On May 30, 2025, Turkey unveiled a monument in its capital, Ankara, honoring Mehmed Talaat Pasha, the principal architect of the Armenian Genocide.
The unveiling took place on Talat Pa?a Boulevard in the city’s Alt?nda? district and was publicly announced by Ankara’s Mayor Mansur Yava?, who praised Talaat Pasha as a “patriotic statesman.” According to the mayor, the monument is intended to commemorate Ottoman and Republic-era officials assassinated abroad—such as Talaat—in an effort to preserve the Turkish state’s memory and historical continuity.
The glorification of a man internationally recognized as one of the greatest criminals of the 20th century has ignited fierce backlash from Armenians and human rights advocates alike.
The unveiling has sparked widespread outrage within the Armenian community and among human rights defenders. Critics argue that honoring Talaat Pasha—one of the greatest criminals of the 20th century—is an act of historical denial and a direct insult to the memory of the over 1.5 million Armenians systematically annihilated under his orders. They emphasize that instead of glorifying perpetrators, Turkey should reckon with its past and formally recognize the genocide.
Despite being convicted by an Ottoman military tribunal in 1919 and sentenced to death for his crimes, Talaat Pasha has been continually honored in Turkey. His remains were repatriated from Berlin and buried with state honors in 1943. Streets, schools, and mosques across the country still bear his name—part of a long-standing state policy to recast genocidaires as national forerunners, rather than confronting historical truth. More than a century later, this policy continues unabated.
The Mastermind of 1915
Talaat Pasha, a senior leader of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), served as Minister of the Interior and later Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire. From these powerful posts, he engineered the arrest of Armenian intellectuals on April 24, 1915, the mass deportations that followed, and the bureaucratic machinery that turned deportation into extermination.
Entire populations were sent on death marches into the Syrian desert, deprived of food and water, and subjected to mass killings. These policies—explicitly designed to annihilate the Armenian people—led to the murder of over 1.5 million Armenians, the destruction of millennia-old communities, and the seizure of Armenian homes, churches, and cultural heritage.
U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, stationed in Constantinople at the time, recalled in his memoirs that Talaat Pasha had told him directly:
“We are not going to leave a single Armenian alive.”
Morgenthau’s diplomatic cables and firsthand reports served as early documentation of the systematic nature of the genocide. Talaat even ordered the destruction of Armenian orphans, stating that the survival of their bloodline must not be allowed.
Fleeing Justice — and Operation Nemesis
After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, Talaat fled to Germany to avoid prosecution. In 1919, he was tried in absentia by an Ottoman military tribunal, found guilty of organizing mass murder, and sentenced to death. Despite the conviction, Germany refused to extradite him.
On March 15, 1921, Talaat Pasha was assassinated on a Berlin street by Soghomon Tehlirian, a young Armenian survivor whose entire family had been murdered. The killing was part of Operation Nemesis, a secret plot by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation to eliminate Ottoman officials responsible for the genocide.
Tehlirian’s trial in Berlin became an international sensation. After hearing the evidence and Tehlirian’s personal trauma, the jury acquitted him, recognizing the assassination as an act of justice in the face of global inaction.
