Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha

Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha (Ottoman Turkish: حسین حلمی پاشا‎ Turkish: Hüseyin Hilmi Paşa, also spelled Hussein Hilmi Pasha) (1 April 1855 – 1922) was an Ottoman statesman and imperial administrator. He was twice the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire around the time of the Second Constitutional Era. He was also one-time president of the Turkish Red Crescent.

Hüseyin Hilmi was one of the most successful Ottoman administrators in the explosive Balkans of the early 20th century, becoming the Ottoman Inspectorate-General of Macedonia from 1902 to 1908, Minister of the Interior from 1908 to 1909, and ambassador to Austria-Hungary from 1912 to 1918. He is often regarded, along with Ahmet Rıza Bey and Hasan Fehmi Pasha, as one of the leading statesmen who encouraged and propagated further progressivity.

Hüseyin Hilmi was born in 1855 in Lesbos. He was of Greek ancestry, an ancestor had converted to Islam. He did his primary studies in Lesbos and learned fluent French at an early age. He started out as a clerk in the Ottoman state structure and gradually climbed the ladder of the hierarchy, becoming the governor of Adana in 1897 and of Yemen in 1902. That same year in 1902, he was appointed Inspectorate-General with responsibility over virtually all of the Balkan territories of the Ottoman Empire at the time, namely the vilayets of Salonica, Kosovo and Manastir.

After the restoration of the Ottoman constitution in 1908, he was appointed as Minister of the Interior and then served as Grand Vizier, at first between February 14, 1909 and April 13, 1909 under Abdul Hamid II and then, reassuming the post from Ahmet Tevfik Pasha a month later, between May 5, 1909 and December 28, 1909. As such, in his first vizierate, he was the last grand vizier of Abdul Hamid II. His first term was suddenly interrupted because of the 31 March Incident (which actually occurred on April 13), when for a few days, reactionary absolutists and Islamic fundamentalists took back control of the Ottoman government in Constantinople until the arrival of an army from Salonica that suppressed the attempted countercoup.

After his second term as grand vizier under Mehmed V, Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha served as the Minister of Justice in the succeeding Ahmed Muhtar Pasha cabinet. In October 1912, he was sent to Vienna as the Ottoman ambassador to Austria-Hungary, a position he held until the end of World War I. Due to health problems, he remained in Vienna until his death in 1922. He was buried in Beşiktaş, Istanbul.