Cemal Azmi

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cemal Azmi Bey

Mehmet Cemal Azmi Bey (* 1868 in Arapkir , Ottoman Empire ; † April 17, 1922 in Berlin ) was an Ottoman politician and Wali (governor) of the Trabzon province during the First World War and the final years of the Ottoman Empire. He was one of the main people responsible for the Armenian genocide in Trabzon province . He was known as "The Butcher of Trabzon" ( Turkish Trabzon Celladı - "Executioner of Trabzon" ).

origin

Cemal Azmi was born in Arapkir in the then Ottoman Empire in 1868 . His father was Osman Nuri Bey, his mother's name was Gülsüm. In 1891 he studied at the Mülkiye Mektep .

Genocide against the Armenians

Shortly before the First World War, Azmi was appointed governor of Trabzon on July 7, 1914. During the genocide from 1915 onwards, Azmi's supporters and troops initially committed massacres outside the city of Trabzon. He was best known for his use of violence against children. Azmi, in collaboration with the member of the Ittihadist Central Committee , Yenibahceli Nail, ordered the drowning of several thousand women and children in the Black Sea .

Oscar S. Heizer, the US Consul in Trabzon in 1915, reports: "This plan did not suit Nail Bey ... Many of the children were loaded onto boats, shipped out to sea and thrown overboard". The Italian consul of Trabzon, Giacomo Gorrini, writes: "I saw thousands of innocent women and children on boats that were overturned in the Black Sea". The later trials in Trabzon also reported that Armenians were drowned in the sea.

Azmi was responsible for kidnapping girls under 15 and boys under 10 from orphanages that were given away to Muslim households. Azmi's son quoted his father before his death: “Among the most beautiful Armenian girls between the ages of ten and thirteen, I chose some and gave them to my son [who was then 14]; I let the others drown in the sea. "

Robbery of Armenian property

Towards the end of the massacres, the Azmi family gained considerable wealth through the confiscation of Armenian property and assets. Arusiag Kilijian, an 18-year-old orphan held as a slave by Azmi's family , reported that Azmi's household was filled with "stolen goods, carpets, and so on."

During the cross-examination of Nuri Bey at the 9th session of negotiations in Trabzon on April 10, 1919, it was reported that Agent Mustafa, the commanding officer of the seaport of Trabzon, “stole a box belonging to Vartivar Muradian” and from Cemal Azmi “five hundred Pounds of gold and jewels ”.

The graves of Cemal Azmi Bey and Bahaeddin Şakir , Turkish Cemetery Berlin .

Martial courts 1919–1920 and Trabzon trials

During the Turkish military courts of 1919–1920 , the Ottoman politician Çürüksulu Mahmud Pasha gave a speech in the Ottoman Senate on December 2, 1919 , where he publicly accused Cemal Azmi of the massacre in Trabzon and the subsequent drowning of thousands of women and children.

On December 11, 1918, Trabzon's lieutenant governor Hafiz Mehmet made a speech in the Chamber of Deputies, saying:

“God will punish us for what we did ... the matter is too obvious to be denied. I personally witnessed these Armenian events in the port city of Ordu . Under the pretext of sending them to Samsun , another port city on the Black Sea, the district governor loaded the Armenians into barges and threw them overboard. I heard that the governor general approved this procedure across the province. Although I reported this to the Ministry of the Interior as soon as I returned to Constantinople ... I was unable to take any action against the latter; I tried to get such measures regulated for about three years, but in vain. "

During the 14th meeting of Trabzon processes on 26 April 1919 declared the Governor of Giresun , Arif Bey that Azmi had commanded him, "the Armenians on the way of the Black Sea to Mosul to deport to drown," which meant it.

On May 22, 1919, Cemal Azmi was sentenced to death in absentia for murder and “forced relocation”. The death penalty was not carried out.

assassination

On April 17, 1922, Cemal Azmi, along with Bahaddin Şakir , was murdered in Uhlandstrasse in Berlin-Charlottenburg for his leading role in the Arshavir Shiragyan genocide as part of Operation Nemesis . His grave is in the Turkish cemetery in Berlin-Neukölln . An old tombstone, which has since been removed, shows the year of his birth as 1876, while the new one says 1866. The tomb, which was completely redesigned in white marble in 2011, depicts Cemal Azmi as a victim of “Armenian terrorists”. In view of the fact that he is a mass murderer sentenced to death by a court martial of the Ottoman Empire, who avails himself of punishment by fleeing withdrawn, this type of veneration of the perpetrators is considered morally questionable for many descendants of the Armenian bereaved.

In 2003 a primary school in Trabzon was even named after Cemal Azmi.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Omer Bartov, Phyllis Mack: In God's Name: Genocide and religion in the twentieth century . Berghahn Books, New York 2001, ISBN 978-1-57181-214-8 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  2. ^ A b Raymond Haroutioun Kévorkian : The Armenian Genocide: A complete history . IB Tauris, London 2010, ISBN 978-1-84885-561-8 , pp. 468 ( limited preview in Google Book Search - Azmi was to be one of the main architects of the liquidation of his vilayet's Armenian population.).
  3. ^ Huberta Lean von Voss: Portraits of Hope: Armenians in the contemporary world . 1st English ed. Berghahn Books, New York 2007, ISBN 978-1-84545-257-5 , pp. 296 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed February 15, 2013] Avengers Arshavir Shirakian (1900–73) and Aram Yerkanian (1898–1934) executed Cemal Azmi, who, as the former governor general of Trebzon was the 'butcher 'of the province.).
  4. ↑ Jacques Derogy: Resistance and Revenge: The Armenian assassination of Turkish leaders responsible for the 1915 massacres and deportation . Transaction Publishers, 1990, ISBN 1-4128-3316-7 , pp. 74 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed February 15, 2013] Oriental carpet shop that was opened in the town center by the butcher of Trebizond, Jemal Azmi.).
  5. ↑ Jemal Azmi known as 'the Butcher of Trabzon', was assassinated on April 14, 1922. In: The Armenian Review . tape 42 , 1990, pp. 44 .
  6. ↑ Suçluya Saygi: Mehmet Cemal Azmi Bey. Soykirima Karsi Uluslarasi Analyis Dernegi, accessed July 1, 2013 (Turkish): "Ermeni çocuklarına uyguladığı vahşet nedeniyle 'Trabzon Celladı' diye de anılmaktadır."
  7. ^ A b Gérard Chaliand: The History of Terrorism from Antiquity to al Qaeda . Reprint edition. University of California Press, Berkeley, Calif. et al. 2010, ISBN 978-0-520-24709-3 , p. 195 ( limited preview in Google Book Search - One of the organizers of the genocide, and Jemal Azmi, “the butcher of Trebizond.”).
  8. ↑ a b c d Suçluya saygi: Mehmet Cemal Azmi Bey. Soykirima Karsi Uluslarasi Analyis Dernegi, accessed February 14, 2013 (Turkish).
  9. ↑ a b Cemal Azmi Bey Kimdir? Cemal Azmi Bey İlköğretim Okulu, accessed February 14, 2013 (Turkish).
  10. ↑ April 11, 1919 report. US National Archives. RG 59, 867, 4016/411.
  11. ↑ Toronto Globe , August 26, 1915.
  12. ↑ Takvimi Vekdyi , No. 3616, August 6, 1919, p. 2.
  13. ^ Christian Gerlach: Extremely Violent Societies: Mass Violence in the Twentieth-Century World . Cambridge University Press, 2010, ISBN 978-1-139-49351-2 , pp. 110 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  14. ↑ Suçluya saygi: Mehmet Cemal Azmi Bey. STCG, retrieved on February 14, 2013 (Turkish): "Ölümünden önce, Türk kimliği altında kendi oğluyla arkadaş olan genç bir Ermeniye övünerek şunları anlattığı bilinmektedir:" En güzel Ermeni kızlarımından 10 ardır kındaslarından olaman 14 years oğluma hediye ettim. Diğerlerini denizde boğdurdum. ""
  15. ↑ Basbakanlık Cumhuriyet Arsivi, 30.18.1.1/25.38.4, file 137-78, no. 5331, decree June 15, 1927.
  16. ↑ Report by Arusiag Kilijian at the third session of the trial of Trebizond, 1 April 1919: APC / APJ, PCI Bureau, doc. no. 34, 769-70.
  17. ^ Examination of Nuri Bey, at the ninth session of the trial of Trebizond, April 10, 1919: Nor Giank, no. 166, April 11, 1919; La Renaissance, no.112, April 11, 1919.
  18. ↑ Meclisi Ayan Zabit Ceridesi third legislature, 5th Session, 13th Session, vol. I, p. 148, December 2, 18 issue.
  19. ↑ Meclisi Mebusan Zabit Ceridesi third legislature, 5th Session, 24th meeting, pp 299, December 1, 1918 issue.
  20. ^ Report by Arif Bey at the 14th session of the trial of Trebizond, April 26, 1919: La Renaissance, no. 125, April 27, 1919; Nor Giank, no.179, April 27, 1919.
  21. ↑ Verdict of the trial of Trebizond, July 8, 1919: Takvim-ı Vakayi, no. 3616, August 6, 1919, pp. 50–2.
  22. ↑ Adoration of perpetrators: Mehmet Cemal Azmi Bey on Arbeitsgruppe Austausch.org. Retrieved June 5, 2013.
  23. ↑ a b Two 'Young Turks' Murdered in Berlin. (PDF) In: The New York Times . April 19, 1922, accessed May 25, 2013 .
  24. ↑ Marcel Leubecher: Armenian Genocide: Grave for Murderers in Sehitlik Mosque . In: THE WORLD . April 20, 2015 ( welt.de [accessed November 30, 2017]).
  25. ↑ OKULUMUZUN TARİHÇESİ. Kuzguncuk Cemal Azmi Bey İlköğretim Okulu, accessed February 14, 2013 (Turkish).
personal data
SURNAME Azmi, Cemal
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Asmi, Jemal; Azmi, ever
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Mass murderer in the genocide of the Armenians
DATE OF BIRTH 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH Arapkir , Ottoman Empire
DATE OF DEATH April 17, 1922
Place of death Berlin