Talaat Pasha
Mehmed Talaat[a] (1 September 1874 – 15 March 1921), commonly known as Talaat Pasha or Talat Pasha,[b] was an Ottoman Young Turk activist, politician, and convicted war criminal who served as the de facto leader of the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1918. He was chairman of the Union and Progress Party, which operated a one-party dictatorship in the Empire; during World War I he became Grand Vizier (prime minister). He has been called the architect of the Armenian genocide,[2] and was responsible for other ethnic cleansings during his time as Minister of Interior Affairs.
For the book, see Talaat Pasha: Father of Modern Turkey, Architect of Genocide.
Mehmed Talaat
Himself
Said Halim Pasha
Adrianople (1908, 1912, 1914)
1 September 1874
Kırcaali, Ottoman Empire (now Bulgaria)
Hayriye Talaat Bafralı
Premeditated mass murder[1]
Death (in absentia)
Around 1 million
Talaat was an early member of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), eventually leading its Salonica chapter during the Hamidian era. After the CUP succeeded in restoring the constitution and parliament in the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, he was elected as a deputy from Adrianople to the Chamber of Deputies and later became Minister of the Interior. He played an important role in the downfall of Abdul Hamid the next year during the 31 March Incident by organizing a counter government. Multiple crises in the Empire including the 31 March Incident, attacks on Rumelian Muslims in the Balkan Wars, and the power struggle with the Freedom and Accord Party made Talaat and the Unionists disillusioned with multicultural Ottomanism and political pluralism, turning them into hard-line authoritarian Turkish nationalists.
In 1913, Talaat and Ismail Enver carried out a coup d'état with Mahmud Şevket Pasha as a reluctant partner. With the latter's assassination, an autocratic triumvirate of CUP Central Committee members lead the Ottoman Empire, consisting of himself, Enver, and Ahmed Cemal (known as the Three Pashas) of whom Talaat was its civilian leader. Talaat and Enver were influential bringing the Ottoman Empire into the First World War. During World War I, he ordered on 24 April 1915 the arrest and deportation of Armenian intellectuals in Constantinople (now Istanbul), most of them being ultimately murdered, and on 30 May 1915 promulgated the Temporary Law of Deportation; these events initiated the Armenian genocide. He is widely considered the main perpetrator of the genocide,[3][4][5][6][7] and is thus held responsible for the death of around 1 million Armenians.
In a move that established total Unionist control over the Ottoman government, Talaat Pasha became Grand Vizier in 1917.[8] He personally negotiated the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Bolsheviks, regaining parts of Eastern Anatolia which were occupied by Russia since 1878, and won the race to Baku on the Caucasus front. However breakthroughs by the Allies in the Macedonia and Palestine fronts meant defeat for the Ottomans and the downfall of the CUP, whereupon he resigned. On the night of 2–3 November 1918, Talaat Pasha and other members of the CUP's central committee fled the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Special Military Tribunal convicted and sentenced him to death in absentia for subverting the constitution, profiteering from the war, and organizing massacres against Greeks and Armenians. Exiled in Berlin, he supported the Turkish Nationalists led by Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) in Turkey's War of Independence. He was assassinated in Berlin in 1921 by Soghomon Tehlirian, a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, as part of Operation Nemesis.[8]
Rise to power: 1908–1913
Young Turk Revolution and aftermath
The Unionists found themselves at the behest of a spontaneous revolution in 1908, which commenced with Niyazi and Enver's flight into the Albanian hinterlands. Talaat's role during the Young Turk Revolution was to organize a plot to assassinate the garrison commander of Salonika, Ömer Nazım, who was a Hamidian loyalist and spy master of the area. Nazım survived his hired Fedai with injury, but the incident, as well as other assassinations carried out by the CUP during the revolution, intimidated the Hamidian establishment enough to reopen the parliament and reinstate the constitution.[28] For the first time in three decades, an election was held for the Chamber of Deputies, which this time featured political parties. Talaat was easily elected into parliament as Union and Progress's candidate for deputy of Adrianople, and then was elected the parliament's deputy-president under Rıza.[29]
A year later in the 31 March Incident, what started out as an anti-Unionist demonstration in the capital quickly turned into an anticonstitutionalist-monarchist counter revolution where Abdul Hamid attempted to reestablish his autocracy. The Grand Vizier Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha was forced to resign for Ahmed Tevfik Pasha. Khachatur Malumian, leader of the Dashnak Party, hid Talaat and Dr. Nazım in his house while mob violence targeted MPs.[30] Three days later, Talaat and 100 MPs escaped Constantinople for Ayastefanos (Yeşilköy) to organize a separate national assembly from the volatile situation in Constantinople, and declared the change in government illegal.[31] Relief came in the form of pro-constitutionalist forces known as the Action Army led by Mahmud Şevket Pasha, which stopped in Ayastefanos before marching on the capital; it was secretly agreed there that Abdul Hamid would be replaced by his brother.[31] After the reactionary revolt was crushed, Talaat bullied the Shaykh al-Islam Sahip Molla to get a fatwa for Abdul Hamid's deposition, and convinced Tevfik Pasha to step down and return Hilmi Pasha to the premiership.[32] With the fatwa, the parliament voted to depose Abdul Hamid II. Talaat and Ahmed Muhtar Pasha headed the delegation to announce to Prince Reşad of his ascension to the throne.
In August 1909 Mehmed Talaat led a 17-member parliamentary delegation to Westminster.[33] He learned there that he was appointed Minister of the Interior in Hilmi Pasha's cabinet reshuffle,[34] becoming the second Unionist with a cabinet position (first being Cavid as Finance Minister). He continued Hamidian era anti-Zionist restrictions in Ottoman Palestine,[35] as well as enforce imperial rule in revolting provinces like Albania and Yemen.[36] That year, Louis Rambert, director of the Régie des Tabacs, wrote that Talaat was "the acknowledged head of the Committee of Union and Progress and the Young Turks."[37] Biographer Hans-Lukas Kieser writes that he was under the influence of Bahattin Şakir and Mehmed Nazım before 1908, but after late 1909 he had an increased interest in the new Central Committee member Ziya Gökalp and his more revolutionary and Pan-Turkist ideas.[38]