Mehmed Kâmil Pasha

Mehmed Kâmil Pasha (1833 – 14 November 1913), known as Kıbrıslı, "the Cypriot", and nicknamed "English Kâmil" for his Anglophilia, was an Ottoman statesman who served four times as Grand Vizier: 1885–1891 and briefly in 1895 under Abdul Hamid II, 1908–1909 in the first constitutional cabinet struggle with the Committee of Union and Progress, and 1912–1913 until Unionist officers forced his resignation at gunpoint. ¹

His birth year is debated in the sources: both articles give 1833, but the Ankara doctoral thesis the English article cites for his early life is titled with the years 1832–1913, and Wikidata carries both years. His birthplace is Nicosia in the English article and the village of Gaziler in the Nicosia district in the Turkish article. ^{1 2 3}

He was born in Cyprus in 1833, a son of the artillery captain Salih Agha of Pyrogi, and educated on the island in Arabic, Persian, French and Greek before being taken to Egypt in 1845, where he studied at a madrasa turned military academy and entered the household of the Khedive Abbas I. His 1851 visit to London for the Great Exhibition began a lifelong admiration of Britain. From 1860 he served the Ottoman government for nineteen years in administrative posts across the empire — Eastern Rumelia, Herzegovina, Kosovo and his native Cyprus among them — before entering the cabinet. ¹

His first and longest ministry (25 September 1885 – 4 September 1891) was marked by rivalry with Mehmed Said Pasha and by attention to new schools; the Agricultural Bank was founded in this period. Recalled at the height of the Armenian crisis, his second ministry lasted only from 2 October to 7 November 1895, when his push to return responsible government to the Sublime Porte failed; he spent a decade as governor of Aydın. His third ministry (5 August 1908 – 14 February 1909) opened parliament under the restored constitution but broke with the CUP, which censured him in a vote of no confidence. ^{1 2}

His fourth ministry began on 29 October 1912, in the First Balkan War, in hope that his British connections would win tolerable peace terms. When his government moved to accept severe terms, Unionist officers raided the Sublime Porte on 23 January 1913, shot the Minister of War, and forced Kâmil Pasha to resign at gunpoint. He died at Nicosia on 14 November 1913. ¹

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