Mehmed VI

Mehmed VI Vahideddin (Ottoman Turkish: محمد سادس Meḥmed-i sâdis or وحيد الدين Vaḥîdü'd-Dîn; Turkish: VI. Mehmed or Vahdettin/Vahideddin; 14 January 1861 – 16 May 1926), also known as Şahbaba (lit. 'Emperor-father') among the Osmanoğlu family, 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 half-brother of Mehmed V Reşâd, he became heir to the throne in 1916 following the death of Şehzade Yusuf İzzeddin, as the eldest male member of the House of Osman. He acceded to the throne after the death of Mehmed V on 4 July 1918 as the 36th padishah and 115th Islamic Caliph.

Mehmed VI's chaotic reign began with Turkey suffering defeat by the Allies Powers with the conclusion of World War I nearing. The subsequent Armistice of Mudros legitimized further Allied incursions into Turkish territory, resulting in an informal occupation of Istanbul and other parts of the empire. An ardent anglophile, Sultan Vahdeddin hoped a policy of close cooperation with Britain could result in a less harsh peace treaty. 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. During the Paris Peace Conference, Mehmed VI turned to Damat Ferid Pasha to diplomatically outflank Greek territorial demands on Turkey through Allied appeasement, but to no avail. Unionist elements within the military, discontent with the government's appeasement in the face of partition, and the establishment of war crimes tribunals, began taking actions into their own hands by establishing a nationalist resistance to resume war. Mehmed'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 Greek Occupation of Smyrna on 15 May 1919 galvanizing the Turkish nationalist movement and beginning the Turkish War of Independence, by October the sultan's government had to give in to nationalist demands with the Amasya Protocol. The Allies militarily occupied Istanbul on 16 March 1920, and pressured Sultan Mehmed VI to dissolve the Nationalist dominated Chamber of Deputies and suspend the Constitution, when the Turkish nationalists stood against Allied designs for a partition of Anatolia. Kemal Pasha responded by establishing a provisional government known as the Grand National Assembly based in Ankara, which dominated the rest of Turkey, while the Sultan's unpopular government in Istanbul was propped up by the Allied powers and effectively impotent. Mehmed VI condemned the nationalist leaders as infidels and called for their execution, though the provisional government in Ankara claimed it was rescuing the Sultan-Caliph from manipulative foreigners and ministers. The Sultan's so-called Istanbul government would go on to sign the Treaty of Sèvres, a peace treaty which would have partitioned the remainder of the 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 subsequently fled the country. His cousin Abdul Mejid II was elected Caliph in his stead, though he too, and the entire Osmanoğlu family were soon exiled after the abolition of the Caliphate. On 29 October 1923, the Republic of Turkey was declared, with Mustafa Kemal Pasha as its first president, ending more than 600 years of Ottoman suzerainty. Mehmed VI died in exile in 1926 in San Remo, Italy, having never acknowledged his deposition.