Mehmet Cavit Bey, Mehmed Cavid Bey or Mehmed Djavid Bey (Ottoman Turkish: محمد جاوید بك; 1875 – 26 August 1926) was an Ottoman economist, newspaper editor and leading politician during the dissolution period of the Ottoman Empire. As a Young Turk and a member of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) had positions in government after the constitution was re-established. In the beginning of the Republican period, he was controversially executed for his alleged involvement in an assassination attempt against Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.^[1]

Mehmed Cavit was born in the Salonica Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire (modern day Thessaloniki). His father was Recep Naim Efendi, a merchant, and his mother was Pakize; they were cousins. He had two brothers and two sisters.^[2] His family had links to followers of Sabbatai Zevi,^[3][4][5] and he was a Dönme, making him a crypto-Jew.^[6] He learnt Greek and French, attending the progressive Şemsi Efendi School, the same school as Mustafa Kemal Pasha attended. He attended the Mekteb-i Mülkiye in Istanbul for civil servants, and upon graduation he secured employment with a state bank, and at the same time taught economics and worked within the Ministry of Education.^[7]

Cavit was more successful than the average state employee in Istanbul, but for unknown reasons he decided to leave his budding career and move back to Salonica. As fears of partition grew in Salonica amidst the spreading insurrections and violence of the Balkans and the autocratic rule and inaction of Abdülhamid II, foreign influence over the Ottoman state also grew (along with the nation's debt). Cavid and other supporters of the Ottoman nation came to believe that the sultan had to step aside for the good of the empire. This core group affiliated itself with the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), called the Young Turks by foreign press.^[7]

In Salonica he worked as a principal and teacher at the Feyziye Schools. Between 1908 and 1911, he published the Ulum-ı İktisâdiye ve İçtimâiye Mecmuası (Journal for Economic Thought and Social Media), together with Rıza Tevfik and Ahmet Şuayip, in Istanbul, which defended liberal thought.

After the proclamation of the Second Constitutional Era in 1908, he was elected MP of Salonica in 1908 and 1912, switching to Kale-i Sultaniye (Çanakkale) in 1914. Following the 31 March Incident in 1909, Cavit Bey was appointed minister of finance in the cabinet of Grand Vizier Tevfik Pasha. In that position he modernized Ottoman finances and fought to abolish the capitulations.^[8] He also worked to creat a Turkish bourgeoisie class. In the aftermath of the Savior Officer insurrection and repression of the CUP, Cavit hid in a French battleship and escaped to Marseilles.^[9] Cavit would regain his position in the wake of Grand Vizier Mahmud Şevket Pasha's assassination.

Following the orchestrated Black Sea Raid on Russian ports in 1914 and the subsequent entry of the Ottoman Empire into World War I, Cavit and half the CUP cabinet resigned in protest. For the next few weeks, central committee comrad Dr. Nazım, himself also a Dönme, would bully Cavit for being a "treacherous Jew".^[6] He remained an influential figure in the Empire's dealings with Germany until he basically returned to his post in February 1917.^[10] He was among the founders of İtibar-ı Milli Bankası (Crédit National Ottoman), which was planned to become a national bank. With the Izzet Pasha's resignation, Cavid no longer took part in government. He represented the Ottoman Empire in postwar financial negotiations in London and Berlin.^{[citation needed]}

During World War I, Cavid was not fully trusted by the CUP leadership. He did not find out about the massive deportations of Armenians until August 1915, and condemned it in his diary, writing "Ottoman history has never opened its pages, even during the time of the Middle Ages, onto such determined murder[s] and large scale cruelty."^[11]

If you want to bloody the Armenian question politically, then you scatter the people in the Armenian provinces, but scatter them in a humane manner. Hang the traitors, even if there are thousands of them. Who would entertain hiding Russians [and] the supporters of Russians? But stop right there. You dared to annihilate the existence of an entire nation, not [only] their political existence. You are both iniquitous and incapable. What kind of conscience must you have to [be able to] accept the drowning, in the mountains and next to lakes, of those women, children and the elderly who were taken to the countryside!^[11]

He lamented, "With these acts we have [ruined] everything. We put an irremovable stain on the current administration."^[11]

After the war, Cavit Bey was tried in the Aliye Divan-ı Harb-i Örfi, which was established by the occupation authorities in Istanbul. When he was sentenced in absentia to 15 years of hard labor, he went to Switzerland.^[12] After accompanying Ankara's representative Bekir Sami Bey at the London Conference held in February 1921, he returned to Turkey in July 1922 to join the Turkish Nationalist Movement. He was a member of the Ankara delegation that signed the Treaty of Lausanne.

In the early period of the Republican era, Mehmet Cavit Bey was charged with involvement in the assassination attempt in Izmir against Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk). The judges of the Independence Tribunal who tried him did not find his defense sufficient to prove his innocence, and Cavit Bey was convicted and later executed by hanging on 26 August 1926 in Ankara.^[13] Dr. Nazim, Yenibahçeli Nail Bey and Hilmi Bey were executed with him. İsmet İnönü's memoirs reveal that Cavid had nothing to do with the İzmir assassination attempt, that he was innocent and that he was executed unjustly.^[14] Albert Sarraut, who was the French Ambassador to Ankara during 1925-1926, met directly with Mustafa Kemal and asked for Cavid Bey's clemency.^[15]

The letters which Cavit Bey wrote to his wife Aliye Nazlı during his imprisonment were given to her only after his execution. She had the letters published later as a book entitled, Zindandan Mektuplar ("Letters from the Dungeon").^[16]

Cavid's grave was kept secret from the public, but it was found in 1950. His remains were transferred and reinterred at the Cebeci Asri Cemetery in Ankara.^[17]

Mehmed Cavid Bey was twice married. He lived a single life for many years after his first wife, Saniye Hanım, died at an early age from tuberculosis in 1909. She was one of his relatives, and they married in 1906 while he was in Thessaloniki. They had no children from this marriage.^[2]

In 1921, Mehmet Cavit Bey married Aliye Nazlı Hanım, the divorced wife of Şehzade Mehmed Burhaneddin. In 1924, their son Osman Şiar was born. After Cavit Bey's execution, his son was raised by his close friend Hüseyin Cahit Yalçın. Following the enactment of the Surname Law in 1934, Osman Şiar adopted the surname Yalçın.^[17] Cavid's siblings took the surname Gerçel.

Cavid served as grand master of the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons between 1916 and 1918.^[18]

• Zindandan Mektuplar (2005) Liberte Yayınları, 212 pp. ISBN 9789756877913
• Kieser, Hans-Lukas (26 June 2018), Talaat Pasha: Father of Modern Turkey, Architect of Genocide, Princeton University Press (published 2018), ISBN 978-0-691-15762-7