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Mehmed Said Halim
Pasha
Mehmed Said Halim Pasha
Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire
	In office; 12 June 1913 – 4 February 1917
Monarch	Mehmed V
Preceded by	Mahmud Shevket Pasha
Succeeded by	Talaat Pasha
Personal details
Born	18 or 28 January 1865 or 19 February 1864; Cairo, Egypt Eyalet, Ottoman Empire
Died	6 December 1921 (aged 56); Rome, Kingdom of Italy
Nationality	Ottoman
Political party	Committee of Union and Progress
Relations	Muhammad Ali Pasha (grandfather)

Mehmed Said Halim Pasha (Ottoman Turkish: سعيد حليم پاشا; Turkish: Sait Halim Paşa; 18 or 28 January 1865 or 19 February 1864^[1] – 6 December 1921) was a writer and statesman who served as the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1917. He was one of the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide and later assassinated by Arshavir Shirakian as part of Operation Nemesis, a retribution campaign to kill perpetrators of the Armenian genocide.

Early life

Mehmed Said Halim was born at the palace of Shubra in Cairo, Egypt to Muhammad Abd al-Halim Pasha [tr], one of the sons of Muhammed Ali Pasha, the founder of the Khedivet of Egypt. He was of Albanian origin.^[2]^[3] In 1870, he and his family settled in Istanbul.^[4] He was educated by private teachers, and learned Arabic, Persian, English, and French. He later studied political science in Switzerland.^[5]

In 1890^[5] or 1895,^[6] he married Emine İnci Tosun, daughter of Mehmed Tosun Pasha. In the late 1890s the Prince Said Halim Pasha Palace in Downtown Cairo was built for him by the Italian architect Antonio Lasciac.

Political career

In 1888, Said Halim became a member of the Council of State with the rank of Mir-i Mîran, making him a civil Pasha. In 1900 he became the Rumeli Beylerbeyi. During this time he had good relations with Sultan Abdul Hamid II. Jealous courtiers spread rumors of Halim's disloyalty and propensity to read dangerous literature. Falling out of favor, he reduced his interest in his duty in the Council of State and retired to his mansion. In 1903, he was exiled from the capital for establishing relations with the Young Turks. He went first to Egypt and then to Europe and established direct relations with the Young Turks, giving them material and intellectual support. In 1906, he was appointed a leading role in the Committee of Progress and Union. Following the 1908 revolution, he returned to Istanbul.^[4]

While exiled, his position in the Council of State was never officially terminated,^[4] but he was finally dismissed by the council on September 3, 1908. He was appointed as the chief of the Yeniköy city council after its municipal election. He later became the Second Chief of the General Association of Municipalities (Cemiyet-i Umumiye-i Belediye İkinci Reisliği), and in 1908 he was appointed a member of the Ottoman Senate. He member of the administrative council of the Darüşşafaka. Between January 23, 1912 and July 23, 1912, he was chief of the Council of State in Said Pasha's cabinet. Halim was sent to Lausanne to negotiate a peace treaty to end the Italo-Turkish War on 3 July 1912, but the change in government spelled his fall from cabinet and he had to return home.^[4]

Following his resignation, he was elected as the General Secretary of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), and was appointed to the Council of State for the second time in 1913 during Mahmut Şevket Pasha's viziership, and to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs three days later. After the assassination of Şevket Pasha on 11 June 1913, he was first given the rank of vizier and was appointed to the Grand Vizier's Office, and the next day (12 June 1913) to the office of the Grand Vizier (Prime Minister). He was a compromise candidate for the CUP; Said Halim was more conservative and Islamist than the central committee would have wanted, however the prestige of his ancestry and his lack of agency made him an acceptable Grand Vizier to the CUP.

Grand Viziership

In September 1913, he was honored with the Order of Distinction by Sultan Mehmed Reşad for his service in signing the achieving a peace deal with the Bulgarians, and anchoring the border to the Maritsa river, beyond Edirne.

He was one of the signatures of Ottoman–German Alliance, which was signed in his mansion in Yeniköy with the German ambassador, Baron Wangenheim. Yet, he attempted to resign after the incident of the pursuit of Goeben and Breslau, an event which served to bring the Ottoman Empire into the Great War. It is claimed that Sultan Reşad wanted a person in whom he trusted as Grand Vizier, and that he asked Said Halim to stay in his post as long as possible. When Britain annexed Egypt in 1914, Halim Pasha claimed the throne of the Egyptian monarchy based on a firman which changed Egyptian succession law half a century ago.

During the Armenian genocide, Said Halim signed the deportation orders for the Armenian population. The Armenian Patriarch Zaven I Der Yeghiayan appealed to him to cease the terror being committed against Armenians, which Said Halim replied to by claiming reports of arrests and deportations were being greatly exaggerated. Der Yeghiayan himself was later deported.^[7] As the war went on, he was increasingly sidelined by Talaat Bey and Enver Pasha.

He lost his Foreign Ministry to Halil Menteşe in 1915. Said Halim's premiership lasted until 1917, cut short because of continuous clashes between him and the CUP. The Interior Minister Talaat succeeded him.

Arrest and assassination

Said Halim was accused of treason during the court martial trials after World War I in the Ottoman Empire for his role in deporting Armenian civilians and signing a secret alliance with Germany. He was exiled on 29 May 1919 to a prison on Malta.^[8] He was acquitted from the accusations and set free in 1921, and he moved to Sicily. He wanted to return to Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, but this request was rejected. He was assassinated soon after in Rome by Arshavir Shirakian, an agent of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, for his role in the Armenian genocide.^[7] According to Eşref Kuşçubaşı, who was involved in the planning of the Armenian death marches, Said Halim Pasha knew nothing of the genocide.^[9]

Political writings and views

Under the nom de plume "Mehmed", Said Halim Pasha wrote several works of social commentary, comparative politics, and political philosophy during the Hamidian Era and Second Constitutional Era.^[5]

As a social scientist

In a historical analysis, he claimed Islam was not as much in need of a equality movement as in the West due to (Sunni) Islam's lack of clergy and aristocracy, therefore in a civilizational sense, Islamic civilization was more egalitarian than the West. Indeed, he believed the west suffers from inherent inequalities inherent to their social structure, while Islamic civilization suffered from too much equality, leading to an Islamic civilization turning increasingly elitist and exclusive. He identified that materialism emerged from the gap between the Church and the new discoveries of science and technology. The idea that Islam essentially discouraged technological innovation was refuted by Halim, though he did identify western materialism for having destroyed family values. Using the framework of historical materialism, he identified the cause of feminism appropriate among bourgeois women in developed Western-European societies, in contrast to upper-class Ottoman women which he believed were uninterested in further rights.^[5]

In 1916 he published Buhrân-ı İçtimaîmiz, where he castigates Ottoman society for leaving behind their past religion and culture.^[5]

While Western nation-states feature homogeneous societies of different classes that are always in conflict with each other, the Ottoman Empire's heterogeneity meant an Ottoman nationalism did not exist.^[5]

As a commentator

In the 1911 essay Meşrutiyet, he gave a retrospective analysis of the failures of the First Constitutional Era, particularly blaming the lack of a civic political culture developed by many people's in the Empire. A desire among the Tanzimat statesmen for westernization for the sake of westernization veiled the fact that the Empire didn't much resemble France, Turkey's model. Despite the modern cosmopolitanism of the cities like Constantinople, Smyrna, or Salonica, much of the empire was still in a socio-economic state of feudalism, and not sufficiently "enlightened" for representative and constitutional government.^[5]

He was skeptical of the CUP's governance following the 31 March Incident, noting that a people toppling a dictator [Sultan Abdul Hamid II] doesn't mean freedom is automatically attained.

Any administration is not the product of one person or even party; rather, it is almost the product of a particular generation. The sultan Abdulhamid was not the founder of the harsh rule that went by the name of the 'Hamidian' administration. Even if sultan Hamid had never been born, conditions would have been such that that generation would have produced another such sultan. The National Assembly, filled by members of the Committee of Union and Progress, was fired by patriotic zeal and revolutionary dreams, which foundered on the rocks of ignorance and inexperience

Cultural depictions

Iqbal writes in his Javid Nama how Rumi guides him to Mercury, where he sees Said Halim Pasha and Jemaluddin al-Afghani in prayer.^[5]

Works

Essays

Mukallidliklerimiz – 1910
Meşrutiyet – 1911
Buhrân-ı İçtimaîmiz – 1916 Kubbealtı Sahaf
Ta'assup – 1917
İnhitât-i Islam Hakkinda bir Tecrübe-i Kalemiyye – 1917
İslâmlaşmak – 1918
İslâm da Teşkîlât-ı Siyâsiyye/Les Institutions politiques dans la société musulmane/The Reform of Muslim Society – 1921

Journals

Sebîlürreşad

Other

Buhranlarımız ve Son Eserleri – İz Yayıncılık
Said Halim Paşa – Bütün Eserleri Anka Yayınları 2003

Footnotes

^ Şeyhun 2014, p. 147 gives 28 January; Wasti 2008, p. 86 gives 18 January and in endnote 20, p. 102 states that Düzdağ 1991, p. xiii gives 19 February 1864.
^ Hovannisian, Richard G. (31 May 2009). The Armenian Genocide in Perspective p.93. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4128-0891-0.
^ Patricia Marchak, M. (2003). Reigns of Terror p.42. McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. ISBN 978-0-7735-2641-9.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Bostan, M. Hanefi. "Said Halim Paşa". İslâm Ansiklopedisi.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h Wasti 2008, p. 86.
^ Şeyhun 2014, p. 147.
^ ^a ^b Arshavir Shirakian (2013). Arshavir Shiragian - The Legacy: Memoirs of an Armenian Patriot. Translated by Sonia Shiragian. Watertown, Massachusetts: Hairenik Association.
^ Sukran Vahide (2005). Islam in Modern Turkey. State University of New York Press.
^ Akçam, Taner (2006). A Shameful Act. New York. p. 157.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

Literature

Düzdağ, M. Ertuğrul (1991), Said Halim Paşa - Buhranlarımız ve Son Eserleri [Said Halim Pasha - Our Crises and Last Works] (in Turkish), Istanbul: İz Yayıncılık, Wikidata Q109923853
Wasti, Syed Tanvir (2008). "Said Halim Pasha: Philosopher Prince". Middle Eastern Studies. 44 (1) (published January 2008): 85–104. ISSN 0026-3206. JSTOR 40262556. Wikidata Q109923750.
Şeyhun, Ahmet (2014). "Said Halim Pasha (1865–1921)". Islamist Thinkers in the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Turkish Republic. Brill Publishers (published 31 October 2014). pp. 147–164. doi:10.1163/9789004282407_013. ISBN 978-90-04-28090-8. OL 28177780M. Wikidata Q109923640.