Ahmet Rıza

Ahmet Rıza Bey
Ahmet Rıza in 1909 as an early opposition leader.
Personal details
Born	1858 Constantinople, Ottoman Empire
Died	26 February 1930 Istanbul, Turkey

Ahmet Rıza Bey (1858 – 26 February 1930) was an Ottoman-born Turkish political activist, scientist, statesman, educational reformer and a prominent member of the Young Turks, during the Second Constitutional Era of the Ottoman Empire.

In 1908 he became the first President of the revived Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Ottoman Parliament, and in 1912, he was appointed as the President of the Senate (the upper house) as well. He also served as Minister of Education from the Liberal Union party, the main opposition party to the ruling Committee of Union and Progress. In 1908, his name was among the candidates' list for the next Grand Vizier. He was the leading negotiator during the failed agreement of coalition between the Ottoman Empire, France, and Britain for World War I.

Ahmet Rıza has been described as a polymath by some authors.

Ahmet Rıza was born in Constantinople (modern Istanbul) in 1858, the son of Ali Rıza Bey. His father was nicknamed İngiliz ("Englishman") because of his command of the English language and admiration of the British Empire. His mother, Fraulein Turban, was born in Munich but was of Hungarian origin. She moved to Vienna, where she met İngiliz, and converted to Islam to marry him, taking the name Naile Sabıka Hanım. He graduated from Galatasaray High School in Constantinople and subsequently studied agriculture in France. As a young man, he sought to improve the condition of the peasantry in the Empire. He was concerned with the conditions of the farmers and wanted to implement agricultural methods, supporting the ideas of the French sociologist, Auguste Comte. In 1894, he published a series of publications on unification of Islamic and Ottoman traditions of consultation. In 1895, Meşveret, the journal that he published, became a locus of the exiled Young Turks movement. Ahmet Rıza opposed the maverick Prince Sabahaddin's calls for revolution and European intervention in the empire at the 1902 Congress of Ottoman Opposition in Paris. At the Second Congress of Ottoman Opposition in 1907, Ahmet Rıza at first reluctantly endorsed the use of violence to depose the sultan, but later reversed his position.