By the autumn of , Talat and the committee had internalized war psychology and a comprehensive war logic that included domestic coercion and violence. After the Second Balkan War, Enver and Talat had wanted to resume war against Greece in order to reconquer lost territory.
They took advantage of the July crisis of , supported a radical anti-Serbian Austrian policy and approached Germany for an alliance , threatening an Ottoman dependence on the Entente if refused. Exceptional circumstances allowed them to put Austria and Germany in Zugzwang. Within a few days, both countries had bound their military destiny to that of the Ottoman Empire. Within a few months, they broadened the alliance in terms of content and extended it until He successfully kept Ahmed Cemal Pasha , a rival in the committee and minister of the navy, at a distance by trusting him with the governorship of Syria and the reconquest of Egypt.
Since Mehmed Cavid Bey had retired out of protest against the war, Talat also headed the finance ministry, although Cavid continued to lead most affairs, in particular the negotiations with Germany for financial assistance and the development of the Baghdad Railway. Enver remained a pillar of the war regime and indispensable, but depended more on Talat than vice versa. In the eyes of the CUP, the loss of Macedonia resulted from foreign interference and octroyed reforms.
Unresolved security concerns and land issues in the eastern provinces had led Armenian leaders to turn to European diplomacy and demand the reforms promised in Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin. A reform agreement, which included international control and was backed by Russia and Germany, was signed on 8 February , and to be implemented during the summer.
It had far-reaching consequences for Talat's administration of domestic affairs since it gave all population groups a share in the administration. War offered Talat the opportunity to annul the agreement, cancel other foreign privileges in domestic affairs and start irregular warfare in the Caucasus and northern Iran. The committee now held a chauvinist stance towards foreigners in general and Ottoman Armenians in particular, whom it accused of collaboration with the Entente during what it considered to be its total, domestic and international struggle for survival and sovereignty.
German leadership and expertise were decisive. In mid-April , a confident Talat impressed the German journalist Emil Ludwig by learning German and talking about a post-war future in which German specialists would help build up the country.
The minister of the interior argued that Turkey had entered the war in order to secure its independence. A few days later, in ciphered telegrams from 24 April to the provincial governors and the army, he defined the situation in Asia Minor as that of a general Armenian rebellion and of revolutionary committees that wished to establish self-determination and thus must be eliminated.
Agencies of Talat's ministry not only arrested the Armenian elites throughout the country, but organized the removal of most Armenians from eastern Asia Minor and western Anatolia in addition to the province of Edirne. Armenian houses were systematically handed over to Muslim migrants muhacir and Armenian assets transferred to an exclusively Muslim economy. When deciding in favor of official war in October , Talat and Enver bypassed him. The press praised this development as the culmination of a history of Turkish salvation starting in Talat raised hopes for peace and rule of law in a country stamped by war, famine, chaos, corruption and a general breakdown of public confidence.
Kieser's careful reading of the Armenian Genocide offers precious keys to understanding the process of the Islamization and Turkification of the late Ottoman Empire.
Kieser reinstates Talaat Pasha as a major statesman of twentieth-century European and world history. This is the first scholarly biography of a man both revered by the beneficiaries and reviled by the victims of his drive to save an empire, only to preside over its demise. Due to global supply chain issues, book orders are currently taking days or longer to be delivered.
Please order early for the holidays or consider shopping at your local bookstore. Buy This. War with the Entente Powers consequently followed in November Unlike his colleagues Talaat faced the prospect of war with some apprehension , uncertain of the Ottoman Empire's likelihood of success in the coming conflict.
At best he viewed participation as a sizeable gamble. As Minister of the Interior Talaat was faced with the responsibility of ensuring Turkey's domestic ability to conduct war, consequently subordinating Ottoman society to support the army's requirements. Controversially his office oversaw the deportation of the Armenians from the Ottoman Empire's eastern provinces and therefore susceptible to Russian influence to Syria and Mesopotamia present-day Iraq in April following the rebels' capture of the city of Van.
Some , Armenians perished in the twentieth century's first case of mass genocide.
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