He attended the Mekteb-i Mülkiye in Istanbul for civil servants, and upon graduation he secured employment with a state bank, and at the same time taught economics and worked within the Ministry of Education.

[7] Cavit was more successful than the average state employee in Istanbul, but for unknown reasons he decided to leave his budding career and move back to Salonica.

Between 1908 and 1911, he published the Ulum-ı İktisâdiye ve İçtimâiye Mecmuası (Journal for Economic Thought and Social Media), together with Rıza Tevfik and Ahmet Şuayip, in Istanbul, which advocated liberalism.

[8] In the aftermath of the Savior Officer insurrection and repression of the CUP, Cavit hid in a French battleship and escaped to Marseilles.

Following the orchestrated Black Sea Raid on Russian ports in 1914 and the subsequent entry of the Ottoman Empire into World War I, Cavit and half the CUP cabinet resigned in protest.

He did not find out about the massive deportations of Armenians until August 1915, and condemned it in his diary, writing "Ottoman history has never opened its pages, even during the time of the Middle Ages, onto such determined murder[s] and large scale cruelty.

[citation needed] After the war, Cavit Bey was tried in the Special Military Court Tribunal [Aliye Divan-ı Harb-i Örfi], which was established by the occupation authorities in Istanbul.

[12] After accompanying Ankara's representative Bekir Sami Bey at the London Conference held in February 1921, he returned to Turkey in July 1922 to join the Turkish Nationalist Movement.

In the early period of the Republican era, Mehmet Cavit Bey was charged with involvement in the assassination attempt in İzmir against Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk).

The judges of the Independence Tribunal who tried him did not find his defense sufficient to prove his innocence, and Cavit Bey was convicted and later executed by hanging on 26 August 1926 in Ankara.

[14] Albert Sarraut, who was the French Ambassador to Ankara during 1925-1926, met directly with Mustafa Kemal and asked for Cavid Bey's clemency.

[2] In 1921, Mehmet Cavit Bey married Aliye Nazlı Hanım, the divorced wife of Şehzade Mehmed Burhaneddin.