Prince Sabahaddin

Turkish politician and thinker. His father was Mahmud Celaleddin Pasha, Minister of Justice, and his mother was Seniha Sultan, daughter of Sultan Abdülmecid. Although he was a “sultanzâde” (son of a sultan) due to his maternal connection to the royal family, he used the title “prince,” as bestowed upon him by Europeans. He received a private education at home from leading intellectuals of the time and was raised in the Western tradition. He settled in Paris with his father and quickly rose through the ranks of the Young Turks in France. He became one of the leaders of the opposition to Sultan Abdülhamid in Europe. He was one of the first Turkish intellectuals to work in the field of sociology. Prince Sabahaddin, who advocated liberalism within the framework of a political philosophy he termed “Decentralization,” and following the proclamation of the Second Constitutional Monarchy, he became the intellectual leader of the opposition that turned against the Committee of Union and Progress and the founder of the Ahrar Party, the first opposition party in Turkish political history. Prince Sabahaddin, who died in exile in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, in 1948, was brought back to Turkey in 1952 and buried in Eyüp Sultan.