Perpetrators of the Ottoman Greek Genocide
This page details some of the key architects and arch-perpetrators of the Ottoman Greek Genocide from the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP) and the Kemalist periods. After the Great War, many of these men were tried and found guilty by Turkish Court Martial in Constantinople.
Mehmet Talaat
Ismail Enver
Ahmed Djemal
Dr. Mehmet Nazim
Dr. Mehmet Reshid
Otto Liman von Sanders
Eşref Sencer Kuşçubaşı
Rafet Pasha
Mehmet Djemal Azmi
Ibrahim Bedreddin
Topal Osman
Nureddin Pasha
Mustafa Kemal
Mehmet Talaat (1874-1921) (top)
Mehmet Talaat Bey or Mehmet Talaat Pasha was the principal architect of the Greek Genocide. He held the position of Minister of the Interior and in 1917 became Grand Vizier. He assumed primary responsibility for planning and implementing the Genocide. Henry Morgenthau, United States ambassador to the Ottoman Empire between 1913 and 1916, wrote in his memoirs:
"This procedure against the Greeks not improperly aroused my indignation. I did not have the slightest suspicion at that time that the Germans had instigated these deportations, but I looked upon them merely as an outburst of Turkish ferocity and chauvinism. By this time I knew Talaat well; I saw him nearly every day, and he used to discuss practically every phase of international relations with me. I objected vigorously to his treatment of the Greeks; I told him that it would make the worst possible impression abroad and that it affected American interests."
Talaat issued summary orders by telegram to provincial governors for the deportation of Ottoman Greeks. For example, in May 1914 Talaat authorized the deportation of Greeks from the Smyrna province on the pretext that Ottoman Greeks were a threat to the national security of the Empire. According to an Austro-Hungarian agent, on 31 January 1917 Talaat Bey declared: "... I see that time has come for Turkey to have it out with the Greeks the way it had it out with the Armenians in 1915." In February 1917 Talaat became Grand Vizier earning him the title Pasha. He resigned from his post in October 1918. Talaat was sentenced to death in absentia by Turkish Court Martial for his role in the genocide. He fled to Germany but was identified and assassinated in Berlin in 1921 by Soghomon Tehlirian.
Ismail Enver (1881-1922) (top)
Ismail Enver Pasha, Minister of War, was one third of the ruling Committee for Union and Progress (CUP) triumvirate, also made up of Talaat as Minister of the Interior and Djemal as Minister of the Marine. Within the Ministry of War, Enver had at his disposal the Special Organization (S.O.) or, in Turkish, Teşkilat-ı Mahsûsa, a secret special forces unit used as an instrument to achieve the systematic physical destruction of the Ottoman Greek population through massacres and deportations. In January 1916 Enver ordered the complete Turkification of all Greeks names denominating provinces, districts, counties, villages, mountains, and rivers in Turkey. At the end of the war Enver fled to Germany. He was sentenced to death in absentia by Turkish Court Martial in Constantinople for his role in the genocide.
Ahmed Djemal (1872-1922) (top)
Ahmed Djemal, the Minister of Marine, was the third in the Committee for Union and Progress triumvirate. Djemal was sentenced to death in absentia by Turkish Court Martial for his role in the genocide. He was assassinated in Tbilisi in 1922.
Dr. Mehmet Nazim (1872-1926) (top)
Dr. Mehmet Nazim was a medical professional and a dominating figure in the Committee for Union and Progress party who played a central role in the Greek Genocide. An article by general Chérif Pasha published in France in 1915 described Dr. Nazim as "a resolute supporter of the extermination of Christians in general and of Greeks in particular..." (Il est un partisan résolu de l'extermination des chrétiens en général et des Grecs en particulier...). Nazim is said to have declared: "The Ottoman state must be exclusively Turkish. The presence of foreign elements is a pretext for European intervention. They should be forcibly Turkicized." In May 1914 Dr. Nazim Bey toured through the country's provinces with the sole purpose of inciting an anti-Greek movement among the local populations. Dr. Nazim believed that previous Ottoman politicians "had not been far-sighted enough to cleanse all the country they ruled of the Christian element". Dr. Nazim was sentenced to death in absentia by Turkish Court Martial for his role in the genocide.
Dr. Mehmet Reshid (1873-1919) (top)
Dr. Mehmet Reshid Bey was a military doctor and prominent member of the Committee for Union and Progress. From 8 July 1913 until 23 July 1914 Dr. Reshid served as district governor of Karesi where he organized the forced deportation of Ottoman Greeks on the orders of Talaat. Hans-Lukas Kieser writes that as Vali of Diarbeikir, "Reshid developed a particular zeal in the liquidation of Christian communities." After the Great War Reshid was jailed, accused of crimes against humanity but succeeded in escaping from the Bekir Aga military prison. In early 1919 Dr. Reshid committed suicide by shooting himself.
Otto Liman von Sanders (1855-1929) (top)
German Field Marshal Otto Liman von Sanders was the commander of the Turkish Fifth Army. In a report to the Ottoman authorities, von Sanders wrote that the entire Greek population of Ayvalik must be deported immediately to the Interior otherwise "he would be unable to take the responsibility for the security of the army". Sanders was reported as saying, "Couldn't they throw these infidels into the sea?". The deportation of the Greek population of Ayvalik to the Turkish Interior was carried out on von Sanders' orders and many died as a result. In a 1919 newspaper article titled "First Hun Held For Atrocities", Sanders' arrest for Greek and Armenian massacres was recorded:
"Sanders is first of the German commanders to be seized for trial for violation of the rules of warfare. And he’s going to be tried in Constantinople, too. Sanders was in command of the Turkish forces which were operating under direction of Berlin. He is known to have sanctioned Turkish Atrocities, including massacres of Greeks and Armenians."
Sanders had been arrested by British forces when he attempted to return to Germany in February 1919. He was held at Malta for six months as a war criminal. Liman von Sanders retired from the army in October 1919 and died in Munich on 22 August 1929.
Eşref Sencer Kuşçubaşı (1873-1964) (top)
Eşref Sencer Kuşçubaşı was the chief of the Teşkilat-ı Mahsûsa (Special Organization or S.O.). Armed S.O. units under Kushchubashi's command carried out violent raids on Greek-inhabited villages and towns and conscripted Greek men into labor battalions. Genocide scholar Vahakn N. Dadrian writes that S.O. leaders claimed "the non-Muslim minorities of the Empire, especially the Greeks on the Aegean coastline" were a threat and that when elaborating on this threat, Kuşçubaşı offered "confirmation of the existence of a secret decision to eliminate these minorities."
Rafet Pasha (top)
Rafet Pasha or Rafet Bey was a member of the Committee for Union and Progress. On 26 November 1916 Rafet Bey informed Dr. Ernst von Kwiatkowski, the Austro-Hungarian consul in Samsoun: "We must at last do with the Greeks as we did with the Armenians...". Two days later on 28 November 1916, Rafet Bey returned and advised Kwiatkowski: "We must now finish with the Greeks. I sent today battalions to the outskirts to kill every Greek they pass on the road." The London Morning Post's special correspondent stationed in Constantinople on 5 December 1918 wrote:
"Rafet Pasha, the late Governor of Bitlis, was sent to Samsoun with express orders to become a scourge to the Greeks. He did the work thoroughly. Over a hundred and fifty thousand were deported in this district and in Trebizond."
Mehmet Djemal Azmi (-1922) (top)
Mehmet Djemal Azmi Bey was governor-general or vali of Trebizond province and was responsible for ordering many of the attacks against Greek-inhabited villages in the region and the deportation of Greeks to the Interior. A Turkish court-martial condemned Azmi Bey to death in absentia. Djemal Azmi was assassinated by an Armenian in Berlin in April 1922.
Ibrahim Bedreddin (top)
Ibrahim Bedreddin Bey or, as he was more commonly known at the time, Ibrahim Bedri Bey coordinated the Committee for Union and Progress' sponsored deportation of the Ottoman Greeks from Biga, a Greek-inhabited town near the Dardanelles. He later served as governor in Mardin and Diyarbekir. After the war he was held under arrest in Malta by the British charged with war crimes.
Topal Osman (1883-1923) (top)
Topal Osman Aga served in the Special Organization (S.O.) as a colonel in command of an S.O. unit made up of 150 convicts, many recruited from Trebizond's prison. Osman had been sought by the Turkish Court Martial in Constantinople for his part in the operations of deportations and massacres but managed to evade arrest. During the Kemalist period Osman continued to be a central figure in the extermination of Ottoman Greek communities. Genocide scholar Vahakn N. Dadrian notes that Topal Osman "...organized extensive massacres against Greek populations in the Trabzon area...". In March 1923 Osman was killed during an exchange of gunfire with military units trying to capture and arrest him for killing Trebizond's parliamentary deputy Ali Şükrü. Osman was decapitated and his corpse was hanged in front of the Turkish Parliament.
Nureddin Pasha (1873-1932) (top)
General Nureddin Pasha was a high ranking Turkish military official who had a reputation for fanaticism and cruelty. Nureddin had established Amasya's so-called 'Courts of Independence' which in September 1921 executed leading Greek intellectuals, clergymen, teachers, doctors and other community figures with the objective of decapitating the population. One Turkish newspaper claimed that Nureddin Pasha had suggested deporting and killing all the remaining Greek and Armenian populations remaining in Anatolia. On the 9 September 1922 Nureddin headed Turkish troops into Smyrna. In the following days, the Greek and Armenian populations were massacred and the city was destroyed by fire. On 16 September General Nureddin issued a proclamation ordering the deportation of all remaining Christian men between the ages of 18 and 45. The order was repeated on 24 September.
Mustafa Kemal (1881-1938) (top)
Mustafa Kemal was the consummator of the Greek Genocide. Kemal was an officer of the Turkish army and founded the Turkish Nationalist Movement by regrouping both the Ottoman army and Turkish irregulars under his command. He preserved the genocidal policy engineered by the Committee for Union and Progress. In an interview with Swiss journalist Emile Hilderbrand, published on Sunday 1 August 1926 in the Los Angeles Examiner under the title "Kemal Promises More Hangings of Political Antagonists in Turkey", Mustafa Kemal acknowledged the Turkish massacre of the Christian element but attributed responsibility to the Committee for Union and Progress:
“These left-overs from the former Young Turkey Party, who should have been made to account for the lives of millions of our Christian subjects who were ruthlessly driven en masse, from their homes and massacred, have been restive under the Republican rule.”
Today, Kemal holds the title "Atatürk" meaning Father of Turks and is venerated as a national hero in Turkey where it is illegal to insult his memory. However, western academics have widely questioned the 'Turkish' view of Kemal's role in the late Ottoman Empire. For example, in a speech at the European Parliament in Brussels on 13 November 2008, Dr. Ronald Münch from the University of Bremen pointed out that if Atatürk were alive today, he would have to stand trial for war crimes.