Charles Doughty-Wylie - Turkish Revolution

Turkish Revolution

Colonel Doughty-Wylie was the British consul in Mersina, Ottoman Empire, during the Young Turk Revolution of 1909. Richard Bell-Davies (later a VC winner, then a lieutenant on the battleship HMS Swiftsure) met him at the time and gives an account in his autobiography Sailor in the Air (1967).

Massacres of Armenians started along with the revolution, and Bell-Davies says that it was largely due to the efforts of Doughty-Wylie that these were halted in Mersina. Doughty-Wylie then went to Adana, forty miles away. He persuaded the local Vali (Governor) to give him a small escort of Ottoman troops and a bugler and with these managed to restore order. Mrs. Doughty-Wylie turned part of the dragoman's house into a hospital for wounded Armenians. Bell-Davies says that by the time an armed party from Swiftsure arrived, Doughty-Wylie had again almost stopped the massacre single-handedly. Newspaper reports of the period record that Doughty-Wylie was shot in the arm, while trying to prevent these massacres.

Charles Hotham Montagu Doughty-Wylie was the recipient of the Order of the Medjidie from the Ottoman Government. He was awarded the Medjidie because of his work during the Balkan Wars when he served with the British Red Cross helping the Ottoman Military. He is the only soldier to have been awarded military honors by both the British Empire and the Ottoman Empire.