From Exile to My Homeland

Osman Selahaddin Osmanoğlu is a direct male descendant of Osman Gazi, who founded the Ottoman Empire in 1299. In fact, he is the only prince in the 700-year history of the Ottoman Dynasty whose father was an Ottoman Imperial prince and whose mother was an Ottoman Imperial princess. Prince Ali Vâsıb, his father, was the great-grandson of Sultan Murad V, while Princess Emine Mukbile, his mother, was the granddaughter of Sultan Mehmed V Reşad's youngest son. In 1924, all 157 members of the Ottoman Dynasty were exiled by order of the Republican government that had recently come to power in Türkiye. Osman Selahaddin Osmanoğlu was thus born in exile, being allowed to set foot in his native land only in 1974. In this autobiography, he recounts his childhood and youth in Alexandria, his family life and career in financial management in England, and finally his relocation to Türkiye, where he is spending the years of his retirement in a mansion on the Anatolian shores of the Bosphorus, opposite the Çırağan Palace. It was in this palace that Sultan Murad V, his great-great-grandfather, was kept in custody by his younger brother Sultan Abdülhamid II for 28 years – until Sultan Murad's death in 1904. Throughout his life, Osman Selahaddin Osmanoğlu has associated not only with many members of the Ottoman Dynasty, but also with members of other ruling families such as those of Egypt, Jordan, Bulgaria, Albania and Italy.