Background
Mehmed Cavid Bey was bom in Salonika in 1875, into a Jewish merchant family that had converted to Islam.
Mehmed Cavid Bey was bom in Salonika in 1875, into a Jewish merchant family that had converted to Islam.
Cavid was educated in his native city and then in Constantinople; in 1896 he graduated from the university with a degree in economics.
Cavid served in the state Agricultural Bank, then in the ministry of education until his return to Salonika in 1902. There he taught economics and ran a private school. Drawn to revolutionary politics, he entered the conspiratorial circle of young officers and officials known as the Young Turks (the Committee of Union and Progress).
Immediately following the Revolution of 1908, Cavid was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. He held the post of minister of finance, 1909-1911, the first Young Turk to serve in the cabinet. At the outbreak of World War I, Cavid was back at this important station, now in a government commanded by the Young Turks.
Cavid's European travels in the cause of borrowing for the perpetually empty Ottoman treasury had equipped him for a major wartime role. He possessed extensive negotiating experience and a wide circle of diplomatic contacts. Cavid opposed aligning Turkey with the Central Powers. Reputed to be a Francophile, he was not privy to the negotiations that led to the alliance of August 2, 1914, with the Central Powers. He resigned - at least nominally - in early November when Turkey took up arms. But Cavid retained effective control of his country's finances; at the same time, he served as a busy high level negotiator and spoke with a respected voice in the formulation of Turkish policy.
Cavid's views often did not prevail. He failed to diminish Turkey's political and military participation in the war. Evidence exists to suggest that he sought a separate peace in late 1915, when the Entente closed down its operations at Gallipoli. He returned formally as minister of finance in February 1917 and he registered forceful objections to the decision to rupture relations with the United States. The young finance minister applied his negotiating skills more successfully to Constantinople's allies. German economic demands met Cavid's immovable opposition. He fended off Berlin's calls for commercial concessions, refused to liquidate Anglo-French holdings, and dodged making contributions for the Baghdad Railroad.
Meanwhile, Cavid squeezed generous loans from the Central Powers to ease Turkey over one financial crisis after another. In early 1918 General Ludendorff intervened personally to press demands for postwar economic privileges. Cavid buried these ideas by asking in return that Germany's wartime loans to Turkey be forgiven. In general, Cavid's defense of Turkish interests drew the approval of his Young Turk colleagues. Historians like Trumpener have been led by these trends to revise earlier views of a weak Turkish government subservient to Germany's wartime direction.
Cavid was the only Young Turk leader to serve in the government after the collapse of the Young Turk cabinet on October 8, 1918. He remained in office until early November, when he was forced to go into hiding, then into exile. He returned to Turkey in 1922. Four years later, he was arrested and tried on charges of subverting the regime of Mustafa Kemal. Along with several other figures from the Young Turk movement, Cavid was convicted and on August 26,1926, executed in Ankara.