MEHMET TALAAT PASHA ,RESPONSIBLE FOR ARMENIAN GENOCIDES MURDERED IN BERLIN 1874 SEPTEMBER 1- 1921 MARCH 15

 

MEHMET TALAAT PASHA ,RESPONSIBLE FOR ARMENIAN GENOCIDES MURDERED IN BERLIN 1874 SEPTEMBER 1- 1921 MARCH 15

Mehmet Talaat Pasha (1874-1921) (also known as Talaat Bey) was the principal architect of the Armenian Genocide. Born in Edirne (Adrianople), Talaat became a telegrapher at a young age. He was active in the Young Turk movement seeking to overthrow Sultan Abdul Hamid (Abdulhamit) II. He joined the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) and quickly emerged a leader in the secret organization. His profession gave him access to the principal means of communication in his era and his assignment as Chief Secretary of Posts and Telegraphs in Salonika (now Thessaloniki, Greece) placed him at the hub of Turkish revolutionary plotting. After the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, Talaat became one of the most influential politicians of the Ottoman Empire. In 1909 he was appointed Minister of the Interior and then Minister of Posts. By 1912 he was Secretary General of the CUP, which the following year seized complete power in the Ottoman Empire. The 1913 coup saw the rise of the so-called Young Turk triumvirate consisting of Talaat as Minister of the Interior, Enver as Minister of War, and Jemal as Minister of the Marine.

Talaat was one of the main advocates of the Turkification of the Ottoman Empire. As Minister of the Interior, he assumed primary responsibility for planning and implementing the Armenian Genocide. He employed the system of provincial administration subordinate to his direct authority as the main instrument for carrying out the deportations. The 1915 orders for the eviction of the Armenians from their homes carried his signature, much as subsequent orders clarifying the originally disguised intentions of the deportations as annihilation also bear his name. Talaat personally supervised the process and his ability to operate a telegraph machine enhanced his capacity to carry out the policies of his government through direct and secret communications to other CUP cohorts specifically assigned provincial administrative posts to receive and carry out the orders. This method of operation circumvented the machinery of the central government and permitted a handful of CUP fanatics to subvert the state in order to carry out their criminal conspiracy. The organized and scheduled depopulation of Armenians from one town after another carried out with complete surprise and minimal cost, their systematic liquidation once moved to remote locations, and the methodical plunder of their properties demonstrated Talaat's capacity for calculated cruelty and only increased his power and prestige in the CUP. Talaat went so far as to expressly order the destruction of young Armenian orphans. In February 1917 Talaat became Grand Vizier, earning him the title Pasha. He resigned his post in October 1918 as the empire neared total defeat.

Aware of the consequences he faced because of the declared intentions of the Allied Powers to hold him and his associates responsible for the extermination of the Armenians, Talaat fled to Germany where he lived under an assumed name. During the tribunal convened in Constantinople by the post-war Ottoman government, Talaat was tried in absentia, found guilty of capital crimes, including massacre, and was condemned to death. Whereas Germany refused to extradite him, Talaat was identified and gunned down in Berlin in 1921 by Soghomon Tehlirian, an Armenian whose extended family had disappeared from its native town of Erzinjan. Talaat's assassination caused a furor, and Tehlirian's trial became a major media event exposing the knowledge of the German government about the Armenian massacres, which had been kept from the German public during the war. The jury, hearing the eyewitness testimony of German officers, acquitted Tehlirian. As for Talaat's remains, they were returned to Istanbul in 1943 by Nazi Germany and given burial with full honors.

Assassination, 1921

The headline of a 16 March 1921 New York Times article, announcing Talaat Pasha's assassination by Soghomon Tehlirian.

See also: Operation Nemesis

Before the assassination, the British intelligence services identified Talaat in Stockholm, where he had gone for a few days. The British intelligence first planned to apprehend him in Berlin, where he was planning to return, but then changed its mind because it feared the complications this would create in Germany. Another view in British intelligence was that Talaat should be apprehended by the Royal Navy at sea while returning from Scandinavia by ship. In the end, it was decided to let him return to Berlin, find out what he was trying to accomplish with his activities abroad, and to establish direct contact with him before giving the final verdict.[47] This was achieved with the help of Aubrey Herbert.

The British intelligence service established contact with its counterpart in the Soviet Union to evaluate the situation. Talaat Pasha's plans made the Russian officials as anxious as the British. The two intelligence services collaborated and signed between them the 'death warrant' of Talaat. Information concerning his physical description and his whereabouts was forwarded to their men in Germany.[47][page needed]

It was decided that Armenian revolutionaries should carry out the verdict.[47] Talaat was assassinated with a single bullet on 15 March 1921 as he came out of his house in Hardenbergstrasse, Charlottenburg. His assassin was an Armenian Revolutionary Federation member from Erzurum named Soghomon Tehlirian.[48] Soghomon Tehlirian admitted committing the shooting, but after a cursory two-day trial, he was found innocent by a German court on grounds of temporary insanity because of the traumatic experience he had gone through during the genocide.[49]

Legacy

Post mortem

Shortly after the assassination of Talaat in March 1921, the "Posthumous Memoirs of Talaat" were published in the October volume of The New York Times Current History.[50] In his memoir,

Talaat admitted to purposefully deporting the Armenians to the Ottoman Empire's eastern provinces in a prepared scheme. He however blamed Armenian civilians themselves for the deportations, implying the civilian population could have caused a revolution.[51][52]

Tomb of Talaat Pasha in the cemetery of Monument of Liberty, Istanbul

He was buried in the Turkish Cemetery in Berlin. In 1943, his remains were taken to Istanbul and reburied in Monument of Liberty in Şişli, Istanbul.[53] His return to Turkey was very welcomed by the Turkish society[54] and to the funeral ceremony attended representatives of the Turkish political sphere as well as the German diplomatic corps in Turkey.[55]

Hans-Lukas Kieser states that many Jews engaged in "open propaganda for him and CUP causes" despite Talaat's involvement in genocide, and that this continued even after Talaat's death into the late twentieth century.[56]

Modern views

Talaat Pasha is widely considered one of the main authors of the Armenian Genocide by historians.[57]

Within modern Turkey, criticism also focuses on Talaat and the rest of the Three Pashas for causing the Ottoman Empire's entry into World War I and its subsequent partitioning by the Allies. Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk widely criticized Talaat Pasha and his colleagues for their policies during and immediately prior to the First World War.[58]

Talaat Pasha is viewed as a "great statesman, skillful revolutionary, and farsighted founding father" in Turkey, where many schools, streets, and mosques are named after him.[59]