Mehmed VI

Mehmed VI
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques
Khan
Mehmed VI in 1918
Sultan of the Ottoman Empire
(Padishah)
Reign4 July 1918 – 1 November 1922
PredecessorMehmed V
SuccessorMonarchy abolished
Grand Viziers
Ottoman caliph
(Amir al-Mu'minin)
Reign4 July 1918 – 19 November 1922
PredecessorMehmed V
SuccessorAbdulmejid II
Head of the Osmanoğlu family
Reign19 November 1922 – 16 May 1926
SuccessorAbdulmejid II
Born(1861-01-14)14 January 1861
Dolmabahçe Palace, Constantinople, Ottoman Empire
Died16 May 1926(1926-05-16) (aged 65)
Sanremo, Liguria, Italy
Burial3 July 1926[1]
Cemetery of Sulaymaniyya Takiyya, Damascus, Syria
Consorts
(m. 1885)
(m. 1905; div. 1909)
(m. 1911)
(m. 1918; div. 1924)
(m. 1921)
Issue
Names
Mehmed Vahdeddîn Han bin Abdülmecid[2]
DynastyOttoman
FatherAbdulmejid I
MotherGülistu Kadın (biological)
Şayeste Hanım (adoptive)
ReligionSunni Islam
TughraMehmed VI's signature

Mehmed VI Vahideddin (Ottoman Turkish: محمد سادس Meḥmed-i sâdis or وحيد الدين Vaḥîdü'd-Dîn; Turkish: VI. Mehmed or Vahdeddin/Vahideddin; 14 January 1861 – 16 May 1926), also known as Şahbaba (lit.'Emperor-father') among the Osmanoğlu family,[3] was the last sultan of the Ottoman Empire and the penultimate Ottoman caliph, reigning from 4 July 1918 until 1 November 1922, when the Ottoman sultanate was abolished and replaced by the Republic of Turkey on 29 October 1923.

The brother of Mehmed V Reşâd, he became heir to the throne in 1916, after the death of Şehzade Yusuf Izzeddin, as the eldest male member of the House of Osman. He acceded to the throne after the death of Mehmed V.[4] He was girded with the Sword of Osman on 4 July 1918 as the 36th padishah and 115th Islamic Caliph.

Mehmed VI's reign began with the Ottoman Empire suffering defeat by the Allied Powers with the conclusion of World War I. The subsequent Armistice of Mudros resulted in the legal occupation of Istanbul and many illegal occupations in other parts of the empire. An initial process of reconciliation between the government and Christian minorities over their massacres and deportations by the government ultimately proved fruitless, when the Greeks and Armenians, via their patriarchates, renounced their status as Ottoman subjects by the end of 1918, spelling a definitive end of Ottomanism. Unionist elements within the Ottoman military, discontent with Sultan Mehmed VI's Anglophilia and his alliance with Damat Ferid Pasha, began taking actions into their own hands by establishing a nationalist resistance, beginning the Turkish War of Independence. Mehmed VI's most significant act as Sultan was dispatching Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) to reassert government control in Anatolia, which actually resulted in the further consolidation of anti-appeasement actors against the court, and consequently, the end of the monarchy.

With the Turkish Nationalists standing against Allied designs for a partition of Ottoman Anatolia, the Allies pressured Sultan Mehmed VI to dissolve the Nationalist dominated Chamber of Deputies, ending the Second Constitutional Era. Kemal Pasha responded with establishing a provisional government known as the Grand National Assembly based in Ankara, which dominated the rest of the Ottoman Empire, while the Sultan's unpopular government in Istanbul was propped up by the Allied powers and effectively impotent. His ministers went on to sign the Treaty of Sèvres, a peace treaty which would have partitioned the remainder of his empire leaving a rump Turkish state. With Ankara's victory in the independence war, the Sèvres Treaty was abandoned for their Treaty of Lausanne. On 1 November 1922, the Grand National Assembly voted to abolish the Sultanate and to depose Mehmed VI as Caliph, and he left for Europe in exile after also being declared persona non grata. On 29 October 1923, the Republic of Turkey was declared, with Mustafa Kemal as its first president.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Mehmed was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Ali Aktan (1995). Osmanlı paleografyası ve siyasî yazışmaları. Osmanlılar İlim ve İrfan Vakfı. p. 90.
  3. ^ Murat Bardakçı (2017). Neslishah: The Last Ottoman Princess. p. 85.
  4. ^ Freely, John, Inside the Seraglio, 1999, Chapter 16: The Year of Three Sultans.