63 Facts About Talaat Pasha

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.

Talaat Pasha was chairman of the Union and Progress Party, which operated a one-party dictatorship in the Ottoman Empire, and later on became Grand Vizier during World War I He was one of the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide and other ethnic cleansings during his time as Minister of Interior Affairs.

Talaat Pasha was an early member of the Committee of Union and Progress, a secret revolutionary Young Turk organization, and over time became its leader.

Talaat Pasha is widely considered the main perpetrator of the genocide, and is thus held responsible for the death of around 1 million Armenians.

Talaat Pasha 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.

The Ottoman Special Military Tribunal convicted Talaat Pasha and sentenced him to death in absentia for subverting the constitution, profiteering from the war, and organizing massacres against Greeks and Armenians.

Talaat Pasha was assassinated in Berlin in 1921 by Soghomon Tehlirian, a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, as part of Operation Nemesis.

Talaat Pasha's father died when Talaat was eleven years old.

Talaat Pasha'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.

Talaat Pasha'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.

At the age of 21 Talaat Pasha was involved in a love affair with the daughter of the Jewish headmaster for whom he worked.

Talaat Pasha was promoted to municipal chief clerk in April 1903, following which he could afford to bring his mother and sisters to Salonika.

Talaat Pasha met then economics professor, later friend and CUP Finance Minister Mehmed Cavid in Salonika Law School, where he took classes to supplement his lackluster education.

However the Inspector General for Macedonia Huseyin Hilmi Pasha was partial towards the secret committee and intervened, and Talaat returned to Salonika to work as a school principal.

Talaat Pasha was briefly secretary-general of the internal CUP, while Bahattin Sakir was secretary-general of the external CUP.

Talaat Pasha was easily elected into parliament as Union and Progress's candidate for deputy of Adrianople, and then was elected the parliament's vice-president.

Talaat Pasha was the most important politician in the Ottoman Empire between 1908 and 1918.

The Grand Vizier Huseyin Hilmi Talaat Pasha was forced to resign for Ahmed Tevfik Talaat Pasha.

Talaat and Ahmed Muhtar Pasha headed the delegation to announce to Prince Resad of his ascension to the throne.

Talaat Pasha learned there that he was appointed Minister of the Interior in Hilmi Pasha's cabinet reshuffle, becoming the second Unionist with a cabinet position.

Talaat Pasha continued Hamidian era anti-Zionist restrictions in Ottoman Palestine, as well as enforce imperial rule in revolting provinces like Albania and Yemen.

Talaat Pasha had to lay low, hiding with Midhat Sukru, Hasan Tahsin, and Cemal Azmi in Tahsin's brother-in-law's house.

The Savior Officer-backed government of Ahmed Muhtar Talaat Pasha fell soon after when the Balkan League achieved decisive victory over the Ottoman Empire in the First Balkan War.

Talaat Pasha volunteered for the war, but was dismissed from the army for distributing political propaganda.

Talaat and Enver urged Sevket Pasha to accept the Grand Vezierate, but mutual distrust between the generalissimo and the committee meant Talaat only came back as deputy Interior Minister, so he employed komiteci politics to stay influential.

Talaat Pasha 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.

Once Sevket Talaat Pasha was out of the picture due to his assassination on 12 July 1913, the CUP established a de facto one-party state in the Ottoman Empire.

Talaat Pasha kept this post until the CUP's fall from power following the Ottoman Empire's surrender in World War I in 1918.

Talaat Pasha was able to procure an important loan from the Regie to ensure success in retaking Adrianople.

Talaat Pasha symbolically joined the army and took part in the recapture.

Talaat Pasha led the negotiations with Bulgaria in the Constantinople conference, which resulted in a population exchange and formalizing Ottoman reassertion of sovereignty over Adrianople.

Talaat Pasha 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.

Talaat Pasha 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.

Talaat Pasha 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.

On 24 April 1915, 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.

Talaat Pasha 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.

Talaat Pasha, 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.

Talaat Pasha had several conversations with the United States ambassador, Henry Morgenthau, Sr.

Talaat Pasha believed Armenian deportation avenged the Muslim expulsions of the Balkan Wars, and resettled Muhacir in abandoned Armenian property.

Talaat Pasha 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.

Talaat Pasha was a leading force in the Turkification and deportation of Kurds.

Talaat Pasha 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.

On 4 February 1917, Talaat finally replaced Said Halim Pasha by becoming the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, while retaining the Ministry of the Interior.

However territorial loss in the south coincided with diplomatic success with the signing of the Brest-Litovsk treaty in March 1918, with Talaat Pasha himself negotiating for the Ottoman Empire, resulting in the return of Kars, Batumi, and Ardahan to Ottoman rule after their loss forty years ago.

Talaat Pasha was able to travel to Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, and Denmark.

Talaat Pasha held regular correspondences with Mustafa Kemal from Berlin.

Talaat Pasha kept in contact with Tevfik Rustu, Halide Edip, Celal, Abdulkadir Cami and Nuri.

Izzet Pasha was pressured early on by the British to arrest Talaat, but he didn't order his arrest nor order his extradition from Germany until a Constantinople court demanded it.

Ahmet Tevfik Talaat Pasha took the position of grand vizier the same day that Royal Navy ships entered the Golden Horn.

Talaat Pasha was replaced by Damat Ferid Pasha, whose first order was the arrest of leading members of Union and Progress.

The indictment accused the main defendants, including Talaat Pasha, of being "mired in an unending chain of bloodthirstiness, plunder and abuses".

The last official interview Talaat Pasha granted was to Aubrey Herbert, a British intelligence agent.

Talaat Pasha's assassin was a Dashnak member from Erzurum named Soghomon Tehlirian, whose entire family was killed during the genocide.

For each Talaat passing away, one thousand Talaats shall come forth ' " Mustafa Kemal Pasha remarked, "The motherland has lost her great son; the revolution has lost its great organizer.

Talaat Pasha asserted the assassination was "the consequence of imperialist politics against the Islamic nations".

Many of Talaat Pasha's contemporaries wrote of his charm but of a melancholy spirit.

Krikor Zohrab wrote "[Talaat Pasha was] the foremost partisan of war" for "whom [he] and his disciples, this war was tout ou rien [all or nothing]".

Talaat Pasha met Hayriye in 1909, while she was studying in the French girls' Lycee Notre Dame de Sion in Constantinople.

Talaat Pasha learned to speak French in the Israelite School at Salonika, and picked up Greek from his wife.

Talaat Pasha was the first Grand Master of the society.

Talaat Pasha is widely considered one of the main architects of the Armenian Genocide by historians.

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.

The Ottoman signature political animal [Talaat Pasha] held up a distorting mirror to Europe.