"Democracy works well in Turkey," he said in an interview with New York Times in 2006.
Osmanoğlu had been hospitalized for one week at the American Hospital with renal and respiratory failure. Noting that her husband was in the intensive care unit for the last days of his life, Osmanoğlu's wife, Zeynep Tarzi, said: “He died at around 8:30 p.m. I did not leave him alone in his last hours alive. We have not yet reached a decision concerning his funeral.” Speaking to the Zaman daily in 2007, Osmanoğlu had said, “I do not have much time left. I want to be in İstanbul all the time.”
Oldest Ottoman born at palace
Born in 1912 at Yıldız Palace in İstanbul -- when the Ottoman Empire was still alive and the Ottoman dynasty still ruled the vast empire -- Osmanoğlu had been the eldest surviving member of the Ottoman dynasty since 1994. His father was Şehzade Mehmet Burhanettin Efendi, and he was the grandson of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. Osmanoğlu was 10 when he left İstanbul and went to Vienna for his education. When the system of the caliphate was abolished in 1924 by the newly founded Turkish Republic, the members of the Ottoman dynasty were expelled from the country. Osmanoğlu married Zeynep Tarzi, the daughter of Prince Abdulfettah Tarzi and niece of the former king of Afghanistan, Amanullah Khan, and of Dr. Pakize Tarzi, a Turkish gynecologist.
Osmanoğlu came to Turkey in 1992 for the first time in 53 years upon the invitation of the Turkish prime minister of the time. On that trip, he went to see the 285-room Dolmabahçe Palace, which had been his grandfather's home and his place to play as a child. Recalling that the Osmanoğlu family was granted amnesty in 1974, Osmanoğlu said in the interview in 2007, “I was in Venezuela when we were granted amnesty. We had a mine there. A Turkish ambassador sent me the news: ‘Apply to us if you want to be citizen. We can give you a passport or a visa if you want. If you have an American passport, let us give you a visa, you can go to Turkey then.' I thanked him for his offer and said, ‘We do not need amnesty since we have not done anything wrong'.”
In 2004 he got his Turkish citizenship. Responding to a question in an interview about how it felt to be a Turkish citizen, he said, “I appreciate that I am accepted as a Turkish citizen. It feels different. In fact, it does not matter if I have a Turkish passport or not. Only my being a Turkish citizen has become official.”
Even though he spent most of his life abroad and lived in New York for many years, Osmanoğlu could speak Turkish well, which, he held, was because he spoke in Turkish with his father and brother until their deaths. In addition to Turkish, he could also speak English, German and French at an advanced level and could understand the Ottoman language as well as Italian and Spanish.
