He mastered Arabic, Persian, and French languages and worked as a civil servant during the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II.

After moving to Constantinople, he started to write articles against Sultan Abdul Hamid II sympathizing with the ideas and aims of the Young Ottomans.

[2][4] After Sultan Abdülhamid II restored the constitutional monarchy following the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, Süleyman Nazif served as governor of Ottoman provinces Basra (1909), Kastamonu (1910), Trabzon (1911), Mosul (1913) and Baghdad (1914).

[7] During his time as governor of Baghdad, Nazif visited Diyarbakir where he encountered a "pungent smell of decaying corpses" which "pervaded the atmosphere and that the bitter stench clogged his nose, making him gag.

In a letter written to his brother Faik Ali Bey, the governor of Kutahya, Nazif wrote, "Don't participate in this event, watch out for our family's honor.

"[11] On November 23, 1918, Nazif's article titled Kara Bir Gün (literally: A Black Day) was published in the newspaper Hadisat to condemn the French occupying forces in Istanbul.

As a result of a speech he gave on January 23, 1920, at a meeting to commemorate the French writer Pierre Loti, who had lived a while in Constantinople, Süleyman Nazif was forced into exile on Malta by the occupying British military.

In the end this did not materialize, Nazif apologizing but being not less critical of the "Crusader mentality" of the imperialist Europeans, targeting Turkey in order to extend their power on its soil.