Şükrü Kaya

Şükrü Kaya.

Şükrü Kaya (* 1882 in İstanköy / Ottoman Empire (today Kos / Greece), † January 10, 1959 in Istanbul ) was an Ottoman civil servant, Turkish politician and was Interior Minister and later Foreign Minister of the Republic of Turkey from 1927 to 1938 . He was one of the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide .

education

He completed elementary and middle school in İstanköy (now Kos ). He graduated from high school in Midilli (now Lesbos ). Then he attended the Galatasaray Sultanisi . In 1908 Kaya graduated from law school and went to Paris. There he graduated from the Faculty of Law and returned to Turkey.

Political advancement and participation in the genocide of the Armenians

He began to work as a secretary in the Ottoman Foreign Ministry. He later became the administrative inspector and general director for Eşirets and Migrants. Kaya worked as an administrative inspector in Anatolia and Iraq . Then he stopped work and went to İzmir. For some time he worked as a teacher in the Buca Sultanisi.

During the Armenian genocide, Şükrü Kaya was deportation commissioner at a central administrative post in Aleppo and was responsible for the deportation of the Armenians. The German consul Walter Rößler quoted Kaya as saying: "The end result must be the extermination of the Armenian race."

After the Mudros armistice , Kaya worked in İzmir in the department for foreign relations of the Society for the Defense of Rights. Because of this activity, he was arrested by the British occupying forces and imprisoned in Bekirağa prison in Istanbul. After the British occupied Istanbul , Kaya and others were arrested for complicity in the Armenian genocide and shipped to Malta . However, Kaya managed to escape to Europe with a total of 16 prisoners of war. After some time in Italy and Germany, Kaya went to Anatolia and took part in the Turkish Liberation War under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

He was an advisor to the Turkish delegation during the first conference in Lausanne . While he was still in Lausanne, he was elected mayor of İzmir. Kaya was a member of the Menteşe Province in the Second Legislature of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey . In the III, IV and V legislative periods he was a member of the Muğla Province . He was Minister of Agriculture in the Ismet Pasha government . In the Fethi Beys government , Kaya became foreign minister. After his government resigned, he lost his post. In the 4th İnönü government, Kaya became Minister of the Interior. From 1927 to 1938, Kaya was Minister of the Interior in every government. Kaya was also general secretary of Ataturk's Republican People's Party (CHP). After Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's death, İsmet İnönü was elected President. İsmet İnönü demanded that Prime Minister Celâl Bayar resign Interior Minister Şükrü Kaya and Foreign Minister Tevfik Rüştü Aras . So Kaya had to leave his post in November 1938.

In addition to politics, Şükrü Kaya worked as a translator and also wrote columns for the Cumhuriyet newspaper . According to the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Turkey , Kaya was a Freemason .

Translated works

• Daniel Defoe : Robinson Crusoe (1923: "Robinson Crusoe")
• Henri Béraud: Le Martyre de l'obèse (1924: "Şişko")
• Charles Rist and Charles Gide : Histoire des doctrines économiques depuis les physiocrates jusqu'à nos jours (1927: "Fizyokratlardan Günümüze Kadar iktisadi mezhepler tarihi")
• Albert Mathiez : La Révolution française (1950: "Fransız İhtilali")

Web links

Commons : Şükrü Kaya  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from May 21, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
2. ^ Rolf Hosfeld: Operation Nemesis: Turkey, Germany and the genocide of the Armenians . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2005. p. 305
3. ↑ "Those who stayed alive were left naked" . The time . March 23, 2005. Retrieved June 20, 2016
4. ↑ Turkey and the Armenian Genocide . Society for Threatened Peoples . December 3, 2003. Retrieved June 20, 2016
5. ↑ Fatma Muge Gocek: Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence against the Armenians, 1789-2009 . Oxford University Press, 2014. p. 363
6. ↑ Grand Lodge of the Free and Accepted Masons of Turkey: Information on Edhem's membership in the Grand Lodge ( Memento of April 27, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (Turkish)