Thursday, 24 September 2009
His Imperial Highness, Prince Ertugrul Osman - the de jure sultan known in Turkey as the "last Ottoman" - has died in Istanbul at the age of 97.Prince Osman would have been sultan of the Ottoman Empire had Turkey not be pushed into a republican system in the 1920s. As the last surviving grandson of Sultan Abdul-Hamid II, he was known as his Imperial Highness Prince Shehzade Ertugrul Osman Effendi. Born in Istanbul in 1912, Prince Osman spent most of his years living modestly in New York. He was a 12-year-old at school in Vienna when he heard the news that his family was being expelled by Mustafa Kemal Pasha, the soldier who founded a Turkish republic by betraying the sultan's confidence. Prince Osman eventually settled in New York, where for more than 60 years he lived in a flat above a restaurant. Always insisting he had no political ambition, he only returned to Turkey in the early 1990s at the invitation of the government. During the visit, he went to Dolmabahce - the palace by the Bosphorus where he had played as a child. Characteristically, he joined a tour group in order to avoid any red-carpet treatment. Prince Ertugrul Osman is survived by his wife, Zeynep, a relative of the King of Afghanistan.
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