Boris Johnson is expected to become Britain's next prime minister this week. The former London mayor is the favourite to win the governing Conservative Party's leadership contest and replace Prime Minister Theresa May on Wednesday.
Recently in a televised debate Johnson faced questions about Islamaphobia.
The ex-London Mayor drew up a distant Muslim relative when he was questioned on over past comments, one of which saw him compare women wearing the traditional burqa to a letterbox.
He said: “When my Muslim great-grandfather came to this country in fear of his life in 1912, he did so because he knew it was a place that was a beacon of hope and of generosity and openness, and a willingness to welcome people from around the world.”
The Muslim relative in question is Boris Johnson’s paternal great-grandfather and his father Stanley Johnson’s grandfather, Ali Kemal.
Ali Kemal was born in Constantinople, now Istanbul, in 1867 to a mother from Circassia, now part of Russia.
Kemal made a living as a journalist, author and poet in Constantinople. He married Anglo-Swiss Winifred Brun in London in 1903. Kemal died during the Young Turk revolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1922.
He left behind three children, Selma, Osman and Zeki. Both Selma and Osman, who were living in England, adopted the surname Johnson.
Osman changed his first name to Wilfred and married Irene Williams of Kent, who gave birth to Boris Johnson’s father Stanley, who married Boris Jonhson’s mother Charlotte Fawcett in 1963.
