Losing Istanbul by Mostafa Minawi

Author:Mostafa Minawi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Sadik arrived in Sofia on the first of November and sent a formal telegram to the grand vizier indicating the commencement of his “sacred duty.”8 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs requested that Sadik be paid 20,000Kr in travel expenses and announced that his salary was set at an agreed on 20,000Kr per month. The massive difference between his salary and that of one of the employees in the embassy, which averaged around 1,500Kr, made the commissioner’s salary more than thirteen times that of most of his employees. It was unclear whether the money Sadik was paid constituted his personal salary or if it was also meant to cover the expenses he incurred in his official duties.9

Sadik wasted no time in meeting with the Bulgarian prime minister the day after his arrival to present his appointment papers. They discussed matters of mutual importance, expressing hopes that issues such as the return of the refugees to their lands would, “God willing (insha’ Allah ta‘ala),” be resolved.10 Prince Ferdinand was in Varna when Sadik arrived, but he returned to Sofia within a week.11 However, he would not meet with Sadik for another month, which some observers, like the British representative in Sofia, took as a slight to the Ottomans.

It is important to remember that Sadik did not arrive in Bulgaria without his own prejudices. As an imperialist and Hamidian loyalist, and as someone who had worked on the several commissions in the Balkans and the eastern provinces of the empire, he was part of a cadre of palace advisors animated by a particular perspective on the world. Sadik internalized the belief that the Christian inhabitants of the empire were not only “well-protected” but even privileged and those who rebelled or complained were traitors working to advance the European powers’ goals. The British representative in Sofia between 1903 and 1908, Sir George Buchanan, confirmed this view when he first met Sadik. He reported that, upon meeting with Sadik in November of 1904, he wanted to emphasize the importance of coming together to resolve some of the issues that were still causing “friction” between Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire:

His Excellency, however, appears to be so perfectly satisfied that the Christian populations in the Turkish Empire enjoy an enviable and privileged position under the benevolent rule of the sultan that nothing, I fear, which I may say, is likely to convince him that there is any foundation for the complaints raised by the Bulgarian Government.12

Once the prince and Sadik met, however, he reported that the meeting was rather pleasant and that it lasted for close to an hour, after which he introduced all of the clerks at the commission, one by one, and the prince engaged each of them individually.13 Knowing Sadik’s history, Charles Marling of the British Special Commission in Sofia breathed a sigh of relief when the first meeting between Sadik and Prince Ferdinand finally took place and was “of perfect cordial nature.”14

Over his three and a half years of service in Bulgaria, Sadik faced two main problems, which eventually took him down.

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