Talaat Pasha

Who was Talaat Pasha?

Mehmed Talaat Pasha, often known simply as Talaat Pasha, was one of the triumvirate known as the Three Pashas that controlled the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.

His career in Ottoman politics began by becoming Deputy for Edirne in 1908, then Minister of the Interior, and finally Grand Vizier in 1917. He fled the empire with Enver Pasha and Djemal Pasha in 1918, and was assassinated in Berlin in 1921 by Soghomon Tehlirian, a survivor of the Armenian Genocide.

Talaat Pasha, when Interior Minister, ordered on 24 April 1915 the arrest of Armenian leaders in Constantinople, and requested the Tehcir Law, or Temporary Deportation Law, of 30 May 1915 that initiated the deportations and subsequent massacre of the Ottoman Empire's Armenian population.