Refet Bele

İbrahim Refet Bele (1881 – 3 October 1963) was a Turkish military commander and statesman. He served in the Ottoman Army and the Turkish Army, retiring as a general, sat in the Grand National Assembly for many years, and twice held the Ministry of the Interior in the Ankara government as well as the Ministry of National Defence. ¹

He was born in 1881 at Thessaloniki (Selanik), to a Turkish family; his surname Bele came from his grandfather, who was from Byala (Bele) in Bulgaria. The family moved to Istanbul and later returned to Thessaloniki while he was an infant. Educated at the Ottoman Military College, he joined the Committee of Union and Progress and fought in the Italo-Turkish War and the First Balkan War, in which his home city was lost to the Greeks. In the First World War he fought in the Sinai and Palestine campaign — at Romani, at the Second Battle of Gaza and at Megiddo — rising through divisional and corps commands. ^{1 2}

In the Turkish War of Independence he commanded on the western front, and in the Ankara government he was Minister of the Interior from September 1920 to March 1921 and again from June to October 1921, then Minister of National Defence from August 1921 to January 1922. The English article records, citing Bayar (2024) and Beyoğlu (2011), that as Minister of the Interior in July 1921 he upheld Nureddin Pasha's orders for the deportation of Pontic Greeks from Ordu, including women, children and the elderly, despite the protest of the district administrator, who resigned on 22 July rather than implement orders he called criminal. Bele sat in the Grand National Assembly for İzmir from 1920 to 1923 and for Istanbul from 1923 to 1926, and again for Istanbul from 1935 to 1950. ¹

He died at Istanbul in 1963 and was buried at Zincirlikuyu Cemetery; the Turkish article notes that by his own wish and his family's his grave was not transferred to the State Cemetery. The sources differ by one day on his death: the English article and Wikidata give 3 October 1963, while the Turkish article, citing the TBMM Album, gives 2 October; this record follows 3 October and marks the date debated. ^{2 3}

Of his religion the sources say nothing at all: the English article names none, the Turkish article's infobox leaves its religion field blank, and Wikidata carries no religion statement for him. Under the museum's two-source rule his faith is therefore recorded as unknown. ^{1 2 3}

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