The 43rd head of the Ottoman dynasty:
Born: 18 August 1912 (Istanbul).
Died: September 23, 2009 (Istanbul).
Ertugrul Usman Oglu was born in the Yildiz Palace of Constantinople to Prince Muhammad Burhanuddin and Alia Malik Nazli Khanum. His father, Prince Burhanuddin, served as a captain in the Ottoman army. And he was the official king and crown prince of Albania from 1914 to 1919 because he had married Princess Alia Malik Nazli Khanum, daughter of King Hussein Bay of Albania. Ertugrul Usman was studying in Vienna when it was reported that Mustafa Kemal Pasha had overthrown his uncle Caliph Abdul Majeed and exiled the royal family. Ertugrul never returned home, and in 1933 he moved to the United States, living in a two-bedroom rented apartment in a four-story building in New York with no elevator or stairwell lighting.
Ertugrul Usman remained involved in private business in the United States. He refused to issue any passport other than the Ottoman Empire. He could go to any country but he was not allowed to go back to his homeland. Mustafa Kemal Atatرکrk had taken away all the titles and privileges of the Ottoman princes, yet he never made any statement against Kamal Atatرکrk. Ertugrul Usman's first marriage took place on January 20, 1947 in New York to Gulda Tewar Sukhoi, with whom he had no children. Gulda died in 1985. He got married for the second time on September 27, 1991 to Princess Zainab. She was the niece of Afghan King Amanullah Khan and the daughter of Abdul Fateh Tarzi. Zainab Tarzi was born on December 16, 1940 in Kabul.
In 1992, Turkish Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel lifted the ban on the former Ottoman royal family and invited Prince Ertugrul Usman to return to his homeland. Arriving in Istanbul, he first visited the palace where he had spent his childhood. The 285-room Dolma Basha Palace was used by Atatرکrk in his last days. On the death of Prince Muhammad Arkhan, the 42nd heir to the Ottoman Empire, on March 12, 1994, Ertugrul Usman inherited the title of Ertugrul II from the Ottoman dynasty. In 2004, the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan re-granted Prince Ertugrul to Turkish citizenship and issued him a Turkish passport. He died in September 2009 at the age of 97 after an illness and was succeeded by Bayazid Usman, the 44th Prince.
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