Hüseyin Numan Menemencioğlu

Hasan Saka and Hüseyin Numan Menemencioğlu (on the right)

His father, Rıfat, from the Aydın Province (west Turkey), was a civil servant and a Minister of Finance in the Ottoman Empire. His mother Feride, of Albanian origin, was the daughter of Namık Kemal, a well known 19th-century intellectual. During his father's various service places, he was born in Baghdad (now in Iraq), graduated from the junior high school in Salonika (now Thessaloniki in Greece) and graduated from the high school in Constantinople (now known in English as Istanbul). Then he traveled aboard to study in the law school of the Lausanne University. After graduation, he began serving in the foreign office of the Ottoman Empire.

After the Occupation of Constantinople by the Allies of World War I, he began serving for the newly founded Turkey. He served in Bern, Bucharest, Budapest, and Beirut. After 1929 he was appointed as the secretary general of the Ministry. He was a brilliant diplomat and he participated in such negotiations like the Straits ıssue (Treaty of Montreux) and Hatay ıssue (Hatay Republic).[1] He went into politics and was elected as the Republican People's Party MP from Gaziantep Province. Between 9 July 1942 and 16 June 1944, in the 13th and the 14th government of Turkey, he was appointed as the Foreign Minister of Turkey. His term coincides with the Second World War. After politics, he resumed his diplomatic mission and was appointed as the ambassador to Paris and then Lisbon.[2]

After retirement, he returned to politics in the 1957 general elections and was elected as a Democrat Party MP from İstanbul Province. However, he soon died, on 15 February 1958,[3] in Istanbul.

• Newspaper clippings about Hüseyin Numan Menemencioğlu in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW