Ahmed Rıza Bey (1858 – 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.The Rise and Development of the Liberal Thought ın Turkey
During the nearly twenty years that 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 Meşveret, the first official publication of the society, where he was exiled. In addition to his work as an opposition leader, Rıza 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.1908 Devrimi Aykut Kansu İletişim Yayınları, , 2009 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 among the few 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, returning to Turkey after the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne.
Early life Ahmed Rıza 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. Ahmed's grandfather was the Minister of Agriculture and Mint, also named Ali Rıza. Ahmed's great-grandfather was Kemankeş Efendi, Sultan Selim III's Sır Kâtibi (Secret Secretary); His father was a Turkish kadı that served in Egypt. Ali Rıza was nicknamed İngiliz ("Englishman") because of his command of the English language and admiration of Britain. His wife, Fräulein Turban, was born in Munich but 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. Among Ahmed's siblings, his youngest sister was Selma Rıza, who became the first female Turkish journalist.
Ahmed's childhood was spent in the family farm in Vaniköy. In addition to more bookish interests like poetry, he enjoyed hunting and gardening, and likely wrote the first book on hunting in Turkey. Under his mother's influence he was raised with a Western education, and attended the Mekteb-i Sultânî (modern Galatasaray High School). He began a career in civil service working at the Sublime Porte's Translation Office.
With the dissolution of the Ottoman Parliament, Ahmet accompanied his father to his exile to Ilgın, Konya. Along the way he noticed 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.He tried to use his education to establish an enterprise using the latest agricultural techniques, but wasn't successful, following which he failed to acquire a civil service position at the Ministry of Agriculture. Rıza 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 Paris
In 1889 Rıza 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. Rıza 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 Robinet’s 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. Rıza became an active member 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".
In his first years in Paris, he defended the actions of the Ottoman government which were criticized in the press. In 1891, Constantinople ordered Rıza to return to the empire due to the "libertine" language he used in a conference about Ottoman women, but he did not comply.
Though patriotic of his country, Rıza determined a lack of education and positive sciences was the reason for the Ottoman Empire's backwardness compared to the rest of Europe. In 1893, Ahmed Rıza sent multiple petitions to Sultan Abdul Hamid II where he outlined the benefits of a constitutional regime and its adherence 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 his friend Khalil Ghanim (Halil Ganim), in the form of a pamphlet called Lâyiha ve Mektub (Petition and Letter) in London. The Hamidian regime attempted to intimidate Rıza with censorship, bribes, offers of amnesty, and threats to friends and family, but he stubbornly refused to fold until the regime's collapse in 1908.
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 Doctor Mehmet Nazım, suggested that he join the society, Rıza accepted but requested 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 published with Ghanim. There he attempted to synthesize positivism within the Ottoman-Islamic philosophic tradition. Rıza also published a series of articles advocating for constitutionalism for the Ottoman Empire, which he justified through its adherence with the Islamic principle of consultation. Ahmed Rıza, his Parisian circle, and Meşveret became synonymous with the CUP and the Young Turks movement. He also contributed for 's 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". 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.
Throughout his exile he was constantly approached by Ottoman agents with generous offers of amnesty for his defection, which he always refused. However, Ahmed Rıza's stubborn secularism and internationalist positivism caused a rift with conservative Young Turks which united around Mizancı Murad. The basis for this conflict may have been Rıza's attempt to merge the CUP with the Positivist Committee of Paris. Most frustrating of all for the Unionists was Rıza staunch opposition to revolution, instead believing in progress through political evolution. In a congress held in December 1896, Murad Bey was elected as president of the CUP, replacing Ahmed Rıza. As a result of pressure from Yıldız Palace, the French government banned the Meşveret on 11 April 1896. Rıza took his newspaper to Switzerland in May, before settling in Belgium in September 1897. Rıza had to relocate again when the Belgian government banned Meşveret and deported him in 1898, an action condemned by the Belgian Parliament. 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 and dissolved the CUP. What consoled Rıza 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 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, essentially a continuation of Meşveret, based in Cairo, which Rıza contributed to.
In 1905 Şehzade Yusuf İzzeddin's private physician Doctor Bahaeddin Şakir defected to the Young Turks and reorganized the CPU to be a more revolutionary organization. Rıza'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, İsmâil 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 Rıza, and the delegates pledged to insight a revolution by all means necessary. However Rıza 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.
Second Constitutional Era