Talaat Pasha (1874-15 March 1921) was the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire from 4 February 1917 to 8 October 1918, succeeding Said Halim Pasha and preceding Ahmed Izzet Pasha. Along with Enver Pasha and Djemal Pasha, he was one of the "Three Pashas" that led the Young Turks.
Biography[]
Mehmed Talaat was born in 1874 in Kircaali, Edirne Vilayet, Ottoman Empire. In 1908, he became a deputy to the Sublime Porte for Edirne, and he was given several cabinet positions under Sultan Mehmed VI, including Minister of Finance, Minister of the Interior, and then the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire. As Grand Vizier, he was responsible for leading the country during World War I alongside the other two of the "Three Pashas": Enver Pasha and Djemal Pasha. In this post, he was known to be the mastermind of the Armenian Genocide. He had had many Armenian intellectuals arrested and murdered in 1915, and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation plotted to assassinate him after the war in "Operation Nemesis", their execution of several leading Ottomans accused of perpetrating the genocide. On 15 March 1921, Soghomon Tehlirian killed him with a single bullet as he left his house in Berlin, German Empire, and Tehlirian was acquitted of murder by Germany due to his traumatic experiences during the genocide.