Mehmed Talaat, commonly known as Talaat Pasha or Talat Pasha, was an Ottoman politician and convicted war criminal who served as its leader from 1913 to 1918.
55 Facts About Mehmed Talaat
2.
Mehmed Talaat was an early member of the Committee of Union and Progress, a secret revolutionary Young Turk organization, and over time became its leader.
3.
Mehmed Talaat is widely considered the main perpetrator of the genocide, and is thus held responsible for the death of around 1 million Armenians.
4.
Mehmed Talaat 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.
5.
The Ottoman Special Military Tribunal convicted Mehmed Talaat and sentenced him to death in absentia for subverting the constitution, profiteering from the war, and organizing massacres against Greeks and Armenians.
6.
Mehmed Talaat was assassinated in Berlin in 1921 by Soghomon Tehlirian, a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, as part of Operation Nemesis.
7.
Mehmed Talaat's father died when Talaat was eleven years old.
8.
Mehmed Talaat's manners were gruff, which caused him to be expelled from the military secondary school at the age of sixteen without a certificate after a conflict with his teacher.
9.
Mehmed Talaat's salary was not high, so he worked after hours as a Turkish language teacher in the Alliance Israelite School which served the Jewish community of Adrianople.
10.
At the age of 21 Mehmed Talaat was involved in a love affair with the daughter of the Jewish headmaster for whom he worked.
11.
Mehmed Talaat was promoted to municipal chief clerk in April 1903, following which he could afford to bring his mother and sisters to Salonika.
12.
However the Inspector General for Macedonia Huseyin Hilmi Pasha was partial towards the secret committee and intervened, and Mehmed Talaat returned to Salonika to work as a school principal.
13.
Mehmed Talaat was briefly secretary-general of the internal CUP, while Bahattin Sakir was secretary-general of the external CUP.
14.
Mehmed Talaat was easily elected into parliament as Union and Progress's candidate for deputy of Adrianople, and then was elected the parliament's vice-president.
15.
Mehmed Talaat was the most important politician in the Ottoman Empire between 1908 and 1918.
16.
Mehmed Talaat learned there that he was appointed Minister of the Interior in Hilmi Pasha's cabinet reshuffle, becoming the second Unionist with a cabinet position.
17.
Mehmed Talaat continued Hamidian era anti-Zionist restrictions in Ottoman Palestine, as well as enforce imperial rule in revolting provinces like Albania and Yemen.
18.
Mehmed Talaat had to lay low, hiding with Midhat Sukru, Hasan Tahsin, and Cemal Azmi in Tahsin's brother-in-law's house.
19.
Mehmed Talaat volunteered for the war, but was dismissed from the army for distributing political propaganda.
20.
Mehmed Talaat urged for the Empire to continue fighting in the First Balkan War to relieve Adrianople, as well as order the arrests against leading Freedom and Accord members and journalists in the subsequent state of emergency.
21.
Mehmed Talaat returned as interior minister in Said Halim Pasha's cabinet.
22.
Mehmed Talaat kept this post until the CUP's fall from power following the Ottoman Empire's surrender in World War I in 1918.
23.
Mehmed Talaat was able to procure an important loan from the Regie to ensure success in retaking Adrianople.
24.
Mehmed Talaat symbolically joined the army and took part in the recapture.
25.
Mehmed Talaat led the negotiations with Bulgaria in the Constantinople conference, which resulted in a population exchange and formalizing Ottoman reassertion of sovereignty over Adrianople.
26.
Mehmed Talaat was confronted by the sultan when the sultan learned of the deportations, but insisted that the stories of persecution of Rum were fabricated by the Empire's enemies.
27.
Mehmed Talaat attended multiple meetings with leading Armenian politicians Krikor Zohrab, Karekin Pastermadjian, Bedros Hallachian, and Vartkes Serengulian, however lack of trust between the old allies of the committee and the ARF and growing radicalism within the CUP slowed negotiations.
28.
Mehmed Talaat worked to keep morale afloat on the crumbling Caucasian front by relaying false information of successes in wars in the Balkans which weren't even happening.
29.
On 24 April 1915, Mehmed Talaat Pasha issued an order to close all Armenian political organizations operating within the Ottoman Empire and arrest Armenians connected to them, justifying the action by stating that the organizations were controlled from outside the empire, were inciting upheavals behind the Ottoman lines, and were cooperating with Russian forces.
30.
Mehmed Talaat then issued the order for the Tehcir Law of 1 June 1915 to 8 February 1916 that allowed for the mass deportation of Armenians, a principal means of carrying out what is recognized as a genocide against Armenians.
31.
Mehmed Talaat, who was a telegraph operator from a young age, had installed a telegraph machine in his own home and sent "sensitive" telegrams during the course of the deportations.
32.
Mehmed Talaat had several conversations with the United States ambassador, Henry Morgenthau, Sr.
33.
Mehmed Talaat believed Armenian deportation avenged the Muslim expulsions of the Balkan Wars, and resettled Muhacir in abandoned Armenian property.
34.
Mehmed Talaat ordered the governor of Van to remove the Assyrian population in Hakkari, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, however this anti-Assyrian policy couldn't be implemented nationally.
35.
Mehmed Talaat was a leading force in the Turkification and deportation of Kurds.
36.
Mehmed Talaat was a major force behind the policies regarding the resettlement of Kurds and wanted to be informed of whether the Kurds would really be turkified or not and how they got along with the Turkish inhabitants in the areas where they had been resettled too.
37.
On 4 February 1917, Mehmed Talaat finally replaced Said Halim Pasha by becoming the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, while retaining the Ministry of the Interior.
38.
However territorial loss in the south coincided with diplomatic success with the signing of the Brest-Litovsk treaty in March 1918, with Mehmed Talaat himself negotiating for the Ottoman Empire, resulting in the return of Kars, Batumi, and Ardahan to Ottoman rule after their loss forty years ago.
39.
Mehmed Talaat was able to travel to Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, and Denmark.
40.
Mehmed Talaat held regular correspondences with Mustafa Kemal from Berlin.
41.
Mehmed Talaat kept in contact with Tevfik Rustu, Halide Edip, Celal, Abdulkadir Cami and Nuri.
42.
Mehmed Talaat's remaining property was confiscated during Tevfik Pasha's premiership, which lasted until 4 March 1919.
43.
Mehmed Talaat was replaced by Damat Ferid Pasha, whose first order was the arrest of leading members of Union and Progress.
44.
The indictment accused the main defendants, including Mehmed Talaat, of being "mired in an unending chain of bloodthirstiness, plunder and abuses".
45.
The last official interview Mehmed Talaat granted was to Aubrey Herbert, a British intelligence agent.
46.
Mehmed Talaat's assassin was a Dashnak member from Erzurum named Soghomon Tehlirian, whose entire family was killed during the genocide.
47.
Mehmed Talaat asserted the assassination was "the consequence of imperialist politics against the Islamic nations".
48.
Many of Mehmed Talaat's contemporaries wrote of his charm but of a melancholy spirit.
49.
Krikor Zohrab wrote "[Mehmed Talaat was] the foremost partisan of war" for "whom [he] and his disciples, this war was tout ou rien [all or nothing]".
50.
Mehmed Talaat met Hayriye in 1909, while she was studying in the French girls' Lycee Notre Dame de Sion in Constantinople.
51.
Mehmed Talaat learned to speak French in the Israelite School at Salonika, and picked up Greek from his wife.
52.
Mehmed Talaat was the first Grand Master of the society.
53.
Mehmed Talaat Pasha is widely considered one of the main architects of the Armenian Genocide by historians.
54.
Mehmed 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.
55.
The Ottoman signature political animal [Mehmed Talaat Pasha] held up a distorting mirror to Europe.