Ahmet Muhtar

Ahmet Muhtar entered Ottoman diplomacy after graduating from the Mülkiye civil service school in 1890. His early career included service in Stockholm, Athens, Vienna, and The Hague, followed by a senior political post in the Foreign Ministry and an appointment in Kyiv during the upheavals at the end of the First World War. He joined the nationalist movement in Ankara and helped run its small foreign policy apparatus while Foreign Minister Bekir Sami was away on diplomatic missions. ¹

He subsequently represented the Ankara government in Tiflis and Moscow before becoming a parliamentary deputy. His appointment to Washington in 1927 restored a resident Turkish representative after the wartime rupture in relations. It followed the American Senate’s rejection of the Lausanne treaty with Turkey and a separate exchange of notes reopening diplomatic relations. ²

He had to organize the new embassy while facing organized opposition to renewed relations with Turkey. He reached New York aboard the Leviathan on 28 November 1927 and presented his credentials to President Calvin Coolidge on 5 December. ²

In Washington, Muhtar cultivated newspaper contacts, including Washington Post editor Bennett, to explain the republic’s reforms and influence American perceptions of Turkey. He returned home in 1934 and resumed parliamentary life as a deputy for Kastamonu. ²