Sultan Mehmed vi

Mehmed VI (1861-1926) was the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire (1918-1922). His full name was Muhammad Wahideddin bin Abdul Megid bin Mahmoud. He was born in Istanbul. He became king after the death of his brother Mohammed V (reigned 1909-1918). To get rid of the situation under the control of the Young Turks during his brother's reign, he dissolved the National Assembly and presided over the government himself.

In mid-March 1920, the British army occupied the imperial capital of Istanbul. Muhammad collaborated with it, outlawed the national resistance movement, arrested and exiled the parliamentarians who advocated the war of resistance, and organized a "caliphate" armed by the British to participate in the suppression of the national liberation movement in Anatolia. After the determined struggle of the revolutionaries led by Kemal, he was forced to agree to hold elections to elect a new National Assembly. After the continuous intervention of the British, French and other Allied powers, and the arrest and exile of the Turkish revolutionaries, Muhammad yielded to pressure, dissolved the nationalist-majority National Assembly again, and signed the humiliating Treaty of Sephora with the Allied powers in August 1920, which caused a large part of Turkey's territory to be dismembered and divided by the great powers, thus arousing the strong dissatisfaction of the people of all walks of life. After the revolutionaries led by Kemal reorganized the Grand National Assembly in Ankara and formally established a provisional government, Muhammad's status as a sultan was useless except for the sole power to appoint Islamic judges.

On November 1, 1922, the Turkish Grand National Assembly passed the abolition of the Sudanese system. A few days later, the new government approved the regular trial of the Sudan for treason. Mohammed, under the protection of the British authorities, sneaked on a British warship with his youngest son on November 17, 1922 and fled, and the Ottoman Empire perished. Mohammed first went into exile in Malta and later moved to Syria. In 1926, he died of illness in San Remo, Italy and was buried in the Suleiman Mosque.

When World War I broke out in 1914, Turkey initially wanted to be neutral, but Churchill, the British Admiralty at the time, pushed Turkey to the side of the Germans. Before the war, Mahmoud repeatedly appealed for a permanent alliance with Britain on behalf of Mohammed V, but was arrogantly rejected by the British each time. In 1913, Turkey paid 30 million dollars for two state-of-the-art dreadnoughts from Britain. To raise this huge sum of money, Mahmoud even offered a diamond crown as collateral.

On July 28, 1914, the night before Britain declared war on Germany, Churchill unjustifiably "commandeered" two dreadnoughts belonging to Turkey, without any mention of compensation. In Churchill's eyes, the entire Ottoman Empire was less important than these two warships. The news of the British confiscation of the two warships dealt a blow to the Turkish government. Mahmoud hated the arrogant Churchill and stopped preventing the government from falling to the German side. In November, Britain and Turkey declared war, resulting in the blockade of access to the Black Sea for the British fleet. In 1915, Churchill launched the Battle of Gallipoli, which opened the Black Sea Strait. He did not expect that the Turks, who he had not taken seriously, would fight to the death. The whole battle turned into a massacre of British soldiers, and Churchill was also fired. After the war, when Churchill met Mahmoud again, he admitted that he had ignored the existence of Turkey and caused the terrible "slaughter, pain and destruction" that followed.

In 1918, Mohammed V died suddenly, and Mahmoud succeeded to become Mohammed VI. At that time, the Ottoman Empire was on the verge of death, with 600,000 soldiers killed or captured, and two million injured. The famine and plague caused by the war claimed countless lives. The Young Turk Party government was also crumbling in the wind. The first thing Mohammed VI did after he ascended the throne was to order the dissolution of the National Assembly, personally preside over the government, and recklessly begged for peace from the Allies. On October 30, 1918, Turkey was forced to sign a peace treaty with the Allies. After that, the British, French, Italian and Greek coalition forces occupied a large area of Turkish territory and attempted to dismember the Ottoman Empire. Turkey, which was at its peak, faced the danger of subjugation and extinction. The then British Prime Minister Lloyd George said: "We don't need to regret that Turkey will disappear from the (international political) stage.¡»

At a critical juncture of national survival, the Turkish National Resistance Movement led by Kemal raised the banner of resistance.

Mohammed VI secretly acquiesced in this behavior. Although the British forced him to declare the Kemal Movement a "rebellion," the military court sentenced Kemal to death in absentia, and dispatched the "Caliphate" to participate in the Allies 'suppression of the rebels, Mohammed VI hinted that the commanders of the "Caliphate" should not work hard while fighting on the front line, and even encouraged their subordinates to defect to the Kemal Rebellion.

But none of this changed the political fate of Muhammad VI. On November 17, 1922, before Kemal's army was about to march into Istanbul, Muhammad VI and his young son boarded a British warship and fled, declaring the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Until the moment he boarded the ship, Muhammad VI was still convinced that he would return. After that, he traveled to Malta, Italy, France, and Tunisia, and wrote many letters to Turkish President Kemal, hoping to return to the motherland, even if he gave up the throne. But these letters were all lost. In 1926, Muhammad VI died alone in Italy. His last words to his descendants were: "My greatest sorrow is not to abdicate, but to leave the motherland."