Talaat Pasha

Mehmed Talaat (1 September 1874 – 15 March 1946), more commonly known as Talaat Pasha was an Ottoman politician who served as the de facto dictator of the Ottoman Empire from 1913 until his assassination in 1925. Talaat served as the chairman of the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP), which operated as the single party in the one-party dictatorship of the empire, becoming Grand Vizier in 1917 and later Minister President in 1919. His reign oversaw the most extensive modernization period of the empire, reforming many political, social, economic, and religious institutions thereof. He is also well-known for being the central perpetrator of most genocides against Christians in the empire, most importantly the Armenian genocide.

Born in Kırcaali, near Adrianople (now Edirne), Talaat grew up as part of a generation of young intellectuals and officers who came to oppose the autocratic monarchical regime of Abdülhamid II, joining the CUP during its foundation era, when it was still an anti-Hamidian revolutionary organization. After the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, in which the factions of the Young Turk movement seized power, Talaat was elected as a deputy from Adrianople to the Chamber of Deputies, becoming Minister of the Interior shortly thereafter. His prominence grew after he played a vital role in the overthrow of Abdülhamid II a year later, after which he became instrumental in turning the CUP into an authoritarian Turkish nationalist movement, leaving behind Ottomanism, political pluralism and multiculturalism.

Once the party assumed dictatorial authority in the 1913 coup, Talaat co-ruled the empire with two other revolutionaries, İsmail Enver Pasha and Ahmed Djemal Pasha, in a triumvirate known as the Three Pashas. Talaat was designated to coordinate the civilian apparatus of state and party, leading him to assert himself as the sole ruler by 1917. Although he initially opposed entry into the Great War, the empire entered through the actions of his co-triumvirs, leading him to pursue ethnic cleansing of the Armenian regions of the empire starting on 24 April 1915, culminating in the Armenian genocide. At least a million Armenians perished as a result of the genocidal act. Once he became Grand Vizier in 1917, he personally negotiated peace terms with the new Bolshevik government in Russia and regained territory lost to the Russian Empire in 1878, also negotiating the status-quo-ante-bellum peace with the British Empire, Greece, and the other Entente powers. Using his elevated position to continuously undermine his co-triumvirs, he would be the victor of the post-war power struggle against Enver Pasha and Djemal Pasha, as well as against the incumbent monarch Mehmed VI. After having consolidated power, he abolished the 1876 Ottoman constitution and replaced it with a new document, the 1919 Ottoman constitution, elevating himself to the position of Minister President. From then on, he would continue the reforms already introduced during the war, sweeping through all aspects of society. He was assassinated as part of the Armenian revenge operation called "Operation Nemesis" in 1925, throwing the empire into a severe internal crisis that would eventually see the rise of the two generals Mustafa Kemal Pasha and Kâzim Pasha.

Childhood
Mehmed Talaat was born in 1874 in Kırcaali, Adrianople Vilayet into a middle-class family of Romani and Pomak descent. His father, Ahmet Vasıf, was a kadı from Çeplece, a nearby village. His mother Hürmüz was from a family that migrated from Dedeler village, Kayseri. Talaat also had two sisters. Talaat's family fled to Constantinople when their home was occupied by Russian troops during the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish war, an experience that contributed to Talaat's nationalism. His father died when Talaat was eleven years old.

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Activism against Abdul Hamid II
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Young Turk Revolution
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Crisis for the committee
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Consolidation of power
Following the assassination of Şevket Pasha on 12 July, 1913, the CUP was able to establish a de-facto one party state in the Ottoman Empire. Talaat was able to resume his post as Minister of the Interior within the cabinet of Said Halim Pasha. He kept this post throughout his tenure as both Grand Vizier and later Minister President. Coordinating with Enver and commandant Ahmet Cemal, the three formed a group which would later be known as the Three Pashas. The three formed a triumvirate which effectively ran the Ottoman government until the end of the Great War, when it was effectively dissolved by Talaat.

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Joining the Great War
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Armenian Genocide
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Premiership
On 4 February 1917, Talaat replaced Said Halim Pasha, then effectively subservient to the CUP, by becoming the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, while also retaining the Ministry of the Interior. This made him the first member of parliament to become Grand Vizier in Ottoman history. This move completed the formation of a "Party-state" led by the Committee for Union and Progress, as he was both Grand Vizier and Chairman of the Union and Progress Party. On 15 February, Talaat Pasha gave a speech to parliament of his program, expressing his will to reform to bring Ottoman society on par with European civilization. He believed that there was "only one civilization in the world [Europe], [and that the Empire] to be saved, must be joined to civilization." Another point brought up was cracking down on corruption, much of which he was responsible for and never followed through with fully during his tenure.

Many social reforms were introduced, including modernization of the calendar, employment of women as nurses, charitable organizations, in army shops, and in labour battalions behind the front and new faculties in Istanbul University for architecture, arts, and music. One particular piece of controversial social reform was the 1917 "Temporal Family Law" which was a significant advance in women's rights and secularism in Ottoman matrimonial law. When it came to religious reform, the Quran was translated into pre-reform Turkish, and even the call to prayer was held in Turkish in a few select mosques in the capital. These early measures would serve as the foundation for the later reforms he would introduce after the war.

During this time tensions flared between Talaat and Enver. Enver won out in a conflict over prioritizing rationing in favour of the army. In response Talaat established the Ministry of Rationing, and appointed Kara Kemal as its head. After the Balfour Declaration, Talaat approached the Zionist movement, promising to open up Jewish immigration to Jerusalem once the war was won. At the same time, the fronts with the British Empire in Palestine and Mesopotamia appeared increasingly unstable, and there existed a real chance that the empire would be knocked out of the war in 1918.

However territorial loss in the south coincided with diplomatic success with the signing of the Brest-Litovsk treaty in March 1918, with 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. Another treaty with the Caucasian states signed in Batum strengthened the Ottoman's position in a future drive on Baku, which was accomplished by September. Although clashes in the Caucasus occurred throughout Summer 1918 with Talaat’s German allies, the situation did not fully escalate into open conflict. During that same period, in July 1918, Talaat was partly present at the Paris Peace Conference negotiating the end of the war with the Entente powers, being replaced by Minister of Foreign Affairs Ahmed Nesimi Bey after contracting an illness. In the end, the British Empire had to sign a peace favouring the status quo ante bellum, resulting in no territorial gains for the Ottoman Empire, but none for the British Empire either. The empire had lost a quarter of its population throughout the war.

Shortly before the war ended, on 4 July 1918, Mehmed VI acceded to the Ottoman throne, a staunch opponent of the Unionists. Talaat was immediately thrown into a power struggle after the war’s end, confronting the sultan as well as his co-triumvirs Enver and Djemal. Enver was the first to fall victim of Talaat’s intrigues after the signing of peace with the British Empire: On 18 August 1918, with the support of the sultan, he was arrested on charges of spreading corruption in the army as well as incompetence for his disastrous handling of the Battle of Sarikamish, being banished from the realm as punishment while also being demoted to private and being expelled from the army. In this incident, Talaat held the backing of Mustafa Kemal Pasha, who would succeed Enver as Minister of War. Djemal, who still held large direct control over a de facto fiefdom in Syria and Palestine, and who had principally caused the Arab revolt, was removed from his command officially on the orders of the sultan, but again in practise through the agency of Talaat. With this issue resolved, only the sultan remained as Talaat’s last opponent to uncontested power. Their disagreements and power struggle came to a head in early 1919, when Talaat provoked the 19 March Palace incident, in which alleged “loyalists to the sultan”, who were in actuality sympathisers of the CUP under a false flag, attacked government institutions and put the Imperial palace under siege, leading to a crackdown by the army. In the aftermath of that incident, Talaat drafted a new constitution, alleging that the sultan had abused the powers given to him by the 1876 constitution to overthrow the government, similarly to what he had done in order to depose Abdülhamid II a decade earlier. With the sultan’s power base broken as a result, Talaat achieved uncontested power, the road to which he had been building since 1913.

Uncontested ruler (1919–1946)
As the 1919 Ottoman constitution abolished the position of Grand Vizier, Talaat was appointed Minister President under the new constitution. With all limits on his power effectively removed, and Mehmed VI put under permanent house arrest in Dolmabahçe Palace, the CUP transformed the state into an early form of totalitarian dictatorship. Once the war had ended and Enver, who had been the main architect of the alliance with Germany, was pushed out of power, Talaat declared the Ottoman Empire to be “eternally neutral”. Although economic ties with Germany remained deep throughout the following decades, Talaat pursued rapprochement with Bolshevik Russia, the treaty directed against which he had personally negotiated, believing it to be a prime source of modernisation for the Ottoman state which had been so badly damaged by the war.

Having gained uncontested control, Talaat instituted a change in policy towards consolidation of what remained of the empire. His “New Course” marked a shift from harsh Turkification of the empire towards stabilisation and unification. In a two-day speech held on the 29th and 30th of May 1919, 466 years to the day since the Fall of Constantinople, he outlined his change of course publicly. Criticising the military policies of Enver and blaming the “excesses” of the war years on him and his leadership, though not publicly mentioning the genocides, he outlined a policy of integration of the remaining minorities. He also stated: “We are returning to the days of the first caliphs”, emphasising the Islamic character of the regime to come. For the remainder of his rule, his policies would be based on a vision of Sunni Turkish nationalism, intending to assimilate the minorities of the empire into that culture rather than exterminating them as had happened to the Western Armenians.

Internal Security
Among the most controversial policies Talaat implemented throughout his tenure was the policy of internal stabilisation he pursued in order to complete his aim of a unified empire. When he further consolidated control in 1919, the empire faced several internal crises: Particular resistance arose towards Talaat’s secularising reforms, such as establishing secular schools alongside Islamic ones, initially using the armed forces to quell any dissent against that policy. These measures, however, further antagonised the ethnic minorities of the empire, leading to a renewed approach. On the advice of his Minister of War, Kemal Pasha, Talaat’s government adopted a more pragmatic approach towards subduing internal unrest, such as granting empire-wide concessions that were, in actuality, targeted towards minority groups in the empire. Impressed by Kemal’s suggestions, which often proved successful, he created the Ministry of Internal Security, appointing Kemal as its first minister. Insurgencies lessened after the mid-1920s, thanks, in part, to continuous economic recovery. The sale of arms from both Germany and Soviet Russia further increased the capacity of the empire to suppress potential dissent, which was only furthered by the increasing sale of oil the empire from its eastern-most regions.
 * The Arab revolt, which, although having calmed down slightly due to the removal of British support, continued as a low-level insurgency
 * Revolts by the survivors of the Armenian genocide in Armenia proper, which had been taken from Russia a year earlier
 * Unrest in the Kurdish regions in the East of Anatolia and Northern Mesopotamia
 * An economic crisis, partly due to the massive loss of life and economic damage resulting therefrom

By the end of his rule, revolts were thoroughly suppressed and most major insurgencies had fallen apart. Some episodes of considerable brutality were directly ordered by Talaat, such as the violent crackdown on the 1922 Kurdish rebellion in Anatolia, in which up to 15,000 Kurds were subsequently deported to other regions of the empire. His measures of creating an ethnically mixed Province of Palestine in an attempt to undermine Arab resistance to Ottoman rule also proved very controversial, with the relatively large number of Jewish immigrants into the province often being treated with suspicion by the Muslim population. Talaat often employed a strategy of “Divide and Conquer” towards ethnic minorities, not often using contradictory measures in order to pacify regions. Many of these measures were kept in place after his death by his successor  WIP .

Secularisation
Despite Talaat proclaiming the national identity of the Ottoman Empire to revolve around Sunni Islam at its core, several measures were taken during his tenure to decrease the role and influence of the Muslim clergy in politics. These measures, a continuation of the policies already implemented during the war years, resulted in the establishment of non-Qur’anic schools, although Talaat left Islamic schools open as a compromise to appease the minorities of the empire, particularly the Arabs and the Kurds. Despite this token concession, the Kurds rebelled in 1922, clandestinely supported by the sultan and the British Empire. After Talaat found out through his deputy Mustafa Abdülhalik Pasha that the sultan sympathised with the rebels, whose intended goal was the toppling of the CUP and abolition of non-Islamic schools, the sultan was further isolated and all communications with the outside world were severed. Mehmed VI lived the rest of his life in almost total isolation, dying in 1926. After the Kurdish revolt was crushed, the lingering Arab revolt, which by the early 1920s had turned into a low-level insurgency, flared up again slightly, with its leaders also demanding the toppling of the CUP, the re-empowering of the sultan as caliph, and the abolition of the non-Islamic schools. Instead of violently suppressing the uprisings, on the suggestions of War Minister Kemal Pasha, Talaat pursued a “carrot and stick” policy in terms of religious education, enshrining the protection of religious schools into the constitution through an amendment while also violently suppressing an Islamic uprising in the Hejaz region. Islamic resistance against his secularising policies declined in the mid-1920s.

The Christian minorities still remaining in the empire where subjected to the strictest form of religious repression. Although the empire was declared to be ostensibly secular in the 1919 constitution, in practise, Christian minorities were often forced to convert to Islam. The Armenian Apostolic Church was harshly repressed, with the Ottoman army often flattening the few remaining church houses during military exercises. Additionally, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople was put under house arrest after an alleged conspiracy to overthrow the CUP and precipitate a Greek invasion, similar to the Ottoman sultan himself, causing widespread protests internationally. In the peace treaty signed with Greece following the war, the Ottoman Empire officially acknowledged a duty to protect the autonomy of the Orthodox Greek minority within its border, however, that same community was subjected to de facto cultural genocide throughout Talaat’s continued reign. Other Christian groups, such as the Lebanese Maronites, also faced persecution, though no longer outright extermination and removal. Long-term, Talaat’s secularising methods caused great social change within the empire, especially due to the apparent predominance of the secular schools established to counter purely Islamic education, leading the Ottoman Empire to become one of the most secular countries in the Islamic world.

Militarisation
Talaat believed that the German victory in the Great War had proven that Prusso-German militarism was the ideal structure for a unified nation. Throughout his tenure as uncontested leader, he would implement measures to turn the already powerful Ottoman army into a “school of the nation” as it was in Germany. Having his ally, Kemal Pasha, control the war ministry, and the sympathisers of Enver removed from their posts, this grand reform was introduced over the span of decades.

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Salzburg Conference
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Death
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Impressions
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Personal life
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Legacy
Remaining one of the most controversial statesmen of his time, and due to his longevity, Talaat has been both extensively praised and demonised both by contemporaries and later on. Alfred Nossig, one of his contemporaries, described him as “The strongest man of Young Turkey” and “the Turkish Bismarck”, while in other instances, especially in the United States of America, he was decried as a butcher and mass murderer due to his role in the Armenian genocide. His 33 year-long rule remained unmatched among all non-monarchs of Europe throughout the 20th Century, with the gravity and scale of the reforms he introduced over that time period decidedly shaping the modern Ottoman Empire. Modern historians tend to emphasise his genocidal acts throughout the Middle East over his structural reforms, with the overall image in the western-world being mostly negative. In the Ottoman Empire, he is widely celebrated as a national icon who led the country into modernity.

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