Ertugrul Osman
The Telegraph
27 Sep 2009
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/6237121/Ertugrul-Osman.html
Ertugrul Osman, who has died aged 97, should, technically speaking, have been addressed as His Imperial Highness Prince Ertugrul Osman Efendi.
Had events been otherwise his title would have been grander still: His Imperial Majesty Grand Sultan Osman V, Emperor of the Ottomans, Caliph of Islam. As it was, the man who would have been the 45th head of the continent-spanning Ottoman dynasty, founded by Osman I in 1299, lived on the third floor of a rent-controlled flat in New York and was content to be known as plain old Osman.
As a descendant of Abdul Hamid II (who reigned between 1876 and 1909) he was the last-surviving grandson of any serving Ottoman Emperor, and the only remaining scion of the dynasty to have been born in the imperial homeland.
His death marks the end of a story that reached its zenith at the gates of
During the intervening time he refused to take up a Turkish passport, claiming instead to be a citizen of the
None the less, he was by no means a firebrand exile, never calling for the return of the Sultanate or the overthrow of the democratically elected government in
Ertugrul Osman was born in
Aged 10 he was sent to Vienna to study, and it was there that he heard, in March 1924, of the abolition of the caliphate, which gave the Sultan authority over the world's Sunni Muslims and was the last significant imperial role to be scrapped by Ataturk. The Sultan and his family were sent into exile. "The men had one day to leave," Osman recalled in a recent interview. "The women were given a week."
Osman stayed in
He lived there with his first wife, Gulda Twerskoy, whom he married in 1947. It was, he admitted, a far cry from the opulent imperial residences in which he had grown up. But instead of growing embittered by his dramatic reversal of fortune, those who met him said Osman assessed his unique situation in understated, often comic tones.
He made his career in the mining business, with the company Wells Overseas, for whom he did indeed frequently travel abroad, particularly to
Osman said he refused the offer, replying: "We do not need amnesty since we have not done anything wrong."
In retirement Osman, who first wife had died in 1985, met Zeynep Tarzi Hanim, an Afghan princess almost three decades younger than he. She too had led the life of a royal exile, after her uncle King Amanullah was toppled in 1929. She had moved with her family to
Though Osman was worried about the age gap between himself and Zeynep Tarzi, she did not see it as a problem and concentrated his mind by issuing an ultimatum: "Eventually I told him, 'If you won't marry me, I'll marry someone else.' It was an empty threat, but it worked." They married in 1991.
A year later he returned to the land of his birth for this first time in more than half a century. He had been extended an official invitation by the Turkish government and made headline news as he touched down.
Although he granted interviews, he preferred to keep a low profile as he toured the landmarks from which his grandfather had ruled a century earlier. During his trip to the
In 1994, with the death of Mehmed Orhan, son of Prince Mehmed Abdul Kadir, Osman became the eldest surviving member of the Ottoman dynasty, and heir – in theory at least – to the title of Pretender to the Sultanate. In fact, he was quite happy to admit that "democracy works well in
Things were working less well at home in
In his final years, Osman finally accepted a Turkish passport, using it to return on several occasions to
It was there last year that his wife gave him a surprise birthday party in the garden of a villa on the
It was also in
According to Turkish reports he will be buried near the tombs of Sultans Mahmut II and Abdulhamit II in the Cemberlitas district of the city.
He is survived by his wife.
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