponding with the members of the Committee of Ottoman Union in 1892. It is thought that he made suggestions to the first draft program of the society. When the leading members of Ottoman Union were arrested and released a short time later that year, many of them fled to Paris. In 1894, these émigrés, especially Doctor Mehmet Nazñm, suggested that he join the society, Rñza accepted but suggested that the name of the society be changed. His suggestion was that the society should be called Order and Progress (Nizam ve Terakki), Comte's positivist motto; The society compromised by adopting the name "Union and Progress" instead.
This made him leader of the Paris branch of the Committee of Union and Progress, a group that was centered around the newspaper Meà Âveret, a journal that he started publishing with Ghanim. There he tried to synthesize positivist doctrine within the Ottoman-Islamic philosophic tradition. Rñza also published a series of articles advocating for constitutionalism for the Ottoman Empire, which he justified through the Islamic principle of consultation. Ahmed Rñza, his Parisian circle, and Meà Âveret became synonymous with the CUP and the Young Turks movement. He also contributed for 's ðstikbal during this time.
Rñza was horrified by the Hamidian massacres, which he blamed on the sultan and condemned as contrary to "the traditions of Islam and the precepts of the Quran". During the Greco-Turkish War, Ahmed Rñza was expelled from the CUP after he refused to pull an article he published in Meà Âveret in support of the Cretan Rebellion.
Throughout his exile he was constantly approached by Ottoman agents with generous offers of amnesty for his defection, which he always refused. However, Ahmed Rñza's stubborn secularism and internationalist positivism caused a rift with conservative Young Turks which united around Mizancñ Murat. The basis for this conflict may have been Rñza's attempt to merge the CUP with the Positivist Committee of Paris. Most frustrating of all for the Unionists was Rñza staunch opposition to revolution, instead believing in achieving progress through political evolution. In a congress held in December 1896, Murad Bey was elected as the head of the CUP, replacing Ahmed Rñza. As a result of pressure from Yñldñz Palace, the French government banned the Meà Âveret on April 11, 1896. Rñza took his newspaper to Switzerland in May, before settling in Belgium in September 1897. Rñza had to relocate again when the Belgian government banned Meà Âveret and deported him in 1898, an action condemned by the Belgian Parliament. Ahmed Rñza gave up publishing the paper in Turkish, instead continuing its existence in French. He was accused of atheism by conservative Young Turks and supporters of Abdul Hamid II. By 1899, the Ottoman government clamped opposition even tighter. More Unionists were arrested in Istanbul and Mizancñ Murad and his friends returned to Istanbul for amnesty and dissolved the CUP. What consoled Rñza during this time was that the Young Turks that remained in Europe began to gather around him again and he reconciled with the Geneva Young Turks. His sister Selma also joined him in Paris, making her the first female member of the society.
At the end of 1899, the Young Turk movement was revived with the defections of Ismail Qemali, and the Sultan's brother in law and nephews: Damat Mahmut Pasha, Prince Sabahattin, and Lütfullah. However these new defectors had different ideas for the future of the Ottoman Empire. At the invitation of Prince Sabahattin and his brother, the First Congress of Ottoman Opposition was convened in Paris in February 1902. At the congress, two groups emerged which were divided on the question of inviting foreign intervention to assist in overthrowing the regime: the "interventionists", consisting of Prince Sabahattin and the Armenian delegates, and the "non-interventionists", who were supporters of Ahmed Rñza, who remained in the minority. Rñza was also opposed to any autonomous status for the Armenian-populated eastern provinces. After the congress, Rñza and his supporters founded the Committee of Progress and Union, while Prince Sabahattin founded the Ottoman Freedom-Lover's Committee. The CPU soon established the magazine à Âûrâ-yñ ÃÂmmet, essentially a continuation of Meà Âveret, based in Cairo, which Rñza contributed to.
In 1905 à Âehzade Yusuf ðzzeddin's private physician Doctor Bahaeddin à Âakir defected to the Young Turks and reorganized the CPU to be a more revolutionary organization. Rñza's role was diminished. The CPU was strengthened with a new circle of sympathizers inside the Ottoman Empire which organized around the Ottoman Freedom Society. Founded by a group of officers and civil servants from Salonica in 1906, the group included men like Mehmed Talât, ðsmâil Enver, Mehmed Cavid, Ahmed Cemâl and others, and the group merged with the CPU in 1907. That year, a Second Congress of Ottoman Opposition was held on 29 December, where Prince Sabahattin's supporters and the Armenian Dashnaks participated. At the congress, supporters of revolution managed to sway Rñza, and the delegates pledged to insight a revolution by all means necessary. However Rñza ruled out the use of terrorism, as it could invite foreign intervention, and the participation of Armenians in a revolution against Abdul Hamid II. In Paris, he played no significant role in the events of the Young Turk Revolution.
After the declaration of the Constitution, Rñza returned to Istanbul on September 25, 1908, where he was welcomed with the "Father of Liberty" (ebü-l ahrar or hürriyetçilerin babasñ). He held an audience with the sultan on 16 October 1908, and traveled to Europe to meet with liberal pressure groups to support Turkey in the Bosnian crisis. Having nominally lead the CUP for so long, the organization as it now existed in the Ottoman Empire was very different. This created tension between the Old Unionists and those now running the party: Talât, Enver, à Âakir, and Cavid.
Ahmed Rñza was inducted into the CUP's Central Committee and after being elected to the Chamber of Deputies as an MP from Istanbul and he was unanimously elected as the President of the Chamber. He was criticized by conservatives for his values. Due to his alleged atheism he was top of the hit list of Islamist rioters during the 31 March Incident. On the first day of the events, Minister of Justice Mustafa Nazñm Pasha was mistaken for the president and lynched. Rñza resigned upon the request of the Grand Vizier in the atmosphere of rebellion and escaped from the parliament as rebels stormed the building while in session. He hid under German protection in a Baghdad Railway Company building in the city. Rñza returned to his job when the Action Army arrived in Ayastefanos to restore order. He was re-elected as the parliament's president in late 1910. That year he nominated the CUP as an organization deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts in advocating for peace in the Ottoman Empire.
However, Rñza became increasingly disillusioned with the CUP for their assassinations of journalists such as Hasan Fehmi and Ahmet Samim and increasing authoritarianism. He resigned from the CUP's Central Committee in 1910, and gave up his parliamentary presidency in 1911. He did not run for reelection with the dissolution of the parliament in January 1912, and was appointed as a Senator by Mehmed V on 18 April 1912. During this period, he harshly criticized the Unionists. After the 1913 coup by the CUP, he completely fell out with the Unionists.
During the Balkan Wars he went to Paris to curry diplomatic goodwill for Turkey among the Europeans.
In 1915, Rñza 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." His distaste for the Unionists was such that when offered to join the Supply Commission in 1918, he resigned at its first meeting.
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).
During the armistice period, Sultan Mehmed VI Vahdettin appointed Ahmed Rñza 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. He initially threw his hat in with the Sultan. He heavily criticized the Ahmed ðzzet Pasha government as a Unionist rearguard, especially due to the participation of Cavid, Mustafa Hayri, and Ali Fethi in the cabinet. He would assist Mehmed VI in his quest to purge the Unionists by amending the constitution to give his sovereign the power to change and dismiss ministers. However he would eventually disagree with Mehmed VI's decision to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies. Ahmed Rñza was instrumental in establishing war crimes tribunals to try Ottoman war criminals. He became a probable candidate for Grand Vizier and it was rumored he could form a government with Mustafa Kemal Pasha, and even met with Fethi Bey to potentially revive the CUP as the government turned dovish to the Allied powers occupying Istanbul. He was outmaneuvered by Damat Ferid Pasha, who was first appointed Grand Vizier on 4 March 1919.
One initiative of Ahmed Rñza to facilitate an agreeable peace treaty was the Vahdet-i Milliye Cemiyeti (National Unity Society), an apolitical association of prominent bureaucrats which corresponded with Allied leaders. The society sent a delegation to Mehmed VI's first Sultanic Council under Rñza's leadership. Eventually, Rñza began to trust Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) Pasha's and the promise of a national resistance movement. After receiving a letter from Kemal, Rñza decided to go to Paris again to lobby for a lighter peace treaty for Turkey. Arriving 19 September 1919, he started a campaign of speeches, interviews, lectures, publishing pamphlets and articles. He corresponded with prominent figures with David Lloyd George, Leon Bourgeois, and Lord Curzon, and personally met with Paul Deschanel, Raymond Poincaré, Clemenceau, and Georges Leygues. He also spoke to the newspapers L'Oeuvre and Temps. He was instrumental in the negotiations between France and the Grand National Assembly government which led to the end of the Franco-Turkish War.
It is not known how well Rñza understood the Turkish Nationalist Movement. Hüseyin Cahid titled one of his letters, "A Unionist who completely failed to understand the National Forces and remained the farthest from it: Ahmed Rñza Bey."
He returned to the Turkish Republic in 1926. Retiring from public life in his Vaniköy farm, Ahmed Rñza wrote his memoirs and a history of the CUP. They were published more than 50 years after his death in 1988 under the title Meclis-i Mebusan ve Ayan Reisi Ahmet Rñza BeyâÂÂin Anñlarñ ("The Memoirs of Ahmet Rñza, the President of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate"). He spent his final years in poverty, selling his library, along with his political documents, to the Turkish Historical Society. He died on 26 February 1930 in à Âià Âli Etfal Hospital in Istanbul, where he was taken after an accidental fall and breaking his hip bone. He is buried in Kandilli Cemetery.
He was awarded the Order of KaraÃÂorÃÂe's Star.
Ahmed Rñza's memoirs were published in Cumhuriyet by Haluk Y. à ÂehsuvaroÃÂlu in 1950, and his correspondences in Akà Âam. He contributed to the following publications: ðstikbal, Islâhat, Osmanlñ, Meà Âveret and Mechvéret Supplément Français, à Âûrâ-yñ ÃÂmmet (1902âÂÂ1908), La Jeune Turquie, La Revue Occidentale (1896âÂÂ1908), and Positivist Review (1900âÂÂ1908).
He published the memorandums he sent to Sultan Abdul Hamid II.