[1] He held the office three times, the first in 1909 under Sultan Abdul Hamid II, and from 1918 to 1919 and from 1920 to 1922 under Mehmed VI during the Allied occupation of Istanbul.

In addition to his premiership, Ahmet Tevfik was also a diplomat, a member of the Ottoman Senate, and long time Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Ahmet Tevfik Pasha's first period of office as grand vizier was one of the direct outcomes of the failed counterrevolutionary 31 March Incident (which actually occurred on 13 April) in 1909.

When the absolutists declared the countercoup, they demanded and received the resignation of the previous Grand Vizier Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha.

[3] Ahmet Tevfik Pasha, who had only reluctantly taken up the post at the urging of the pro-absolutist Sultan Abdul Hamid II, formed a government made up of mostly non-partisan and neutral members and took precautions to limit the growth of violence that had begun in Istanbul and Adana.

He formed his government again on 12 January 1919, but after the invaders forced him to dissolve it once more, he resigned as grand vizier on 3 March 1919.

[4] A political scandal that contributed to the fall of the government was the escape of Mehmed Reshid from prison and his subsequent suicide, who was high ranking CUP member who was known as the "butcher of Diyarbakır" during World War I. Damat Ferid Pasha accused Tevfik of being soft on the Unionists, which prompted Tevfik Pasha to arrest key committeemen after the event.

[5] After his second term as grand vizier, Ahmet Tevfik Pasha became the head of the Senate of the Ottoman Empire (which had not yet been dissolved, unlike the lower house).

A daughter, Zehra Hanım, married Mazlum Bey, the son of Minister of Internal Affairs Memduh Pasha.

[2] An apocryphal story has the officer of the imperial family meeting Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, whereupon the renegade asked him, "What news did you bring from your father and the sultan?

Tevfik Pasha, informed of his son's escapade by the angered sultan replied, "he went to fulfill his duty".

Following the Sultan's exile, İsmail Hakkı Pasha remarried with Ferhunde Hanım, the great aunt of Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit.