Abdulaziz (; ; 8 February 18304 June 1876) was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 25 June 1861 to 30 May 1876, when he was overthrown in a government coup. He was a son of Sultan Mahmud II and succeeded his brother Abdulmejid I in 1861.Chambers Biographical Dictionary, , page 2
Abdulaziz's reign began during the Ottoman Empire's resurgence following the Crimean War and two decades of the Tanzimat reforms, though it was now reliant on European capital. He was the first Ottoman sultan who traveled to Western Europe in a diplomatic capacity, visiting a number of important European capitals including Paris, London, and Vienna in the summer of 1867. The decade after his ascension was dominated by the duo of Fuad Pasha and Aali Pasha, who accelerated reorganization of the Empire. The Vilayet Law was promulgated, Western codes were applied to more aspects of Ottoman law, and the millets were restructured. The issue of Tanzimat dualism continued to plague the empire, however.
The first semblance of an opposition party coalesced around detractors of Fuad and Aali, the Young Ottomans. Once they were dead by 1871, Abdul Aziz promulgated reactionary ministries and attempted personal rule, revealing his eccentricities. His autocracy became the target of the Young Ottomans, leading to demands for a constitution. In his last years as sultan, famine, economic crisis and default, diplomatic isolation, government dysfunction, and uprisings by Christian minorities culminated into a general international crisis known as the Great Eastern Crisis. Abdulaziz was deposed on 30 May 1876 by his ministers on the grounds of having mismanaged the economy, and was found dead from suicide six days later.
Early life
Abdulaziz was born at Eyüp Palace, Constantinople (Istanbul) on 8 February 1830.Britannica, Istanbul: When the Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923, the capital was moved to Ankara, and Constantinople was officially renamed Istanbul in 1930.Finkel, Caroline, Osman's Dream (Basic Books, 2005), 57; "Istanbul was only adopted as the city's official name in 1930." His parents were Mahmud II and Pertevniyal Sultan, originally named Besime, a Circassian.
The Pertevniyal Valide Sultan Mosque was built under the patronage of his mother. The construction work began in November 1869 and the mosque was finished in 1871.
His paternal grandparents were Sultan Abdul Hamid I and Sultana Nakşidil Sultan. Several accounts identify his paternal grandmother with Aimée du Buc de Rivéry, a cousin of Empress Joséphine. Pertevniyal was a sister of Hushiyar Qadin, third wife of Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt. Hushiyar and Ibrahim were the parents of Isma'il Pasha.
Abdulaziz received an Ottoman education but was nevertheless an ardent admirer of the material progress that was being achieved in the West. He was the first Ottoman sultan who traveled to Western Europe, visiting a number of important European capitals including Paris, London, and Vienna in the summer of 1867.
In addition to his interest in literature, Abdulaziz was also a classical music composer. He took a special interest in documenting the Ottoman Empire. Some of his compositions, together with those of the other members of the Ottoman dynasty, have been collected in the album European Music at the Ottoman Court by the London Academy of Ottoman Court Music.European Music at the Ottoman Court, London Academy of Ottoman Court Music. CD album released on 6 November 2000. ASIN: B0000542KD.
Reign Between 1861 and 1871, the Tanzimat reforms which began during the reign of his brother Abdulmejid I were continued under the leadership of his chief ministers, Mehmed Fuad Pasha and Mehmed Emin Aali Pasha. New administrative districts (vilayets) were set up in 1864 and a Council of State was established in 1868. Public education was organized on the French model and Istanbul University was reorganised as a modern institution in 1861. He was also integral in establishing the first Ottoman civil code, the Mecelle. Under his reign, Turkey's first postage stamps were issued in 1863, and the Ottoman Empire joined the Universal Postal Union in 1875 as a founding member.
European tour
Abdulaziz cultivated good relations with France and the United Kingdom. In 1867 he was the first Ottoman sultan to visit Western Europe. Ostensibly he was to see the Paris exhibition of 1867 at Napoleon III's invitation, however the real goal was to reestablish Ottoman credit and forestall a Franco-Russian intervention in rebellious Crete. His voyage in visiting order (from 21 June 1867 to 7 August 1867): Istanbul – Messina – Naples – Toulon – Marseille – Paris – Boulogne – Dover – London – Dover – Calais – Brussels – Koblenz – Vienna – Budapest – Orșova – Vidin – Ruse – Varna – Istanbul. In London, he was made a Knight of the Garter by Queen Victoria and shown a Royal Navy Fleet Review with Ismail Pasha. He travelled by a private rail car, which today can be found in the Rahmi M. Koç Museum in Istanbul. His fellow Knights of the Garter created in 1867 were Charles Gordon-Lennox, 6th Duke of Richmond, Charles Manners, 6th Duke of Rutland, Henry Somerset, 8th Duke of Beaufort, Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn (a son of Queen Victoria), Franz Joseph I of Austria and Alexander II of Russia. Impressed by the museums in Paris (30 June – 10 July 1867), London (12–23 July 1867) and Vienna (28–30 July 1867) he ordered the establishment of an Imperial Museum in Istanbul: the Istanbul Archaeology Museum.
In 1868, Abdulaziz received visits from Eugénie de Montijo, Empress consort of Napoleon III of France and other foreign monarchs on their way to the opening of the Suez Canal. He took Eugénie to see his mother in Dolmabahçe Palace. However, his mother Pertevniyal Sultan considered the presence of a foreign woman within her private quarters of the seraglio to be an insult. She reportedly slapped Eugénie across the face, which almost caused an international incident. According to another account, Pertevniyal was outraged by the forwardness of Eugénie in taking the arm of one of her sons while he gave a tour of the palace garden, and she gave the Empress a slap on the stomach as a possibly more subtly intended reminder that they were not in France.
Railroads
The first Ottoman railroads were opened between İzmir–Aydın and Alexandria–Cairo in 1856, during the reign of Sultan Abdulmejid I. The first large railway terminal within present-day Turkey, the Alsancak Terminal in İzmir, was opened in 1858. However, these were individual, unconnected railroads, without a railway network. Sultan Abdulaziz established the first Ottoman railway networks. On 17 April 1869, the concession for the Rumelia Railway (i.e. Balkan Railways, Rumeli (Rumelia) meaning the Balkan peninsula in Ottoman Turkish) which connected Istanbul to Vienna was awarded to Baron Maurice de Hirsch (Moritz Freiherr Hirsch auf Gereuth), a Bavaria-born banker from Belgium. The project foresaw a railway route from Istanbul via Edirne, Plovdiv and Sarajevo to the shore of the Sava River. In 1873, the first Sirkeci Terminal in Istanbul was opened. The temporary Sirkeci terminal building was later replaced with the current one which was built between 1888 and 1890 (during the reign of Abdülhamid II) and became the final destination terminus of the Orient Express. In 1871, Sultan Abdulaziz established the Anatolia Railway. Construction works of the on the Asian side of Istanbul, from Haydarpaşa to Pendik, began in 1871. The line was opened on 22 September 1872.CFOA History - Trains and Railways of Turkey The railway was extended to Gebze, which opened on 1 January 1873. In August 1873 the railway reached Izmit. Another railway extension was built in 1871 to serve a populated area along Bursa and the Sea of Marmara. The Anatolia Railway was then extended to Ankara and eventually to Mesopotamia, Syria and Arabia during the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II, with the completion of the Baghdad Railway and Hejaz Railway.
Further decline of the empire
Also in 1867, Abdulaziz became the first Ottoman Sultan to formally recognize the title of Khedive (Viceroy) to be used by the Governor of the Ottoman Eyalet of Egypt and Sudan (1517–1867), which thus became the autonomous Ottoman Khedivate of Egypt and Sudan (1867–1914). Muhammad Ali Pasha and his descendants had been the governors of Ottoman Egypt and Sudan since 1805, but were willing to use the higher title of Khedive, which was unrecognized by the Ottoman government until 1867. In return, the first Khedive, Ismail Pasha, had agreed a year earlier (in 1866) to increase the annual tax revenues which Egypt and Sudan would provide for the Ottoman treasury. Between 1854 and 1894, the revenues from Egypt and Sudan were often declared as a surety by the Ottoman government for borrowing loans from British and French banks.
Abdulaziz gave special emphasis on modernizing the Ottoman Navy. In 1875, the Ottoman Navy had 21 battleships and 173 warships of other types, ranking as the third largest navy in the world after the British and French navies. His passion for the Navy, ships and sea can be observed in the wall paintings and pictures of the Beylerbeyi Palace, which was constructed during his reign. However, the large budget for modernizing and expanding the Navy, combined with the 1873–1875 Anatolian Famine which reduced the government's tax revenues, contributed to the financial difficulties that caused the Porte to declare a sovereign default with the "Ramazan Kanunnamesi" on 30 October 1875. The subsequent decision to increase agricultural taxes for paying the Ottoman public debt to foreign creditors (mainly British and French banks) triggered the Great Eastern Crisis in the empire's Balkan provinces. The crisis culminated in the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78) that devastated the already struggling Ottoman economy, which led to the establishment of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration in 1881, during the early years of Sultan Abdulhamid II's reign.
The global financial turmoil increased the importance for Britain of the sureties regarding the Ottoman tax revenues from Egypt and Sudan for the repayment of Ottoman debts to British banks. Combined with the strategically important Suez Canal which was opened in 1869, these sureties were influential in the British government's decision to occupy Egypt and Sudan in 1882, with the pretext of helping the Ottoman-Egyptian government to put down the ʻUrabi revolt (1879–1882). Egypt and Sudan (together with Cyprus) nominally remained Ottoman territories until 5 November 1914, when the British Empire declared war against the Ottoman Empire during World War I and changed the status of these territories as British protectorates (which was formally recognized by Turkey with Articles 17–21 of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923).
By 1871, both Fuad Pasha and Aali Pasha were dead. The Second French Empire, the Western European model embraced by Sultan Abdulaziz, had been defeated in the Franco-Prussian War. Abdulaziz turned to the Russian Empire for friendship as unrest in the Balkan provinces continued. He increasingly relied on Mahmud Nedim Pasha, an incompetent statesman known as "Nedimoff" in the press for his Russophilia. In 1875, the Herzegovinian rebellion triggered further unrest in the Balkan provinces, beginning a general diplomatic crisis known as the Great Eastern Crisis. In 1876, the April Uprising saw insurrection spreading among the Bulgarians. Ill feeling mounted against Russia for its encouragement of the rebellions.
While no single event led to his deposition, the crop failure of 1873 and his lavish expenditures on the Ottoman Navy and on new palaces which he had built, along with mounting public debt, helped to create an atmosphere that conducted to the end of his reign. Abdulaziz was deposed by his ministers on 30 May 1876.