page_title: Talaat Pasha
section_title: Armenian Genocide
hierarchical_section_title: Talaat Pasha / Armenian Genocide
caption_attribution_description: English: Talaat Pasha, (1874-1921)Türkçe: Talât Paşa, (1874-1921)
context_page_description: Mehmed Talaat, commonly known as Talaat Pasha, was one of the triumvirate known as the Three Pashas that de facto ruled the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. He was one of the leaders of the Young Turks and ruled the empire during the Armenian Genocide, which he initiated as Minister of Interior Affairs in 1915.
  His career in Ottoman politics began by becoming deputy for Adrianople in 1908, then minister of the interior and minister of finance, and finally grand vizier in 1917. Acting as the minister of interior, Talaat Pasha ordered on 24 April 1915 the arrest and deportation of Armenian intellectuals in Constantinople, most of them being ultimately murdered, and on 30 May 1915 requested the Tehcir Law; these events initiated the Armenian Genocide. He is widely considered the main perpetrator of the genocide, and thus is held responsible for the death of between 800,000 and 1,800,000 Armenians.
  On the night of 2–3 November 1918 and with the aid of Ahmed Izzet Pasha, Talaat Pasha and Enver Pasha fled the Ottoman Empire. Talaat was assassinated in Berlin in 1921 by Soghomon Tehlirian, a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, as part of Operation Nemesis.
context_section_description: According to various sources, Talaat Pasha had developed plans to eliminate the Armenians as early as 1910. Danish philologist Johannes Østrup wrote in his memoirs that in the autumn of 1910, Talaat talked openly about his plans to "exterminate" the Armenians with him. According to Østrup, Talaat stated: "If I ever come to power in this country, I will use all my might to exterminate the Armenians." In November of that year, a decision to carry out such a plan was made in Salonica (Thessaloniki) where a secret conference was held by prominent members of the CUP. The conference concluded that the Ottoman Empire, which promoted equality among Muslims and non-Muslims alike, was not ideologically compatible anymore, and that the Ottoman Empire should adopt a policy of Turkification. Talaat, who attended the conference, was a leading advocate of this policy shift and stated in a speech that "there can be no question of equality, until we have succeeded in our task of ottomanizing the Empire." Such a decision ultimately required the assimilation of non-Turkish elements within the empire and if necessary, it could be done through force. British ambassador Gerard Lowther concluded after the conference, "[that the] committee have given up any idea of Ottomanizing all the non-Turkish elements by sympathetic and Constitutional ways has long been manifest. To them 'Ottoman' evidently means 'Turk' and their present policy of 'Ottomanization' is one of pounding the non-Turkish elements in a Turkish mortar."
  Talaat, along with Enver and Cemal, eventually represented the radical faction of the committee. In 1913, the faction ultimately seized power through a violent coup establishing the rule of the Three Pashas, which was also known as the "dictatorial triumvirate". The Three Pashas then became largely responsible for the Ottoman Empire's entry into World War I. With the start of World War I, the Three Pashas found a suitable opportunity to begin their campaign of exterminating the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire.
  On 24 April 1915, Talaat 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. This order resulted in the arrest on the night of 24–25 April 1915 of 235 to 270 Armenian community leaders in Constantinople (Istanbul), including politicians, clergymen, physicians, authors, journalists, lawyers, and teachers, the majority of whom were eventually murdered. Although the mass killings of Armenian civilians had begun in the vilayet of Van several weeks earlier, these mass arrests in Constantinople are considered by many commentators to be the start of the Armenian Genocide.
  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 the Armenian Genocide. The deportees did not receive any humanitarian assistance and there is no evidence that the Ottoman government provided the extensive facilities and supplies that would have been necessary to sustain the life of hundreds of thousands of Armenian deportees during their forced march to the Syrian desert or after. Meanwhile, the deportees were subject to periodic rape and massacre, often the result of direct orders by the CUP. 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. This was confirmed by Talaat's wife Hayriye, who stated that she often saw him using it to give direct orders to what she believed were provincial governors. In a session of the Ottoman parliament, Ottoman statesman Reshid Akif Pasha testified that he had uncovered documents which demonstrated the process by which official statements made use of vague terminology when ordering deportation only to be clarified by spec
caption: Talaat Pasha at his desk
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