Süreyya Bedir Khan

According to a British intelligence report, he was requested to enter the Ottoman Government by Enver Pasha in 1912, a demand he did not follow and concerned over reprisals, he left for Egypt.

In Egypt he was welcomed by a community of exiled former Ottoman intellectuals and was given the task to take care of the estate of Nimetullah Hanim, a princess of the Khedivial family and daughter-in-law of Ahmed Muhtar Pasha.

[3] In 1918 he established the Committee for the Independence of Kurdistan and onwards he re-initiated the publication of the Kürdistan newspaper[5] which originally was founded by his uncle Mikhdad Midhat Bedir Khan.

[7] Other family members such as Zarife Bedir Khan, who was the wife of Arif Mardinzade, also lived in Cairo at the time,[8] and were joined by several others in March 1920 coming from Istanbul.

After the Turkish Government decided to strip him of his Ottoman passport in 1928, he successfully applied for the Syrian citizenship, alleging that we was born in Maqtala, a claim that was refuted by the French in 1933.