Introduced at the beginning of the novel as the father of Felâtun Bey and Mihriban Hanım. He acquired the nickname 'Merakî' (the Curious/Whimsical) because whenever those around him asked about his strange and excessive endeavors, he would reply, 'It is just a whim!' While he was a content and very wealthy man in Üsküdar, Istanbul, he suddenly shifted to full Westernization, sold his home and property, moved into a Western-style stone mansion in the Beyoğlu district, and filled his house with Armenian and Greek servants. He considered his son’s knowledge of French to be sufficient as a perfect intellectual education. He is extremely careless and superficial in guiding the moral development of his children. His death leaves his son with an uncontrolled, massive fortune and a total lack of qualifications.
He was married at sixteen and, after losing his wife, never remarried, instead sacrificing his children's upbringing to his own whims under the guise of total Western comfort.
Although he is a man of Ottoman roots who tried to imitate Western styles later in life, he might be considered to lean toward ostentation in his clothing and daily mannerisms (a forty-five-year-old man who is quite vigorous but pretentious).
Felâtun Bey
His parasitic son, whose every talent he wrongly attempts to ennoble.