(This article appeared in the English version of Hurriyet, April 27, 2005. The bold text follows — more or less —  the original Turkish version, in an effort to be true )

By Murat Bardakcı

Ottoman Grand Vizier and Interior Minister Talat Pasha, in black books that he kept from the period he was in office, recorded that in the years between 1915 and 1916, not only Armenians but hundreds of thousands of Turks were displaced from their homes in eastern Turkey.


The notebooks show that up to 800,000 Turks from provinces under invasion threat from Russian forces took to the road as "emigrants," and that a corridor stretching from Izmit to Halep was used to resettle up to 702,905 Turkish citizens. The area most emigrated to was Mosul, with 150,000 resettled, and the least emigrated to was Icel (Mersin), with only 426 people.

The so-called "black books" from the archives of Grand Vizier Talat Pasha record not only the migrations that took place from the European side to Anatolia during the Balkan War, but also lists of citizens displaced by the Russian invasion of eastern provinces during World War I. The lists of people removed from their homes and out of the way of fighting between Turkish and Russian forces reveal that while Armenians were moved, Turks were also moved.

(End)

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In its English edition, Hurriyet apparently only translated the first three paragraphs. Below is the rest of this article (here is the original Turkish), with great thanks to the translation of N. S. Sevilir; the first paragraph conforms to the third one above.

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In Talat Pasha's book (Talat Pasha was the "Sadrazam" and the internal affairs minister) there are other informations such as the number of refugees during the Balkan War (from Balkans to Anatolia) and also, as stated above, the number of people who have left eastern Anatolia during the Russian invasion in the WW1.

In December 1914 the Turkish forces were literally destroyed in Sarikamis. After this the cities in eastern Anatolia were invaded by the Russians one by one. First Van, then Erzurum, Bitlis, Mush, Trabzon and Erzincan were taken over by Russian and the control of Van was given to Armenians.

According to Talat Pasha's book,  an area of over 140.000 km2 had been invaded and within this area 1,800,915 people had lived. It is written that 800,000 people were "deported" to another region, however it states that only 702,905 deportees could be relocated.

When one reads this list one can clearly see that during 1915 and 1916 Armenians weren't the only people who were deported but rather thousands of Turks were too.

(A part explaining the meanings of words such as "tehcir" has  been skipped.)
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"Ittihad and Terakki"'s leaders had fled Turkey and went to Europe after the Turkish defeat in the World War.

Talat Pasha (with the pseudonym "Ali Sai") had also fled to Germany with his wife Hayriye Talat Hanim, and started living in Berlin. The Pasha spent his days in Europe with "organizations (of Turks)", travelling from one country to another.

Talat Pasha wrote a letter to his wife just 20 days prior to being murdered by Armenians. The letter contained information about his future prospects:

"My dear wife,

I finally arrived in Berlin. Yesterday I had a dinner with Baha Bey (one of the leaders of İttihad and Terraki, Bahaeddin Şakir Bey).. Hadice Hanım is renting a house in Potsdam and she'll give us a room there.. We can stay in Munich for a week and then we can go back to Berlin and then maybe to Dresden or Baveira. I will be going to Halle tomorrow. My friend will meet me there. I will write to you from there.. Tell Nazım Bey (also a leador of İttihad and Terraki) to come to me urgently. If you are bored there, you can come with him or wait for me there.

-Ali"

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Calal Bayar not only had Talat Pasha's memoirs published, but was behind the bringing of his remains back to Turkey

Talat Pasha wrote his memories during his exile in Germany but never published it.

The Pasha's memories were only published in 1946 by Celal Bayar (who was also an old İttihat and Terraki member). The book's foreword was written by Hüseyin Cahid Yalcin.

The following are the letters of Celal Bayar to Talat Pasha's wife, Hayriye Talat Hanım. He always had shown a great respect towards her as "my boss' wife." In these letters one can read Celal Bayar's suggestions to bring back the Pasha's coffin to Turkey and to publish his memories.

"Ankara 21.11.1942

Dear Hanım efendi,

Thanks for sending me Pasha's memories. The content was really interesting, he had said in the foreword that these were written to protect İttihad and Terraki's politics.. I would really regret it, if these won't get published. Therefore since it's written in German, we will have to get it translated.

You probably know the Pasha's old friend Rahmi Bey? We here have decided with Rahmi Bey that Talat Pasha's coffin should be brought here and be buried in Turkey. Rahmi Bey will take care of the processes.

With best regards, and awaiting your reply.

-Celal Bayar"

(The second letter is as follows):

"5.12.1942

Dear Hanım efendi,

I have received your letter dated 27.11.1942

I would like to publish all of his memories, not less. They are in German so I would like to know if there is a Turkish text? It would really be good if you can find the Turkish text as they will be in Pasha's style of writing. However if the Turkish version doesn't exist, then we will have to get it translated. The copyright will be yours.

As for the bringing of his coffin: Turkey has officially asked the German authorities for the process.

With best regards.

Celal Bayar"

(The third and the last letter):

"Ankara, 02.02.1943

Dear Hanım efendi,

I have received your letter dated 9.1.1943. I was late to answer as I had an illness. We have yet to receive any dates for the bringing of the coffin. We are still waiting for an answer from Germany.
Currently I am getting the memories translated.

With best regards.

Celal Bayar"


Holdwater wonders: The process of translation means Mr. Bayar was only able to obtain Talat's memoirs in German. But why would Talat have not written his memoirs in Turkish? (Perhaps a friend of his took the originals and translated to German at one point, and the original Turkish version got lost over the years.)

Furthermore, I have reluctantly come to accept the "Posthumous Memoirs of Talat Pasha," printed in a 1921 edition of the New York Times, as genuine. (After reading Guenter Lewy's book, primarily.) But the above exchange with Talat's wife makes it seem as though Talat's memoirs were to be released for the first time.

Let Leylegian rest assured. We turned Talat Pasha’s tomb into a dump.

You must have seen it in the newspapers: the president of the organization based in Brussels called ˜European Armenian Federation”, Laurent Leylegiyan, made some strange demands last week from the Turkish government.

Evidenced by his demands that betray a complete harmony between his name and his mindset, Mr. Leylekyan wanted the demolition of the mausoleum of Talaat Pasha in Istanbul, and a change to street names named after ˜Talaat” and “Enver”; and the closing of the museums showing the Armenian crimes against the Turks; and the laws banning the mention of the “genocide”.

After reading Leylegian’s drivel, I remembered an old Iranian saying, 'Divane ra kalem nist', in other words, “˜the fool will not be charged for sinning” and laughed. However, what I saw in the vicinity of Sisli turned my smile into a bitter grimace and I thought we had already carried out some of Leylegian’s demands on our own.

Talat's mausoleum in less dumpy days

Yesterday morning I went to photograph the tomb of Talaat Pasha on the Hill of Eternal Liberty at Sisli for the purpose of using the pictures in the series and instead of a tomb, I came across a dump! As if a new revolt had taken place at the site where the mausoleums of Talaat, Enver, Mahmut Sevket, and Midhat Pashas along with the martyred soldiers in the revolt of March 31 are found. The lock of the mausoleum below the monument was broken and the tomb downstairs had now become the destination for drunkards. The tombs in the park were being used as beer cases. In short, everything was heart rending.

The same place was in the same shape days before the reinterring of Enver Pasha’s ashes from Tajikistan. After I had brought the situation to light, it was hastily cleaned up but following the funeral of the Pasha, all had returned to the same routine.

Let the president of European Armenian Federation, Laurent Leylegian, rest assured and not go through the trouble of making such demands of the Turkish government. As long as the Metropolitan Municipality which is in charge of the Hill of Eternal Liberty maintain its indifference, there will not remain a any evidence of the tombs “ not only Talaat Pasha“ but also those martyrs who are in their eternal sleep here, unless the site is turned over to the Military!

He was a Postal Clerk but Became a Prime Minister

You must surely know of Talaat Pasha, for whom we have been naming boulevards, streets, neighborhoods and schools, but let me briefly remind you anyway.

His full name being Mehmed Talaat, Talaat Pasha was born in Edirne on 20 August 1874. He lost his father at a young age and entered the Postal and Telegraphic service to feed his family. He became a founder of Ittihad & Terakki. He was arrested for his activities against the regime of Abdul Hamid and was jailed for 25 months and then was exiled to Salonica.

Employed as a mailman here, Mehmed Talaat was elected to Parliament from Edirne after the proclamation of the Second Constitution in 1908. He was made Interior Minister in the cabinet of Hussein Hilmi Pasha, and Minister of Postal and Telegraph Service in the cabinet of Kucuk Said Pasha. Talaat was one of the planners of the raid on the Sublime Porte on 23 January 1913, and one of the three top leaders of the Ittiahad & Terakki Party together with Enver and Jemal Pashas. He became the Interior Minister once again in the cabinet of Said Halim Pasha created on June 13, and personally oversaw the Armenian deportations in 1915. He was made prime minister on 4 February 1917 and received the title “pasha”.

Having resigned on 8 October 1918, upon our defeat in WWI, Talaat Pasha left Turkey with the other Ittihad & Terakki leaders during the night of 2 November on a German submarine. He first went to Russia, then to Germany.

Talaat Pasha was declared as the “greatest enemy” by Diaspora Armenians because of the measures he took in the Armenian events in Anatolia during the war years, and was murdered in Berlin in the morning of 15 March 1921, by an Armenian partisan called Sogomon Tehlirian with a bullet to his neck. Tehlirian was acquitted in the German court where he was tried. The ashes of the Pasha were brought to Istanbul from Berlin on 25 February 1944, 24 years after the murder and were interned at the Hill of Eternal Liberty with great military ceremony.

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Holdwater: The above translation comes courtesy of "The Genocide Archive Project," based in the "Armenian country" of Massachusetts, and headed by that tireless "professional Armenian patriot," David Davidian. (A taste of the fellow's intellectualism, from his intrusion into a Google usenet group for Turkish culture, March 19, 1990 entry: "Soghomon Tehlerian was not a 'fanatic'. He was person performing a duty to humanity. Talaat Pasha was the chief architect of the Turkish genocide of the 1.5 million Armenians.") While faithfully rendered, the translation understandably has a slight "pro-Armenian" slant; for example: "Deportations" has been used for the word "Tehcir." The word "deportation" is incorrect, because Armenians were moved within the country, and not out of the country... and ultimately allowed to return to their homes.

Kamuran Gurun spells out the difference, from The Armenian File:

The term tehjir (relocation) is Arabic and derives from the root hijret (emigration). It is used in the sense of `having one emigrate. This word has no connotation of putting one in a concentration camp, but indicates 'changing one's location'. For this reason, the term "deportation" used by the British and French is incorrect. Deportation has the connotation of forcing one to settle in a place under custody, that is, having one exiled. The individual who is exiled, who is deported, is not free in the place he is sent to. He lives in a specific place, in a prison, fortress, or camp, without any contact with the outside world.

(Let us add that deportation, to my mind, best means banishment outside a country's borders. For example, Russia's innocent Muslims were cruelly booted out forever from their centuries-old homes during WWI, as were the Balkan Turks, a few years earlier. These people were truly "deported.")

In addition, as a point of reference countering the Turkish text, Jemal Pasha, in his own memoirs, claimed that Talat was never a postman. Furthermore, it was established in the Tehlirian trial that Talat was shot in the back of the head, and not in the neck. (To nitpick, the original Turkish article described Tehlirian as a "committee member" (komitaci), that is, a member of the revolutionary committees, and not as a "partisan." At this stage, Tehlirian was more than a mere party member; he was a hit man, serving the Dashnak assassination squad, Nemesis.)

Finally, let's hope the "dump" of Talat's resting place should come as a lesson to the genocide nuts, up in arms as they can be over Turkey's neglect in the upkeep of Armenian churches. (They never talk, of course, about the upkeep of Turkish mosques in Armenia, probably because Armenia got rid of all the Turkish mosques.) If Turkey is neglectful of an important leader's tomb, then it's not as though the negligence of churches should be regarded as a sign of "cultural genocide."

 

Here we go with the installment for April 24, 2006. (The original, in Turkish.)

The Grand Vizier and Minister of Internal Affairs Talat Pasha, the architect of the 1915 relocation made the “Directorship of Housing, Immigrants and Tribes”( "İskan, Asiretler ve Muhacirler Müdürlüğü”), which was part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, prepare lists about the results of the relocation and took a copy for himself.

I took these documents that are being published for the first time from Talat Pasha’s wife Ms. Hayriye Talat , who was alive at the time, in 1982. I’m sure these numbers that I took from the documents will seem higher than what most of my readers have estimated. The reason for this is that we never prepared an academic publication concentrating on the numbers, only responding to the accusations of the Armenian diaspora in regards to their propaganda to the Turkish public. Therefore “Talat Pasha’s relocation documents” is not proof that Turkey is guilty, but proof that the state acted in self defense; the Armenian rebellion made things very difficult for the Turkish soldiers fighting on the borders during the world war.

NOTE: The last column, "Total Pop." is the 1914 population of Armenians.

The documents of Grand Vizier and Minister of Internal Affairs Mehmed Talat Pasha are being published 91 years after the 1915 relocation and 85 years after the murder of Talat Pasha by an Armenian terrorist in Berlin, for the first time in this column.

I took these documents from Ms. Hayriye Talat, the wife of Talat Pasha, who died in January 1983, in the autumn of 1982 and I preserved these documents for a quarter-century. In the political climate of the time, you couldn’t even mention these documents, let alone publish them. I added more and more documents to my archive during these 25 years, which I took from the relatives of leading Ittihat Terakki officials and Aysegul Bafralı, Ms. Hayriye Talat’s granddaughter. I will try to publish as many of the Pasha’s documents as I can in this series if I have enough space.

This is first-hand information

These numbers that I took from these documents will seem higher than what most of my readers have estimated. The reason for this is that there has not been a realistic academic publication about the 1915 relocation, and that we only reacted to Armenian accusations and propaganda which gets more and more active with non-scientific arguments like “We did not kill the Armenians, they killed us,” or  “we sent a small number of Armenians to other places and a greater number returned” instead of academic answers and reactions.

As I publish these documents of the architect of the 1915 relocation Talat Pasha, which are first hand information, for the first time in this column, I hope that these documents will lead to other scientific research. It is necessary for me to provide an important reminder:

Proof of self-defense

Relocation is a self-defense right that the state used because Turkish soldiers were hit from behind by rebels and because there was internal disorder. As you can see in these pages, the 1915 relocation was not a “genocide”; Ittihat Terakki never thought of a “Nazi model” solution to the Armenian issue, they only temporarily relocated some of the Armenian population living in different parts of Anatolia to other parts of the empire but they never completely emptied any residential areas.

Therefore “the relocation documents of Talat Pasha” is not proof that shows Turkey is guilty, it is proof of “self-defense” of the state against a rebellion that made everything very hard for our troops during WW1.

How many went, how many stayed

Talat Pasha, the architect of the 1915 relocation, made the “Directorship of Housing, Immigrants and Tribes” ("İskan, Asiretler ve Muhacirler Müdürlüğü”), which was part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, prepared lists about the results of the relocation and took a copy for himself.

There are details about the numbers of the local Armenian population, and numbers of Armenians who went from or came to the 23 administrative areas of the Ottoman Empire in the list, which are called "vilayet", "mutasarrıflık" and "liva" in the list .

These lists that are being published for the first time since the 1915 tehcir (relocation) show us that the event was clearly a relocation. The aim of the relocation was sending the population in the areas where rebellions took place to other areas. For example, some of the Armenians in Van were sent to Izmit, some of the Armenians in Izmit were sent to Kütahya and some of the Armenians in Kütahya were sent to Afyon, so that the Armenian population in areas where rebellions took place would decrease. But relocations of small numbers of people from one city to another had another aim: In these areas there were no big rebellions so the people causing problems were sent away but the Armenian population mostly remained untouched.

Some administrative centers were listed with their old names: "Dersaadet" İstanbul, "Mamüretülaziz" Elazıg, "Karahisar-i Sahib" Afyon, "Ayntab" Gaziantep, "Kengiri" Çankiri, "Tekfurdagi" Tekirdag, "Hüdavendigar" Bursa and surrounding areas, "Kal'a-i Sultani" Canakkale, "Canik" Samsun area, "Karesi" Balikesir area, and "Mentese" is Mugla.

I re-organized the lists and translated the lists into modern Turkish so it would fit the column and will be understandable for the readers.

Under the names of the administrative areas which are the “Vilayet, sanjak and liva” we see the number of the local Armenians (Yerli Ermeniler) which are the Armenians that stayed after the relocation. ”Yabancı Ermeniler” are the foreign Armenians who came to the area from other areas, and “genel toplam” ("All Armenians") is the number of all Armenians in an area after the relocation. At the last column we see the 1914 number of Armenians in the area, 1 year before the relocation. 

 

The rest will be included, as soon as the pages are translated; stay tuned.

Let's put up the tables from the next two installments, in the interim; remember, the last column, "Total Pop.," reflects the 1914 number for Armenians. And to review: "Local Armenians":  the original Armenians who stuck around after the relocation. ”Foreign Armenians": the ones who were brought in from other areas, and  "All Armenians" represents the number of all Armenians in an area after the relocation.