Naime Sultan, the daughter of Sultan Abdul Hamid II had been a neighbour in the adjoining villa. Hatice Sultan had been having an affair for three years with her husband, Mehmed Kemaleddin Pasha. According to Filizten Hanım, they decided to have Naime Sultan, murdered so they could get married. This relationship was discovered in early 1904. The nature of the relationship is not known with certainty. According to Filitzen Hanim, Murad V's last consort, the relationship was consummated, while according to the son of the governor of Bursa, who was holding Kemaleddin under house arrest, it consisted only of letters thrown over the wall that separated their gardens and fleeting encounters. In any case, the scandal resonated not only in the Empire, but also in Europe and America (The New York Times reported the news on 25 May 1904). The two were eventually accused of wanting to poison their respective consorts in order to get married, and, according to Filitzan, the pain and shame for their favourite daughter led to Murad V's death. Hatice's feelings are also controversial. While Kemaleddin was surely in love with her (in his letters he frequently lamented her absence, asked when they could meet and if they could meet earlier than established, recounted that one time in which he slowed down in front of his villa to see her exit hers and get in the carriage), Filitzan and Hatice's granddaughter argue that seducing the husband of Naime, Abdülhamid II's favourite daughter, was just a way to take revenge for the wrongs she and her family had suffered from him who had imprisoned her father in Çırağan Palace for years, and didn't arrange her marriage until the age of thirty, and then married her to someone she never loved. Thus, the perfect way to take revenge was to ruin the marriage of Sultan's favourite daughter. According to other Hatice she still felt a sincere feeling, even if only relief from the escape from the unhappy marriage. In any case, when Kemaleddin, after the divorces, asked her to marry him, she refused them, out of pride, because "she did not accept the scraps of another princess" or because at that point she was already infatuated with who would become her second husband.
