Abstract:

Sultan Vahdettin was the last representative of the Ottoman dynasty who assumed the sultanate in one of the last months of the First World War. He assumed responsibility not only for himself, but also for a six-hundred-century-old empire that was being defeated. The policy he would pursue and the decisions he would make would affect his fate and that of the country. The first decision was to wage a great struggle against all kinds of occupation by relying on the nation, and the second was to protect the sultanate and caliphate under the sovereignty of a powerful occupying state. The decision to be made was to wage a great struggle for independence by leading the nation with the responsibility imposed on him by history, with the heroic spirit he had received from his ancestors, against the Entente states, which he could not prevail against, even though he had the German Empire as an ally, and perhaps to lose the sultanate, or to gain the friendship of England, a great and powerful state, to enter its patronage and to protect all its gains. The subject is important in terms of illuminating the debates about Vahdettin in recent political circles. The study was prepared using British and Turkish archival documents. The aim of the study is to reveal the policy of Sultan Mehmet Vahdettin IV, the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, towards England after the Armistice of Mudros and its reasons.

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