Şerif Paşa

Mehmed Şerif Pasha (1865 – 22 December 1951) was a founding member of Kurd Society for Cooperation and Progress and representative of the Society for the Elevation of Kurdistan to the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920). He was a leading Kurdish nationalist.

Family He was the son of Said Pasha Kurd, nephew of Kurd Ahmet Izzet Pasha and Mustafa Yamulki, brother of Kurd Fuad Pasha and brother in law of Said Halim Pasha, and cousin of Abdul Aziz Yamulki. He was descended from a noble Kurdish family of the Emirate of Baban.

Early life and career Sherif Pasha was the Ottoman Ambassador to Stockholm between 1898 and 1908 Sherif Pasha lived in Sweden for ten years. The first documented Kurd in Sweden was the physician Mirza Seid from east Kurdistan (Iran) who came 1893.

Young Turk Revolution Before 1908 Sherif Pasha was a supporter of the Young Turk movement and provided economic support to Ahmed Riza, a young Turk leader in Paris. After the 1908 Revolution he returned to the Ottoman Empire and headed up the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) branch in the Istanbul district of Pangaltı.

However, he soon fell out with the CUP.

Early Kurd activities In 1908, he co-founded the Kurd Society for Cooperation and Progress in Constantinople together with Emin Ali Bedir Khan and Abdulkadir Ubeydullah.

Leader of the Ottoman opposition in exile (1909–1914) He again left the Empire and helped to found a number of reformist liberal opposition parties. He articulated strong opposition through a newspaper in Paris entitled Meşrutiyet (Constitutionalism). Due to his oppositional stances, the CUP accused him of being involved into the murder of the former Ottoman Grand Vizier Mahmud Shevket Pasha. He was sentenced to death in absentia in June 1913. Sherif Pasha remained in Monte Carlo throughout the Great War. In 1918, death sentence he was issued in June 1913, was overturned by the Government of Tevfik Pasha. (Kürdistan Teali Cemiyeti) and as well at the Treaty of Sèvres.

He reached an agreement with the Armenian delegation headed by Boghos Nubar in Paris which involved the division of eastern Anatolia between a Kurdish and Armenian state.

Leader of the Kurdish nation in exile (1920–1951) After the failure of the Kurdish movement to achieve autonomy or independence for Kurdistan, Sherif Pasha remained in exile until his death. He moved to Cairo, where he had a property, which he received through the marriage with a member of the Khedivian family, In 1927 his daughter Melek Hanim was born in Monticiano, Siena.

Death and legacy Sherif died of a heart attack on 22 December 1951 in his last place of exile Catanzaro, Calabria, Italy. He is known as the father of the Kurdish nation and his hand drawn map of Kurdistan presented to the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920) adorns walls in Kurdish homes and is studied in textbooks by Kurd across the world.