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Heybeliada as well as the other Prince Islands have been an exile place for princes sent away by Byzantine Emperors wanting them to stay away from state affairs. Later the islands became summer residence for wealthy Istanbul residents, mostly for the non-Muslim communities. Today, although Heybeliada is still considered by majority as a resort vacation, there is a visible tendency especially among artists, writers and journalists, to choose Heybeliada as their place of permanent, mainly due to the car inferno of Istanbul. Doubtless, the recent arrival of the natural gas to the island has facilitated the decision of choosing Heybeliada permanently, and as a result, many of the older wooden houses are being renovated.
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According to a Turkish historian, Nejat Gulen, Kuleli Kösk was built as a summer house in 1910 for Mahmut Sevket Pasa, an Ottoman army chief, who later became minister of Defence. Mahmut Pasa was the commanding officer of the “Army of Action” (Harekat Ordusu), the so-called Europeanised Ottoman troops, which were stationed in the Balkans. His troops came to Istanbul in 1909 to suppress a conservative insurrection known as the “31st March Incident”. The uprising was a reaction against the Second Ottoman Constitution (Mesrutiyet), which aimed at creating a constitutional monarchy and strengthening the Ottoman State through the adoption of European style of state administration.
According to another account, widely adopted by the people living on Heybeliada, Kuleli Kösk was built in 1906 by an Ottoman Pasa for his beloved daughter, whose first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. Blaming the stress of Istanbul, the Pasa decided to build a mansion for his daughter on Heybeliada. Indeed, according to this story, the daughter got pregnant once more and gave a birth to a perfectly healthy baby in Kuleli Kösk.
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