On August 4, 1935, the front-page headline of newspapers throughout the United States announced that Prince Abdülkerim had committed suicide in a room in the Cadillac Hotel, located on 43rd Street and Broadway in New York. The young Prince had 75 cents in his pocket, the newspapers said, and claimed that he had left a letter in Turkish to the New York’s chief of police. The police did not show the letter to the press; only later was it allegedly translated into English by an official of the Turkish Consulate in New York and presented to the media. This news also hit the front page of the New York Times.  In this letter, the young Prince was said to have claimed that he had fallen ill trying to regain his dynasty and throne; he had proposed marriage to a rich woman from the Bronx, Alice De Stefano, believing that such a marriage would allow him to realize his dreams. Her rejection caused him to fall into a depression and, as a result, he could not think of any other way out except by committing suicide.

It was a warm spring night. A group of people gathered at the Bergen Turkish-American Mosque and Cultural Center in Cliffside Park, New Jersey. They were very enthusiastic about their guest who would be watching a documentary about the‘Ottoman Family in Exile’ with them. The 8-year-old-boy in the crowd was probably the most excited one of all. He was expecting to see the Princess with a crown, and he came with his plastic sword to protect her.  The honored guest was Mediha Nami Osmanoğlu de Martinez who is the oldest daughter of Osman Nami, who is Abülhamid’s daughter Ayşe Sultan’s son. She watched the documentary with tears along with the participants.

The eighth child and the fourth son of Sultan Abdülhamid II, Prince Mehmed Burhaneddin is also among the Ottoman Dynasty members who lived and passed away here in the United States. Born in 1885 at Yıldız Palace in İstanbul, Prince Burhaneddin was Abdülhamid II’s favorite son and was known for his intelligence. It is said that when he was barely in his twenties, his father sought to declare him the heir to the Ottoman throne, causing a great uproar among conservative factions that insisted on the traditional line of succession, his father had wanted to declare him the Veliaht (the Heir) to the Ottoman throne. He had been a colonel in the Ottoman navy, a composer, a painter, and a virtuoso pianist and violinist. He had two extremely rare pianos of which only four still exist in the world.

The Head of the Ottoman Dynasty His Imperial Highness Bayazıd and the family members visited, in Queens, the grave of Prince Abdül Kerim, the grandson of Sultan Abdülhamid II, who died in a hotel room in New York under mysterious circumstances 80 years ago. The grave of the Prince in the Queens cemetery, where he was buried 80 years ago, was found in 2006 by TRT film director Kerime Şenyücel, who was shooting a documentary about his grandson Orhan Osmanoğlu and the Dynasty members.