Ahmet Rıza

Ahmed Rıza (1858 – 26 February 1930) was an Ottoman educator, activist, revolutionary, intellectual, politician, polymath, and a prominent member of the Young Turks. He was also a key 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 Nâzım Bey he founded the Meşveret, the first official publication of the society, where he was exiled. In addition to his work as an opposition leader, Rıza was 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.

Early life
Ahmet Rıza was born in Istanbul in 1858 to a family that was in public service for generations. He was the son of Ali Rıza Bey a statesman and Senator. Ahmet's grandfather was the Minister of Agriculture and Mint, also named Ali Rıza. Ahmet's great-grandfather was Kemankeş Efendi, Sultan Selim III's Sır Kâtibi (Secret Secretary); His father was Sıddık Molla, a kadı that served in Egypt. Ahmet's father was nicknamed İngiliz ("Englishman") because of his command of the English language and admiration of the British Empire. His mother, Fräulein Turban, was born in Munich but was of Hungarian origin. She moved to Vienna, where she met İngiliz while he was on a diplomatic mission, and converted to Islam to marry him, taking the name Naile Sabıka Hanım. Ahmet's sister was Selma Rıza.

Ahmet Rıza received a Western style education, having attended the Beylerbeyi Rüşdiye, thereafter the Mahrec-i Aklâm and then the Mekteb-i Sultânî (modern Galatasaray High School). After graduation, he worked at the Sublime Porte's Translation Office for a while. With the dissolution of the Ottoman Parliament, Ahmet's father was exiled to Konya. While accompanying his father to his exile, he saw the poor conditions of the peasants. The journey made Rıza 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.

Returning to the Ottoman Empire, Ahmed Rıza tried to use his degree and the latest technology to establish an enterprise. However it failed, and he blamed its demise on the backward peasants. He worked in the Ministry of Education with the intention of educating the peasants. In 1887 he resigned as director of education in Bursa. Being pessimistic about reform he decided to go back to France.

Exile in Paris
In 1889 Rıza returned to Paris. Two theories explain Rıza's flight: one was that he gave a pretext of participating in the exhibition organized for the centenary of the French Revolution, another indicated he simply escaped to Paris. In Paris, Rıza worked as a translator in the French judicial system. At Sorbonne University, he continued taking courses on positivism, as taught by the mathematician Pierre Laffitte. 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 Rıza became one of the most active members of the Société Positiviste, and in 1905 he appeared as a "representative of Muslim communities" in the Comité Positif Occidental, an organization established to spread positivism internationally.

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 Rıza 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.

In 1893, Ahmed Rıza sent multiple petitions to Sultan Abdul Hamid II where he outlined the benefits of a constitutional regime. Discouraged after his sixth petition, he began writing articles in the French newsletter La Jeune Turquie published by Khalil Ghanim, and also published the reform program he had previously presented to Abdul Hamid in the form of a pamphlet under the name Lâyiha ve Mektub (Petition and Letter) in London.

Leading the Committee of Union and Progress
Rıza 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 Mehmet Nazım, suggested that he join the society, Rıza 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 Meşveret, a journal that he started publishing with Ghanim. There he tried to synthesize positivist doctrine within the Ottoman-Islamic philosophic tradition. Rıza also published a series of articles advocating for constitutionalism for the Ottoman Empire, which he justified through the Islamic tradition of consultation. He also contributed for Ali Şefkati İstikbal during this time.

Rıza 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".

Throughout his exile he was constantly approached by Constantinople agents with generous offers of amnesty for his defection, which he always refused. As a result of pressure from Yıldız Palace, the French government banned the Meşveret on April 11, 1896. Rıza took his newspaper to Switzerland in May, before settling in Belgium in September 1897. Meanwhile, Ahmed Rıza's secularism and positivism caused a rift with the conservative Young Turks which united around Mizancı Murat. Most frustrating of all for the Unionists was Rıza staunch opposition to revolution. In a congress held in December 1896, Murad Bey was elected as the head of the CUP, replacing Ahmed Rıza Bey. During the Greco-Turkish War, Ahmed Rıza was expelled from the CUP after he refused to pull an article he published in Meşveret in support of the Cretan Rebellion. Rıza had to relocate again when the Belgian government banned Meşveret and deported him in 1898, much to the Belgian Parliament's dismay. Ahmed Rıza 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 Mizancı Murad and his friends returned to Istanbul for amnesty. What consoled Rıza during this time was that the Young Turks that remained in Europe began to gather around him again. 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, Damat Mahmut Pasha and his sons Prince Sabahattin and Lütfullah. However these new defectors had different ideas for the future of the Ottoman Empire: they believed in liberalism and decentralization. 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 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 Rıza, who remained in the minority. Rıza was also opposed to any autonomous status for the Armenian-populated eastern provinces. After the congress, Rıza 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 Şûrâ-yı Ümmet, based in Cairo, which Rıza contributed to.

Rıza's 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 merged with the CPU in 1907. That year, a Second Congress of Ottoman Opposition was held in on 29 December. At the congress, supporters of revolution managed to sway Rıza, and the delegates pledged to insight a revolution by all means necessary, including terrorism. In Paris, he played no significant role in the events of the Young Turk Revolution.

Second Constitutional Era
After the declaration of the Constitution, Rıza returned to Istanbul on September 25, 1908 where he was welcomed with the "Father of Liberty" (ebü-l ahrar, hürriyetçilerin babası). He held an audience with the sultan on 16 October 1908.

Ahmed Rıza was inducted into the CUP's Central Committee and after being elected to the Chamber of Deputies as an MP from Istanbul, 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 rioters during the 31 March Incident. On the first day of the events, Minister of Justice Mustafa Nazım Pasha was mistaken for the president and lynched. Rıza 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. Rıza returned to his job when the Action Army arrived in Ayestefanos 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, Rıza became increasingly disillusioned with the CUP for their assassinations of journalists such as Hasan Fehmi and Ahmet Samim, and he resigned from the CUP's Central Committee. He gave up his parliamentary presidency in 1911. He did not run for reelection with the dissolution of the parliament on January 1912, and was appointed as a Senator by the sultan 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.

Later career
In 1915, Rıza 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."

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 Rıza 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. Grand vizier Damat Ferid Pasha eventually outmaneuvered him, taking away his position. He defected to Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) Pasha's movement and went to Paris on 22 June 1919. He was instrumental in the negotiations between France and the Grand National Assembly government which led to the end of the Franco-Turkish War. He returned to the Turkish Republic in 1926.

After retiring from public life at a farm in Vaniköy, Ahmed Riza 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 Rıza Bey’in Anıları ("The Memoirs of Ahmet Rıza, the President of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate"). He died on 26 February 1930 in Istanbul, and is buried in Kandilli Cemetery.

He was awarded the Order of Karađorđe's Star.

Books

 * Layihalar, 1889
 * Tolarance Muslumane, 1897
 * Journals of Meşveret, 1903-1908
 * La Crise de I’Orient, 1907
 * Echos de Turquie, 1920
 * La Faillite Morale de la Politique Occidentale en Orient, 1922

Vazife ve Mesuliyet

 * Padişah ve Şehzadeler
 * Asker
 * Kadın

Magazines

 * Revue Occidentale, 1896-1908
 * Positivist Review, 1900-1908