Committee of Union and Progress
He was one of the founding members of the Freedom and Accord Party in 1911, favoring liberalism and more regional autonomy within the Empire, in opposition to the Committee of Union and Progress. On 11 June 1919, Damat Ferid Pasha officially confessed to massacres against Armenians and was a key figure and initiator of the war crime trials held directly after World War I to condemn to death the chief perpetrators of the genocide, who were notably Committee of Union and Progress members and long-time rivals of his own Freedom and Accord Party.