Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha

Hüseyin Hilmi was born in 1855 in Lesbos. He was of Greek ancestry,[6][7] an ancestor had converted to Islam.[8][9] 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.

• List of Ottoman Grand Viziers
• Greek Muslims

Interview with Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha, Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, co-founder of the Turkish Red Crescent, General Inspector of Macedonia, Interior Minister, Minister of Justice and Ambassador in Austro-Hungary. One of the most successful and intelligent Ottoman administrators of the twentieth century. The interview was published by Dimitar Dumbalakov from the village of Suho, Lagadinsko, Aegean Macedonia - "Hilmi Pasha for the New Balkans" in the newspaper "Kambana", Sofia, February 10, 1914. "- I have never thought..." Hilmi Pasha said, "...that Macedonia may ever become Serbian,or that the Greeks will conquer Thessaloniki, but fate as you know, often allows even the strangest things. The population in Macedonia is in its majority Bulgarian, then comes in number the Turks, the Greeks are few, and the Serbs are non-existent at all among the indigenous peoples, and, furthermore, Hilmi Pasha continued, for the freedoms of this country, only the Bulgarians has fought and sacrificed. The Revolutionary struggle and the uprisings - it was a purely Bulgarian act. The Greeks and Serbians, I boldly say this, They talked with us, the Turks, against your committees, and they told me everything they learned about you, they were our spies, friends and worshipers, and when Bulgaria decided to fight, they only joined because of the benefits. Before they betrayed you, they betrayed us. But whatever the Serbs and Greeks are, we, the Bulgarians and the Turks, are guilty, because we did not get along with each other in time. But the joy of the Greeks and the Serbs from easily gained profits won't last long. This Bulgarian, Turkish and Albanian population, they cannot hold in obedience for long time. They know best, the revolutionary spirit of the Bulgarian nation. Nothing can break it. If the (Ottoman) empire could not go head to head with the Bulgarians and tame them, how will the Serbian and Greek powers do it?"

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• Emine Onhan Evered, "An educational prescription for the Sultan: Huseyin hilmi pasa's advice for the maladies of empire," Middle Eastern Studies, 43,3 (2007), 439-459.