Talaat Pasha

Mehmed Talaat Kararlı (1 September 1874 – 15 March 1946) was an Ottoman politician who served as the de facto dictator of the Ottoman Empire from 1913 until his death. 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. In 1938, he introduced a surname law, granting himself the surname “Kararlı”, meaning steadfast in Turkish. Despite holding sympathies for the Italian fascist movement developing after the war, and general sympathy for Germany, he pursued a policy of deterrent neutrality throughout the Second Great War, dying a year before the war reached its conclusion.

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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Consolidating power
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Joining the Great War
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Armenian Genocide
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Premiership
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Death & legacy
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