Behbud Khan Javanshir

Behbud Khan Javanshir

Behbud Chan Dschawanschir ( Azerbaijani Behbud Xan Cavanşir ; * 1877 in the village of Azad Qaraqoyunlu, Dschawanschirski Ujezd (today Tərtər ), Elisavetpol Governorate , Russian Empire ; † July 18, 1921 in Istanbul , Ottoman Empire ) was an Azerbaijani politician, member of the interior and parliament of the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan .

biography

Behbud Khan Jawansheer was born into an influential Khan family. His great-great-grandfather Panah Ali Khan (1693–1763) was the founder of the Azerbaijani Khanate of Karabakh .

From 1890 to 1898 Dschawanschir attended a secondary school in Tbilisi . In 1902 he went to Germany and enrolled at the Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg . There he learned German in a very short time and graduated from the academy in 1906 with distinction. Javanshir then went to London and studied English in a language school for a year .

In 1907, Javanshir returned to Azerbaijan and began working as an engineer on the Shibaev oil field. In addition to his activities as a benefactor, he was a member of the secret organization “Difai” (Defense), whose aim was to protect the Azerbaijani people against attacks by the Armenian nationalists.

With the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan (DRA), Javanshir was appointed Interior Minister of the country in June 1918. The Armenian pogrom in Baku in September 1918, in which between 9,000 and 30,000 Armenians were murdered, also fell during his term of office . His involvement in the pogrom made him a target of Operation Nemesis , which aimed to kill those responsible for the Armenian genocide and ultimately led to his later assassination.

At the end of December of the same year he was replaced by Xəlil bəy Xasməmmədov and instead appointed Deputy Minister for Trade and Industry. At the same time, he was a member of the National Assembly.

After the establishment of Soviet rule in Azerbaijan in April 1920, Jawanshir was able to escape persecution and imprisonment by the Bolsheviks with the help of Nariman Narimanov . In the first few months he worked on the now Sovietized oil fields of Baku . Due to his knowledge of German and Turkish , Dschawanschir was later sent to Berlin as a representative of the Soviet power, and then to Istanbul in the summer of 1921.

Assassination and Trial

On July 18, 1921, Jawanshir was shot and killed by the Armenian assassin Misak Torlakjan opposite the Pera Palas Hotel in the center of Istanbul in front of his wife and two brothers .

Torlakjan was arrested at the scene and brought before a British military tribunal. From the beginning, his Armenian lawyers tried to classify him as insane. He simulated unconsciousness in his cell, obtained fake medical certificates, and gave false information about his past throughout the trial. The view of the Armenian, Greek and British doctors that Torlakjan suffers from epilepsy and is therefore insane was refuted by a Turkish neurologist. Torlakjan cited the murder of his wife, sister and children by Azerbaijanis before his eyes in Baku as the reason for his act . In reality, he had no family members in Baku. These had died long before in Trabzon . In the end, the court found him guilty of the murder, but came to the conclusion that Torlakjan had committed the act in a state of affect . The case shows great similarities to Soghomon Tehlirian , who was acquitted only a few months earlier in Berlin for the murder of Talât Pascha , the main person responsible for the Armenian genocide .

Torlakjan was expelled to Greece after the trial . There he was released on arrival, from where he emigrated to Romania via Serbia. After the Second World War he emigrated to the USA , where he died on November 12, 1968 in Montebello, California.

Literature and individual references

1. ↑ Эльдар Исмаилов: Ханы Карабахские и их потомки. Поколенная родословная роспись старшей линии рода. (PDF) 2016, accessed November 16, 2019 (Russian). 
2. ↑ Документы по русской истории в Закавказье . tape 1 . Баку 1920, p. 25 .
3. ↑ Carolyn J. Dean, The Moral Witness: Trials and Testimony after Genocide (Ithaca 2019), p. 48.
4. ↑ Бейбут-хан Джеваншир (1877–1921). Retrieved November 16, 2019 (Russian). 
5. ↑ Derogy Jacques: Resistance and revenge: The Armenian assassination of the Turkish leaders . Transaction Publishers, New Jersey 1990, ISBN 0-88738-338-6 , pp. 119-121 .
6. ↑ Derogy J .: Resistance and revenge: the Armenian assassination of the Turkish leaders . Transaction Publishers, New Jersey 1990, ISBN 0-88738-338-6 , pp. 117-121 .