Mahmud Muhtar Pasha
Mahmud Muhtar Pasha, known as Mahmut Muhtar Katırcıoğlu since 1934, was an Ottoman-born Turkish military officer and diplomat, the son of the Grand Vizier Ahmed Muhtar Pasha.Biography
He was born in Constantinople and returned to the city in 1893 after seven years' military education in Germany. He was a participant in the Greco-Turkish War of 1897, in spite of the prohibition by the Sultan. In 1910, he became Minister of Navy in Ibrahim Hakkı Pasha's cabinet and arranged the construction of the first Turkish dreadnought. He married Princess Nimetullah Khanum Effendi, a daughter of Isma'il Pasha and they had five children.
At the outbreak of the First Balkan War in 1912, he went to the front, commanded the III Corps in the Battle of Kirk Kilisse, and was severely wounded. He wrote an account of his experiences in the Balkan War titled Why We Lost Rumelia, of which German and French versions appeared in 1913.
On 30 May 1929, Mahmud Muhtar Pasha was put on trial before the Supreme Court on charges of damnifying the state treasury by remitting 20,000 pounds without security to the British Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company in conjunction with works for the Anatolian Railway Company. On 3 November 1929, he was sentenced to making a payment of 22,000 Turkish gold coins discounted by five percent.
