Mahmud Shevket | |
|---|---|
محمود شوكت | |
 | |
| Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire | |
| In office 23 January 1913 – 11 June 1913 | |
| Monarch | Mehmed V |
| Preceded by | Kâmil Pasha |
| Succeeded by | Said Halim Pasha |
| Minister of War | |
| In office 23 January 1913 – 11 June 1913 | |
| Monarch | Mehmed V |
| Grand Vizier | Himself |
| Preceded by | Nazım Pasha |
| Succeeded by | Ahmet İzzet Pasha |
| In office 12 January 1910 – 9 July 1912 | |
| Monarch | Mehmed V |
| Grand Vizier | İbrahim Hakkı Pasha Mehmed Said Pasha |
| Preceded by | Salih Hulusi Pasha |
| Succeeded by | Hurşid Pasha |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1856 |
| Died | 11 June 1913 (aged 56 or 57) Istanbul, Ottoman Empire |
| Manner of death | Assassination |
| Resting place | Monument of Liberty, Istanbul |
| Relations | Khaled Sulayman Faiq (brother), Hikmet Sulayman (brother) |
| Alma mater | Mekteb-i Harbiye |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  Ottoman Empire |
| Branch/service | Ottoman Army |
| Rank | Field Marshal |
| Commands | Third Army Action Army |
| Battles/wars | Macedonian Struggle 31 March Incident Albanian Revolt of 1910 Yemeni Revolt Albanian Revolt of 1912 First Balkan War |
Mahmud Shevket Pasha (Ottoman Turkish:محمود شوكت پاشا,Turkish:Mahmut Şevket Paşa; 1856 – 11 June 1913)[1] was anOttoman military commander and statesman.
During the31 March Incident in 1909, Shevket Pasha and theCommittee of Union and Progress overthrewAbdul Hamid II after an anti-Constitutionalist uprising inConstantinople.[2] He played the role of a military dictator,[3] surpassing the power of the CUP and the Grand Viziers after the crisis, with many observers ascribing him the title "generalissimo".[4] AsWar Minister he introduced military reform and the incorporation ofAir Squadrons. Shevket Pasha becameGrand Vizier during theFirst Balkan War, in the aftermath of the CUP's23 January 1913 coup d'état, resuming war with theBalkan League. He was assassinated 6 months later by partisans of theFreedom and Accord Party, as part of a largercounter-coup attempt against the CUP.
Mahmud Shevket was born inBaghdad in 1856. His grandfather, Hacı Talib Ağa had moved fromTbilisi to Baghdad.[5] His father wasBasra governorKethüdazade Süleyman Faik Bey. He had four brothers, Numan, Murad,Khaled, and the much youngerHikmat, the latter two would become important statesmen of post Ottoman ruleIraq. Raised as an Ottoman, most sources claim that he hadGeorgian,[6]Chechen,[7][8][9][10] orIraqi Arab[11] ancestry. However, according toCelal Bayar andRıza Tevfik Bölükbaşı, the relatives of the pasha told them that his father was of Georgian and his mother of Arab origin.[12][13] In addition toTurkish andArabic, he spokeFrench andGerman.
He finished his primary and secondary education in Baghdad before going toAlliance Israélite Universelle of Constantinople (nowIstanbul).[14][15][16] After completing his education in theMekteb-i Harbiye in 1882 he served inCrete as a lieutenant before returning as a faculty member the next year.[17] Shevket rose through the ranks, eventually serving on thegeneral staff and achieving the rank ofMiralay (Colonel) in 1891. He joined an arms purchasing commission sent toGermany to supervise the manufacture of war matériel for the Ottoman army, during which he worked as an assistant toColmar Freiherr von der Goltz. There he wrote extensively on theMauser rifle as it entered into operation in the Ottoman Army. Upon his return in 1899, he was promoted to brigadier general and appointed deputy chairman of theTophane-i Amire's Inspection Commission. In 1901, he was promoted toFerik (Lieutenant General) and was soon assigned to theHejaz railway to oversee construction of the Mecca–Medina telegraph line. He perceived this assignment as an exile, which likely tainted his opinion of SultanAbdul Hamid II's regime. During this period he also spent some time in France studying military technology.[18]
In 1905 Mahmud Shevket Pasha was appointed governor of theKosovo Vilayet during the height of theMacedonian Conflict, where he gained respect from the army for his effectiveness. He made contact with theCommittee of Union and Progress (CUP) and turned a blind eye to their anti-regime activism. Thus began his complex and tenuous relationship with the "Sacred Committee". When the CUP prevailed in the 1908Young Turk Revolution, which forced Sultan Abdul Hamid to reinstate theOttoman constitution andcall for elections, Shevket was placed in command of the Selanik-basedThird Army (nowThessaloniki).
In 1902 he publishedOttoman Military Organization and Uniforms from the Establishment of the Ottoman State to the Present (Turkish:Devlet-i Osmâniyye’nin Bidâyet-i Tesisinden Şimdiye Kadar Osmanlı Teşkilât ve Kıyâfet-i Askeriyesi) which is considered to be one of the most comprehensive studies written on the history of the Ottoman army and its uniforms.[19]
A year later saw the31 March Incident, when counter-revolutionary reactionaries rose up in support of Abdulhamid's absolutist rule and theConstitution was once again repealed. The CUP appealed to Shevket Pasha to restore the status quo, and he organized theAction Army, anad hoc formation made up of his Third Army and elements of theFirst andSecond Armies to suppress the uprising.[20][21] TheThird Army was still entirely loyal to the CUP under Shevket’s command.[22]His chief of staff during the crisis was the first president of theRepublic of Turkey, captainMustafa Kemal (Atatürk). The Action Army entered Constantinople on 24 April, and after a series of negotiations, Abdulhamid II was deposed,Mehmed V Reshad ascended to the throne, the Constitution was reinstated for the third and last time, and the CUP was allowed to form a government.
After the incident, he became an important power holder in Ottoman politics: Shevket Pasha was mademartial law Commander of Constantinople, inspector of the First, Second, and Third Armies, andMinister of War. ThoughHüseyin Hilmi Pasha came back to form a government, his premiership was widely seen as being under Shevket Pasha's control. His War Ministry worked to keep officers away from politics, especially the CUP.[23] His tenure as War Minister saw the suppression of the1910 Albanian Revolt. He also used troops fromTripolitania to suppressYahya Muhammad Hamid ed-Din's revolt in Yemen, which exposed Tripolitania toforeign invasion from Italy in 1911. Hilmi's resignation sawIbrahim Hakki elevated to the Grand Vezierate, and Shevket was also included in cabinet as War Minister.
Shevket Pasha is credited for the creation ofOttoman Air Divisions in 1911. He gave much importance to a military aviation program and as a result the Ottoman Empire held some of the most pioneering aviation institutions in the world.[24][25]
In an interview withThe New York Times, he pushed for Christians to make up 25% of theOttoman army, and for good relations with theUnited States.[26]
Though he saved the CUP in the 31 March Incident, Shevket also played a pivotal role in the1912 coup which caused the fall of the CUP government. His resignation as War Minister was an effective endorsement to theSavior Officers, who were able to maneuver around the Unionist parliament and shuttered it, driving them underground.[27] Thereafter he served as asenator.
During theFirst Balkan War, the Ottoman Empire lost all of itsBalkan possessions except the outskirts of Constantinople. The CUP overthrewKâmil Pasha's Savior Officer backed government in January 1913 in a coup known as theRaid on the Sublime Porte, because he entered negotiations with theBalkan League. Shevket Pasha was madeGrand Vizier, War Minister,Foreign Minister andField Marshal in anational unity government that included the CUP, and resumed fighting in the war. However, the change in government did not change the reality that the war and most ofRumelia was lost. TheTreaty of London ended the First Balkan War, though Shevket Pasha's government never signed the treaty.[28] He also decided to abandonQatar to Britain to shore upIraq's security, a move which cabinet ministersKüçük Said Pasha, Oskan Mardikyan, andNicolae Batzaria objected to. However Turkish troops continued to occupy Qatar until 1915.[29]
The Ottoman Empire would recoverEastern Thrace andEdirne in theSecond Balkan War, but by then Shevket Pasha would be dead. On 11 June 1913 Mahmud Shevket Pasha was assassinated in his car inBeyazit Square in a revenge attack by a relative of the assassinated War MinisterNazım Pasha, who was killed during the 1913 coup.[1] When Shevket's car stopped in the square for roadside repairs, at least five gunmen fired ten shots from another vehicle.[30] He was buried in theMonument of Liberty, dedicated to soldiers of the Action Army who were killed in the 31 March Incident. The car he was in, the uniform he was wearing, the clothes of his murdered aides, and the weapons used in the assassination are on display at theIstanbul Military Museum. He was survived by his wife, Selime DilşadHanım, with whom he had no children.[31]
With Shevket Pasha's assassination, the CUP took complete control over Ottoman politics. A martial law tribunal handed out several death sentences to real or alleged conspirators, with 12 being executed on 24 June. Many death sentences were doled out among the leadership of the Freedom and Accord Party, which since the Raid of the Sublime Porte were exiled in several countries. Opposition leaders still in the capital were exiled to Sinop.
On the day of his assassination, a deputy of theFreedom and Accord Party,Lütfi Fikri stated "In the full sense of the word, Mahmud Şevket Pasha has committed suicide, and this was decided on the day he accepted the grand vezierate over the corpse ofNâzım Pasha. I am sure that this man did not like, for instance,Talaat Bey and his friends. How could it be that he became, to such a degree, a toy in their hands and died for this reason?"[32]
Mahmud Shevket Pasha represented the last independent personality in the Empire's politics; the successor of the premiership,Said Halim Pasha, would be a puppet of the CUP's radical faction, headed bythe triumvirate ofTalat,Enver, andCemal, all of whom would finally enter the cabinet following his death.Enver Pasha took Shevket Pasha's old post ofMinister of War by 1914, and Talat in addition to returning to theinterior ministry after his assassination, himself became Grand Vizier in 1917. Shevket Pasha's assassination allowed the CUP, primarily Talat Pasha, to establish a radical nationalist dictatorship that would last until the Ottoman Empire's defeat inWorld War I in 1918. This dictatorship would see the empire retakeEdirne in theSecond Balkan War, but also join and loseWorld War I while committinggenocide against its Christian minorities.
Shevket Pasha was the last Ottoman Grand Vizier to die in office. He was the only grand vizier to have written memoirs.[31]
A town inBeykoz, Istanbul is named after him. The name of the townTirilye was changed to Mahmutşevketpaşa in his memory after his assassination, but would rename itself to Zeytinbağı in 1963.[33]
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In a 2012 interview withHabertürk,Murat Bardakçı publicized what he claimed was the first ever audio recording made in the Ottoman Empire, which was Mahmud Shevket Pasha's rallying speech to the troops of the Action Army, urging them to march on Istanbul and overthrow the sultan.[34] While a YouTube video recording of the speech has gone viral, its veracity has been controversial. A study by the historian Derya Tulga concluded that it is impossible for an original audio recording of Shevket Pasha's 1909 speech to exist, and even assuming it is Mahmud Shevket Pasha's voice, the recording was ultimately a reenactment produced two years after the 31 March Incident, which he would have done for propaganda purposes. She goes further to state that the voice in the recording is most likely not even Shevket Pasha's but instead the Turkish representative of Favorite Platten Record Company Ahmet Şükrü Bey. Mehmet Çalışkan came to a similar conclusion, adding that the words of the speech itself can't be verified to be Shevket Pasha's, and points out that Ahmet Şükrü promoted the voice recording on a 15 August 1911 issue of the CUP mouthpieceTanin.[35]
Shevket Pasha wrote several books in addition to his memoirs. He also translatedAlphonse Karr'sSous les Tilleuls.
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Resmi sicillere nazaran bu aileyi kuran zat, aslen (Gürcü) olup (Bağdat kölemenleri)ndendir.[According to the official records, the person who founded this family was originally Georgian and was one of the Baghdad slaves.]
Mahmut Şevket Paşa'nın soyu Gürcü'dür.[Mahmut Şevket Pasha's ancestry is Georgian.]
Kendisi aslen Gürcü idi, ancak ailesi çoktandır Irak'a yerleşmişti ve Araplaşmıştı[He was originally Georgian, but his family had long since settled in Iraq and was Arabized.]
Süleyman Bey Bağdad'daki kölmenlere mensub ve Aslen Gürcü olup merhum Sadr-ı âzam ve Harbiye Nazırı Mahmud Şevket Paşanın babasıdır.[Süleyman Bey, a member of the slaves in Baghdad and originally Georgian, is the father of the late grand vizier and Minister of War Mahmud Şevket Pasha.]
Bana, Mahmut Şevket Paşa'nın yakınları, babasının Gürcü, annesinin Arap olduğunu söylemişlerdir[Relatives of Mahmut Şevket Pasha told me that his father was Georgian and his mother was Arab.]
Kendisi, umumi kanaat ve zan hilâfına, Arap değil Bağdat'ta yerleşmiş bir Gürcü ailesinin evlâdıdır. Nitekim ben Bağdat'ta iken merhumun hâlâ orada yaşayan hısım ve akrabası ile görüştüm.[Contrary to public opinion, he is the son of a Georgian family settled in Baghdad, not an Arab. As a matter of fact, while I was in Baghdad, I talked to the deceased's relatives and relatives who still live there.]
| Preceded by | Grand Vizier 1913 | Succeeded by |
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