Hasan Mazhar, or Hasan Mazhar Bey, was a Young Turk governor of Ankara in the Ottoman Empire who refused to participate in the Armenian genocide in 1915, leading to his dismissal. [1] [2]
In 1918-1919, he led the Mazhar Commission, which investigated the Armenian genocide immediately after the war and whose findings initiated the Istanbul trials. [3]
Hasan Mazhar Bey served as the governor (vali) of Ankara starting from June 18, 1914. In May 1915, he opposed deportation orders issued by the Ministry of Interior, rejecting its genocidal rhetoric. [2]
The Young Turk government quickly intervened, sending a delegate, Atıf Kamçıl, at the beginning of July 1915 to monitor his actions. Atıf Kamçıl was a member of the Special Organization's leadership. Hasan Mazhar was dismissed a few days later, on July 8, 1915. [4] He later said about this event:
"I acted as if I did not understand the deportation orders I received from the Minister of Interior in Istanbul. As you know, other provinces had already completed their deportation operations, which I had not yet started. Then Atıf Bey arrived... He orally conveyed the order regarding the massacre and extermination of Armenians. I told him, 'No, Atıf Bey, I am the governor, I am not a bandit. I cannot do it. I will stand up from my [governor's] throne, and you can come and do it yourself." [5]
On November 23, 1918, Sultan Mehmed VI established a government inquiry commission on the Armenian genocide, and Hasan Mazhar Bey was naturally appointed as its president, as he was one of the few Ottoman administrators who had not been involved in the massacres. [1]
From November 1918 onwards, he sent questionnaires to all provinces to record sworn oral or written statements from Turkish political or military figures. [5]
The commission began investigating the crimes committed by Ottoman officials, primarily against the Armenian population. Mazhar Bey initially requested that every prefect and sub-prefect send him the originals or certified copies of all orders they received during the genocide. [1] Despite the Young Turk government's instructions to destroy telegrams after reading, some officials retained telegrams, which the commission was able to obtain. [1]
After this initial step, Mazhar took testimony under oath from numerous sources. He wanted the commission to be mixed, not solely composed of military personnel. [1] Mazhar allowed Armenians to access the commission's proceedings while they were taking place. Despite the Turkish state's subsequent ban on accessing these documents, lawyers from the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople were able to take advantage of the resources provided by Mazhar to begin compiling the dossier of the Armenian genocide. [6]
The documents and testimonies collected by Mazhar would be used to "support 130 investigation files." [1]
The Mazhar Commission has been criticized for its narrow scope of action, which focused on government officials responsible for the genocide, despite one of the distinctive features of the Armenian genocide being the massive support of civilian populations or irregular troops in the massacres. [7] [8] The complex political situation in the aftermath of World War I and the absence of the concept of genocide prior to the Holocaust may have hindered the commission. Despite the challenging political situation, Mazhar was not afraid of possible reprisals; he prohibited 26 Young Turk deputies from leaving the capital to prevent their escape and had 13 Ottoman ministers interrogated. [9]
However, the contributions of the commission in terms of sources, transparency, and justice have been recognized by genocide historians. [10] [11] Furthermore, Mazhar sought to shed light on the mechanisms of genocide, even though they were not yet referred to by that name, demonstrating a keen sense of justice. [10] [12]
The establishment of military courts to investigate the crimes of the Young Turks was a logical continuation of the work of the Mazhar Commission, and on December 16, 1918, the sultan officially created such tribunals. Three military courts and ten judicial bodies were established in the provinces. [1]
The military courts judged the most important perpetrators of the genocide based on the documents provided by Mazhar. [1] Most of the accused were sentenced to death between 1919 and 1920. The escape of some of them to foreign countries triggered Operation Nemesis.
Paradoxically, many of the convicted individuals have been regarded as heroes in Turkish history since Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, such as the highly significant example of Mehmed Kemal Bey, the first person sentenced to death by the military courts for organizing "slaughterhouse sites", [12] whose tomb has become a national memorial. [13]
On April 27, 2015, a stone was erected in the Garden of the Righteous in Warsaw to commemorate his person and a memorial tree was planted. [14]
The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily through the mass murder of around one million Armenians during death marches to the Syrian Desert and the forced Islamization of others, primarily women and children.
The Turkish War of Independence was a series of military campaigns and a revolution waged by the Turkish National Movement, after the Ottoman Empire was occupied and partitioned following its defeat in World War I. The conflict was between the Turkish Nationalists against Allied and separatist forces over the application of Wilsonian principles, especially self-determination, in post-World War I Anatolia and eastern Thrace. The revolution concluded the collapse of the Ottoman Empire; ended of the Ottoman sultanate and Ottoman caliphate, and established the Republic of Turkey. This resulted in the transfer of sovereignty from the sultan-caliph to the nation, setting the stage for nationalist revolutionary reform in Republican Turkey.
Erzincan, historically Yerznka, is the capital of Erzincan Province in eastern Turkey. Nearby cities include Erzurum, Sivas, Tunceli, Bingöl, Elazığ, Malatya, Gümüşhane, Bayburt, and Giresun. The city is majority Sunni Turkish with an Alevi Kurdish minority.
Ottoman Armenian casualties refers to the number of deaths of Ottoman Armenians between 1914 and 1923, during which the Armenian genocide occurred. Most estimates of related Armenian deaths between 1915 and 1918 range from 600,000 to 1.2 million.
The Greek genocide, which included the Pontic genocide, was the systematic killing of the Christian Ottoman Greek population of Anatolia, which was carried out mainly during World War I and its aftermath (1914–1922) – including the Turkish War of Independence (1919–1923) – on the basis of their religion and ethnicity. It was perpetrated by the government of the Ottoman Empire led by the Three Pashas and by the Government of the Grand National Assembly led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, against the indigenous Greek population of the Empire. The genocide included massacres, forced deportations involving death marches through the Syrian Desert, expulsions, summary executions, and the destruction of Eastern Orthodox cultural, historical, and religious monuments. Several hundred thousand Ottoman Greeks died during this period. Most of the refugees and survivors fled to Greece. Some, especially those in Eastern provinces, took refuge in the neighbouring Russian Empire.
The deportation of Armenian intellectuals is conventionally held to mark the beginning of the Armenian genocide. Leaders of the Armenian community in the Ottoman capital of Constantinople, and later other locations, were arrested and moved to two holding centers near Angora. The order to do so was given by Minister of the Interior Talaat Pasha on 24 April 1915. On that night, the first wave of 235 to 270 Armenian intellectuals of Constantinople were arrested. With the adoption of the Tehcir Law on 29 May 1915, these detainees were later relocated within the Ottoman Empire; most of them were ultimately killed. More than 80, such as Vrtanes Papazian, Aram Andonian, and Komitas, survived.
The defense of Van and in Russian Van operation was the armed resistance of the Armenian population of Van and Russian army against the Ottoman Empire's attempts to massacre the Ottoman Armenian population of the Van Vilayet in the 1915 Armenian genocide. Several contemporaneous observers and later historians have concluded that the Ottoman government deliberately instigated an armed Armenian resistance in the city and then used this insurgency as the main pretext to justify beginning the deportation and slaughter of Armenians throughout the empire. Witness reports agree that the Armenian posture at Van was defensive and an act of resistance to massacre. The self-defense action is frequently cited in Armenian genocide denial literature; it has become "the alpha and omega of the plea of 'military necessity'" to excuse the genocide and portray the persecution of Armenians as justified.
The Istanbul trials of 1919–1920 were courts-martial of the Ottoman Empire that occurred soon after the Armistice of Mudros, in the aftermath of World War I.
After World War I, the effort to prosecute Ottoman war criminals was taken up by the Paris Peace Conference (1919) and ultimately included in the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) with the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman government organized a series of courts martial in 1919–1920 to prosecute war criminals, but these failed on account of political pressure. The main effort by the Allied administration that occupied Constantinople fell short of establishing an international tribunal in Malta to try the so-called Malta exiles, Ottoman war criminals held as POWs by the British forces in Malta. In the end, no tribunals were held in Malta.
The Memoirs of Naim Bey: Turkish Official Documents Relating to the Deportation and the Massacres of Armenians, containing the Talat Pasha telegrams, is a book published by historian and journalist Aram Andonian in 1919. Originally redacted in Armenian, it was popularized worldwide through the English edition published by Hodder & Stoughton of London. It includes several documents (telegrams) that constitute evidence that the Armenian genocide was formally implemented as Ottoman Empire policy.
Armenian genocide survivors were Armenians in the Ottoman Empire who survived the genocide of 1915. After the end of World War I, many tried to return home to the Ottoman rump state, which later became Turkey. The Turkish nationalist movement saw the return of Armenian survivors as a mortal threat to its nationalist ambitions and the interests of its supporters. The return of survivors was therefore impossible in most of Anatolia and thousands of Armenians who tried were murdered. Nearly 100,000 Armenians were massacred in Transcaucasia during the Turkish invasion of Armenia and another 100,000 fled from Cilicia during the French withdrawal. By 1923, about 295,000 Armenians ended up in the Soviet Union, mainly Soviet Armenia; an estimated 200,000 settled in the Middle East, forming a new wave of the Armenian diaspora; and about 100,000 Armenians lived in Constantinople and another 200,000 lived in the Turkish provinces, largely women and children who had been forcibly converted. Though Armenians in Constantinople faced discrimination, they were allowed to maintain their cultural identity, unlike those elsewhere in Turkey who continued to face forced Islamization and kidnapping of girls after 1923. Between 1922 and 1929, the Turkish authorities eliminated surviving Armenians from southern Turkey, expelling thousands to French-mandate Syria.
Refet Bele, also known as Refet Bey or Refet Pasha was a Turkish military commander. He served in the Ottoman Army and the Turkish Army, where he retired as a general.
Cemal Azmi, also spelled Jemal Azmi, was an Ottoman politician and governor of the Trebizond Vilayet (province) during World War I and the final years of the Ottoman Empire. He was one of the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide and was mainly responsible for the liquidation of Armenians in Trebizond Vilayet. He was known as the "butcher of Trebizond".
Witnesses and testimony provide an important and valuable insight into the events which occurred both during and after the Armenian genocide. The Armenian genocide was prepared and carried out by the Ottoman government in 1915 as well as in the following years. As a result of the genocide, as many as 1.5 million Armenians who were living in their ancestral homeland were deported and murdered.
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Mehmet Celal Bey was an Ottoman-born Turkish statesman and a key witness to the Armenian genocide. During his career as a politician, Celal Bey served as governor of the Ottoman provinces associated with the cities Erzurum, Aleppo, Aydın, Edirne, Konya, and Adana. He also served as minister of the interior and minister of agriculture as well as mayor of Istanbul. Celal Bey is known for having saved many lives during the Armenian genocide by defying deportation orders, which were preludes to starvation and massacres. As a result, he was removed from his post as governor in Aleppo and transferred to Konya, where he was again dismissed upon continuing to obstruct deportations. Today, he is often called the Turkish Oskar Schindler.
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La commission Mazhar accomplit un travail remarquable pour tenter de réunir le plus grand nombre possible de documents officiels et de témoins musulmans pour étayer les charges criminelles qui pesaient sur les dirigeants unionistes. Même si le nettoyage des archives les plus compromettantes avait été mené à bien avant la fin de la guerre, cette commission réussit néanmoins à mettre la main sur un certain nombre de télégrammes officiels adressés par le gouvernement aux autorités provinciales contenant des instructions relatives au processus de déportation et de destruction des populations arméniennes. Tous les procès qui eurent lieu en 1919 et 1920 reposent en partie sur le travail d'instruction conduit par cette commission.
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