Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha
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Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha (also spelled Hussein Hilmi Pasha) was an Ottoman statesman who held the top post of grand vizier for a brief period in the wake of the Second Constitutional Era in the Ottoman Empire, but who is also notable for being one of the founders of the Turkish Red Crescent and for having been one of the most successful Ottoman administrators in the explosive Balkans of the early 20th century.
Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha was born in 1855 in Midilli (Lesbos today) and did his primary studies there, in a stressed religious focus, but he also learned good French at an early age. He started out as a clerk in the Ottoman state structure and gradually climbing up the ladders of hierarchy, became the governor of Adana in 1897 and of Yemen in 1902. The same year, he was appointed as inspector general with responsibility over virtually all Balkan territories of the Ottoman Empire at the time (the vilayets of Selanik, Kosovo and Manastır).
After the re-enactment of the Ottoman constitution in 1908, he was appointed as Interior Minister, and then served as grand vizier, at first between 14 February 1909 and 13 April 1909 under Abdülhamid II and then, re-assuming the post a month later, between 5 May 1909 and 28 December 1909. As such, in his first vizierate, he was the last grand vizier of Abdülhamid II. This first vizierate had had to be suddenly interrupted because of 31 March Incident which, despite its name, had occurred on 13 April 1909 and for up to a month fundamentalists had reigned in the streets of İstanbul till the arrival of an extraordinary army from Selanik.
He also held the post of Minister of Justice in the succeeding Gazi Ahmed Muhtar Pasha cabinet. In October 1912, he was sent as Ottoman ambassador in Vienna, a position he held till the end of the World War I. Due to health problems, he remained in Vienna till his death in 1922. He was buried in Beşiktaş, İstanbul.
