Rauf Orbay

Hüseyin Rauf Orbay
Prime Minister of Turkey
In office 4 November 1922 – 4 August 1923
Preceded by	Fevzi Çakmak
Succeeded by	Ali Fethi Okyar
Personal details
Born	Hüseyin Rauf 27 July 1881 Istanbul, Ottoman Empire
Died	16 July 1964 (aged 82) Istanbul, Turkey
Political party	Progressive Republican Party (1923–1924)
Alma mater	Turkish Naval Academy
Religion	Sunni Islam
Awards	Medal of Independence
Military service
Nickname(s)	"Hero of Hamidiye"
Allegiance	Ottoman Empire
Service/branch	Ottoman Navy
Years of service	1895–1918
Rank	Colonel
Commands	Ottoman cruiser Hamidiye
Battles/wars	Balkan Wars

Prominent nationalists at the Sivas Congress. Left to right: Muzaffer Kılıç, Rauf (Orbay), Bekir Sami (Kunduh), Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), Ruşen Eşref (Ünaydın), Cemil Cahit (Toydemir), Cevat Abbas (Gürer)

Hüseyin Rauf Orbay (27 July 1881 – 16 July 1964) was an Ottoman naval officer, Turkish statesman and diplomat.

Hüseyin Rauf was born in Istanbul in 1881 to an Abkhazian family Ashkharua.^[1] As an officer in the Ottoman Navy, he achieved fame for his actions as the captain of the cruiser Hamidiye during the First Balkan War.^[2] He was Chief of Naval Staff during World War I and by October 1918 was Minister of Marine and led the delegation that signed the Armistice of Mudros.^[3] Rauf Orbay also played a role in assisting Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in a near court-martial during a feud with Djemal Pasha and Enver Pasha.^[4]

On 31 October 1918, he signed Armistice of Mudros as the Minister of Navy, which ended the Ottoman Empire's participation in World War I. When the Turkish War of Independence began, he resigned from his position and went to Ankara to collaborate with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. He was elected as a member of the representative committee in the Congress of Erzurum on 23 July 1919. He joined the Congress of Sivas as a delegate for Sivas on 4 September 1919 and was elected deputy chairman.

When the War of Independence ended he became the first Prime Minister of the new provisional Government of the Grand National Assembly on 11 August 1922. In 1924, he was one of the founders of the Terakkiperver Cumhuriyet Fırkasi (Progressive Republican Party) at the request of Atatürk as part of Atatürk's attempt to begin the tradition of multiparty democracy in the young Republic, in opposition to Atatürk's Republican People's Party. When this party was closed down in 1925 after Atatürk found that Islamist reactionaries had infiltrated its ranks, Rauf went to exile in Europe for 10 years. Later, he was cleared of all accusations and became a member of the Turkish parliament.

During World War II, Rauf Orbay was the Turkish ambassador in London,^[5] helping keep Turkey out of the war. He always firmly believed in the Republic of Turkey and always stressed that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was the only person who could have organised and lead the transformation of the crumbling Ottoman Empire into modern Turkey.

Autobiography

• Cehennem Değirmeni ("Windmill of Hell"), Emre Publishing, September 1993^[6]

References

1. Berzeg, S.E. (1990). Türkiye Kurtuluş Savaşı'nda Çerkes göçmenleri. Nart Yayıncılık. Retrieved 2015-02-26.
2. Huseyin Ra'uf Orbey, W.M. Hale,The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. VIII, ed. C.E.Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P.Heinrichs and G. Lecomte, (Brill, 1995), 174.
3. Huseyin Ra'uf Orbey, W.M. Hale,The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. VIII, 174.
4. Mango, Andrew (1999). Ataturk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey. Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press. p. 171. ISBN 1-58567-011-1.
5. Selim Deringil, Turkish Foreign Policy during the Second World War: An 'Active' Neutrality, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), 206 n48.
6. Book summaries (Turkish)

• Rauf Orbay, Siyasi Hatiralar, Örgün Yayinevi, İstanbul, 2003.
• Family knowledge.

External links

• Works by or about Rauf Orbay at Internet Archive
• Mustafa Alkan, "Hüseyin Rauf Orbay’ın Hayatı (1880-1964)", Atatürk Araştırma Merkezi Dergisi, Sayı 59, Cilt: XX, Temmuz 2004, (Turkish)
• Kafkas Foundation (Turkish)