Mehmed V

Ali Reza's death plunges the family into genuine hardship.

Zubeid, now a widow with children to raise and no reliable income, makes the difficult decision to leave Salonika for a time, retreating to relatives in the countryside to a farm near the town where her brother lives.

For a period, young Mustafa's formal education halts entirely.

He works alongside relatives on agricultural land, learns the rhythms of rural labor.

Mustafa Kemal, present among the officers involved in organizing and staffing this force, serves as chief of staff to the army that ultimately suppresses the counter-coup, a role that places him once again at the operational heart of events of enormous consequence for the empire's future, even as the more prominent political credit for the counter-coup's suppression accrues, as before, to other figures within the movement.

The episode ends with Sultan Abdul Hamid II's deposition.

The man whose decades of absolutist rule Mustafa Kemal has opposed since his earliest days as a cadet is removed from the throne entirely, replaced by his more pliable brother, Mehmed V, a ruler who will reign as a largely ceremonial figure while actual power increasingly concentrates in the hands of the CUP and its leadership.

It is worth pausing on what this moment represents for the young officer, who only four years earlier arrived in Damascus as a disgraced and suspect captain exiled to a distant frontier garrison.

A brother, who by Turkish law was the heir apparent, was chosen in his place.

and now rules as Mehmet v. Hilmi Pasha, was restored as Grand Vizier.

Many participants in the counter-revolution were executed.

The new sultan, who was sixty-four at his accession, has lived the secluded life of a political prisoner.