While the trials were taking place, the spread of the Kemalist movement was changing the overall atmosphere. MPs of the last Ottoman parliament, which was mostly constituted of Kemalists, came forward on 20 February, 1920 with the proposal to lay charges against Damad Ferid Pasha, because the prime minister was consistent in revealing those responsible for the Armenian massacres.
Under pressure from the Kemalists, Damad Ferid handed in his resignation on 17 October, and was replaced by Tevfik Pasha, who was more favourably inclined towards the Kemalists. On 8 November, the judges who had passed the Baberd verdict were arrested.
Mehmet Kemal and Bahramzadeh Nusret, two of the three criminals who had been charged, sentenced, and hanged, were made heroes. On 5 August, 1920, the day of Nusret’s death execution, the parliament in Ankara ceased its activities for ten minutes as a mark of respect.
According to the decision of 9 December of that same year, the Ankara parliament approved the payment of a pension to Mehmet Kemal’s family and, on 25 December, to Nusret’s family. Mehmet Kemal’s statue was erected in Boğazlıyan, and a primary school and boulevard in Urfa were named after the other criminal, Bahramzadeh Nusret.
Some of the main organisers of the Armenian Genocide were sentenced by the Turkish Military Tribunal and some were killed by Armenian avengers. There is, however, a third category of Turkish perpetrators, whose deaths have thus far escaped general recognition. Among these, according to the genocide expert Vahakn Dadrian, were brigand chiefs, the so-called çetebashis, who wrought havoc with thousands of trapped Armenian deportees by subjecting them to kinds of barbarities unexcelled even in Turkish history.
They were most effective in their pursuit primarily because their charges, whom they led and directed, were almost entirely felons, carefully chosen blood-thirsty criminals who were released from the many prisons of the Ottoman Empire mainly, if not only, for this purpose. Then there were the chief Ittihadists who closely collaborated with Tâlat and the Special Organisation in setting up and implementing the massacres. Many of these were tried, convicted, and condemned to death in 1926 by the Independence Court of the Ankara government on charges of conspiracy to kill Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) and take over the Turkish government. The brigand chiefs were killed individually by either Ittihadists or by Kemalists, whom they had joined in the Armistice period. Other perpetrators died as a result of heart attacks or strokes. Finally, there is the category of suicide resulting from post-war despondency of one kind or another, and death by fatal accidents.
Nearly all of these defendants were prominent ex-Ittihadists whose trials were divided into two judicial proceedings with venues in Izmir and Ankara. The first series started in Smyrna (Izmir) on May 26, 1926 and ended on the day of the verdict, i.e., on July 13, 1926, when seven conspirators were condemned to death and hanged the same day at midnight – Ismail Canpolat, Ahmed Şükrü, Ziya Hurşid, Halis Turgut, Arif, Rüştü, Hafız Mehmed, Rasim, and Abdülkadır. Kara Kemal committed suicide on 27 July before he could be transferred to Ankara.
Of these, three were involved in the organisation of the Armenian Genocide, with two of them having played a key role.
Halis Turgut was a party operative and parliamentarian. During the war, he served as commander of a Special Organisation contingent operating in Sivas (Sebastia) province. He later operated at the Caucasus front, including the Nakhijevan region in the 1917-1918 period. To escape prosecution by the Turkish Military Tribunal investigating the crime of Armenian deportations and massacres, he had escaped to Sivas, to the mountains with a small guerrilla unit.
Ahmed Şükrü was wartime Minister of Education, a fanatical Ittihadist and arch foe of the Armenians. He was hanged twice as the rope on his neck snapped the first time, with Shükrü collapsing on the floor half-dead and finally expiring on the gallows while emitting death-rattles. This man, who helped send tens of thousands of innocent Armenian peasants to their gruesome deaths, was sufficiently terrified to cry out, “Oh, alas! Oh, alas!” (“Vah! Vah!”) upon seeing the gallows on his way to execution.
Ismail Canpolat was the right hand man of Talât. He was in charge of the empire’s Public Security Office, Emniyeti Umumiye, the Prefect of the Ottoman Capital, and, later in the war, Interior Minister.
To be continued, this chapter is from Tatul Hakobyan’s book- ARMENIANS and TURKS
Image – Mehmet Kemal
