Mehmed VI
Mehmed VI (14 January 1861 – 16 May 1926) was the 36th and last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. His reign lasted from 1918 to 1922. He succeeded his brother, Mehmed V, as the eldest male member of the House of Osman after the 1916 suicide of the heir to the throne, Yusuf Izzettin Efendi. He was presented with the Sword of Osman on 4 June 1918 in the traditional coronation ceremony. His father was Sultan Abdulmejid I and mother was Gülüstü (1831 – May 1861). His reign saw the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after its defeat in the First World War. The collapse of the Ottoman state resulted in its partitioning by Britain, France, Italy, Greece and Armenia. It was during this desperate time that the popular war hero Mustafa Kemal Atatürk assembled a Turkish resistance army in Ankara and fought off the Allied occupants of Anatolia during the Turkish War of Independence which he won. After removing the Western powers along with Greece from Anatolia in September 1922, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk then proceeded to abolish the Ottoman caliphate. Mehmed was removed from the throne when the Ottoman sultanate was abolished in 1922. As the sultan fled on an Allied warship, the Turkish army then liberated Istanbul in January 1923 which cemented the foundation of the new republic of Turkey with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as its first president.