Ali Kemal

Ali Kemal was a British-Turkish journalist, newspaper editor, poet, liberal-leaning politician, and government official who was for some three months Minister of the Interior in the government of Damat Ferid Pasha, the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire. He was murdered by paramilitary officers during the Turkish War of Independence. Kemal is the father of Zeki Kuneralp, who was the former Turkish ambassador in Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Spain. In addition, he is the paternal grandfather of both the Turkish diplomat Selim Kuneralp, and the British politician Stanley Johnson. Through Johnson, Ali Kemal is the great-grandfather of former British prime minister Boris Johnson and his siblings. Early in his life, Kemal had acquired strong liberal democratic convictions, which caused him to be exiled from the Ottoman Empire under Abdul Hamid II. He lived in Cairo between September 1900 and 1908. There he established and edited a weekly magazine, Türk, from 1903 and 1907. Immediately after the end of Abdul Hamid's rule in July 1908, he returned to Istanbul and became one of the most prominent figures in Ottoman journalistic and political life. Because of his opposition to the Committee of Union and Progress, the Young Turk group which had carried out the revolution, he spent most of the following decade in opposition. He was at one time editor of the liberal İkdam newspaper and a leading member of the Liberty Party. During the First World War, Kemal was a vocal critic of the Ottoman government's involvement in the war and its alliance with Germany. He denounced the Armenian genocide and advocated for a peaceful settlement with the Allies. He also supported the Arab Revolt and the establishment of an independent Arab state. After the Ottoman defeat in the war, Kemal joined the cabinet of Damat Ferid Pasha, who was appointed by the sultan as the grand vizier of a new government that sought to cooperate with the occupying powers. Kemal became the minister of the interior in March 1919 and tried to implement reforms in the legal and educational systems. He also supported the abolition of the caliphate and the establishment of a secular republic. However, Kemal's policies and views were strongly opposed by the Turkish nationalists, who were led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and who fought against the foreign occupation and the sultan's government. Kemal was accused of treason and collaboration with the enemy by the nationalists, who issued a death warrant for him. Kemal resigned from his post in June 1919 and fled to Britain, where he lived in exile for two years. He returned to Turkey in 1921, hoping to reconcile with the nationalists and join the new republic. However, he was arrested by the nationalist forces in November 1922, while he was travelling by train to Ankara. He was taken to a military headquarters in İzmit, where he was lynched by a mob of soldiers and civilians. His body was hanged from a tree and then buried in a nearby cemetery.