Turkish Interior Minister Talaat Pasha from 'Four Years Beneath the Crescent' by Rafael De Nogales.
The Grand Vizier Talaat Pasha
"The documents leave no doubt that Talât Paşa was the overall coordinator of the deportations and massacres. . . . In one coded cable sent on 21 July 1915 to the governors-general and lieutenant governors of Diyarbakir, Mamüretülaziz, Urfa, and Der Zor, Talât Paşa writes that 'the dead on the roads should be buried, not thrown in lakes, wells or rivers, and their belongings are to be burned.' . . . The German consul to Jerusalem sent a telegram to the embassy in Istanbul on 9 September, in which he reports Cemal Paşa's claim to only carry out the plans while '—Talât Bey decides the dimensions of the expulsions.'"
Turkish Interior Minister Mehmed Talaat Pasha, with War Minister Ismail Enver Pasha and Ahmed Djemal Pasha, ruled Turkey during World War I. Both contemporaries — including the German consul quoted about and Henry Morgenthau, American Ambassador at Constantinople from 1913 to 1916 — and later historians including Turkish historian Taner Akçam quoted here, lay primary responsibility for the Armenian Genocide on Talaat.
A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility by Taner Akçam, pp. 168, 169, copyright © 2006 by Taner Akçam, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 2006
1915-07-21, 1915, July, Armenia, Armenian genocide, genocide, Talaat, Talaat Pascha
