# Emmanouil Emmanouilidis

Emmanouil Emmanouilidis (Greek: Εμμανουήλ Εμμανουηλίδης; 1867–1943) was an Ottoman Greek and Greek jurist and politician. He was a representative for the Committee of Union and Progress during the Second Constitutional Era. He served in the Chamber of Deputies from Izmir and was one of the deputies who criticized the press law of 1915.

## Biography

Emmanouilidis Efendi graduated from Istanbul Law School. He worked as a jurist in Izmir and Athens. He was a member of the Greek Elders' Council [Rum İhtiyar Kurulu] in Izmir several times. As the editor-in-chief of the Izmir Aktis magazine, he defended the use of Demotic Greek and earned the hostility of the conservatives who advocated the re-imposition of Katharevousa and the enactment of this language in the Greek parliament. When Aristidi Pasha was appointed as a member of the Senate on 31 January 1911, Emmanouilidis was elected as a deputy of İzmir. In the 1912 elections, he was reelected as a deputy of İzmir and in the 1914 elections, he was elected as a representative of Aydın.
After the Greco-Turkish War, he had to move to Athens and in the 1923 parliamentary elections, he was elected as the full-fledged representative of Athens-Piraeus. He served as the vice-president of the Greek Parliament from 6 November 1927 to 9 July 1928. He became a member of parliament for Eleftherios Venizelos' Liberal Party and served as Minister of Health in the 1928, June 1929 and December 1929 Venizelos governments.
A street bears his name in Nea Smyrni.

## 4 November 1918 motion

Emmanouilidis was one of the first deputies to break the passive attitude most parliamentarians had during the war near its conclusion. On 4 November 1918, he attacked the President of the Chamber (Speaker) Halil Menteşe for activities which lead to his enrichment during the Armenian genocide. He called for new elections and for Halil to step down for new Speaker, proposals which were rejected. Later during the session, he put forward an eight-point proposal, calling for the punishment of Talât Pasha and his friends, saying the Unionists that persecuted the Armenians and the Arabs had to bare consequences. The motion was as follows:
* One million people, including women and children, people who had committed no crime other than being part of the Armenian nation, were cut down and killed.
* Some 250,000 members of the Greek community, which has for at least the last forty centuries been the true agent of civilization in this country, were expelled from the Ottoman Empire and had their property confiscated.
* After the war, some more 550,000 more Greeks were murdered at sea and on land, and their property was seized.
* Since non-Muslim communities within the Ottoman Empire were barred from conducting trade, and commerce was left to the thievery of the authorities, the entire nation has been cheated.
* Deputies Zohrab Efendi and Vartkes Efendi were assassinated.
* The abuses inflicted on the noble Arab nation are the main cause for the current disaster.
* Some 250,000 people serving in the Labor Battalions, formed as a result of the general mobilization, perished from hunger and deprivation.
* The country entered the war without reason and a portion of its territory was abandoned to the Bulgarians in order to attain this dubious honor.
Minister Ali Fethi Okyar refuted the motion by asserting the descriptions of Greek, Armenian, and Arab suffering should also include Turks, who were "perhaps more abused and mistreated than anyone" and promised better conditions for non-Muslims which were met with shouts of "Bravo!" Emmanouilidis responded that those responsible for genocide were not mere individuals but an entire political movement, and that the entire nation bore collective responsibility for supporting the CUP, which draw harsh responses from Turkish deputies.

## Published works

He wrote many books, the most notable of which is:
* Osmanlı İmparatorluğu'nun Son Yılları [The Last Years of the Ottoman Empire]