Halil Kut

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Halil Pasha 1916

Halil Kut , also Halil Pasha ( Turkish Halil Paşa * 22. November 1882 in Istanbul ; † 4. August 1957 ibid) was an Ottoman governor and commander in the First World War . Halil Kut was an uncle of Enver Pasha on his father's side. With the naming law of 1934 he adopted the family name Kut. He was one of the people responsible for the Armenian genocide .

Early career

Halil Pascha was born in Istanbul. In 1905 he graduated from the Military Academy here and served for the next three years in the Ottoman 3rd Army in Macedonia , where he joined the Committee for Unity and Progress . When in 1908 the Ottoman Sultan reinstated the Ottoman constitution of 1876 under pressure from the Young Turks , who also included Halil Pasha's nephew Enver , Halil Pasha was sent to Persia on the orders of the government . After the Sultan's counter-coup in 1909, Halil Pasha returned to Istanbul and became a member of the royal guard.

In 1909 he was commissioned to take action against insurgents and bandits in the region around Saloniki . He then fought in both the Italo-Turkish War in Tripolitania in 1912 and in the Balkan Wars in 1912/1913. Until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Halil Pasha was the commander of the Jandarma in eastern Van .

First World War and participation in the genocide of the Armenians

When the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War, Halil Pasha was a member of the high command. He later served in the Ottoman Third Army on the Caucasus Front , where he fought against the Russians and their Armenian allies.

During the Armenian genocide, Halil Kut massacred all Armenian soldiers in his command, as well as the Armenian population, including men, women and children, in Bitlis , Mus and Beyazit . The massacres of the Armenians perpetrated by Halil, which lasted until autumn 1919, were admitted by Halil Pasha in his memoirs, in which he stated that he had killed a total of 300,000 Armenians, and added: “It could also be more or less. I did not count. [...] I tried to wipe out the Armenian nation down to its last individual. "

In 1915 he moved to the southern Mesopotamia front , where he fought against the British in the sixth Ottoman Army under the command of Colmar von der Goltz . After several battles, the Ottomans captured British General Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend and his troops on April 29, 1916 near Kut, south of Baghdad . After this successful battle, Halil Pasha was promoted to general. Colmar von der Goltz had died a few days earlier. In addition, Halil Pasha was appointed governor of Baghdad Province and was in command of the Sixth Ottoman Army until the end of the war in 1918.

In 1917, Halil Pascha, on the orders of the Minister of War Enver Pascha, was supposed to relocate part of the Sixth Army from the southern front to the eastern front, where they fought unsuccessfully against the British in Persia. But this relocation weakened his troops in the south, so that Baghdad fell to the British on March 11, 1917. The British were able to push the Ottomans out of Mesopotamia despite initial defeats. Finally, in October 1918, Halil Pasha surrendered after the battle of Sharqat.

Late years

Halil Pasha came to the Allied occupied Istanbul as a prisoner of war, but was able to escape and flee to Moscow , where the Bolsheviks had overthrown the Tsar in 1917 . After the signing of the Moscow Treaty in 1921 between the Turkish counter-government in Ankara and the Soviets , Halil Pasha returned to Turkey, carrying with him gold from Lenin , which was intended in return for the transfer of Batumi to the Soviets. Since he was not allowed to stay in Turkey, he first went back to Moscow and then to Berlin . Only in 1923 after the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey was he allowed to return to his homeland. In 1957 he died in Istanbul.

Works

  • Taylan Sorgun (Ed.): Bitmeyen Savaş , 1972.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Vahakn N. Dadrian: The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus. Berghahn Books, 2003. p. 405.
  2. ↑ Bitmeyen Savaş
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Gust: Own book reviews: Taner Akçam: A shame ful Act, The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish responsibility. Metropolitan Books, New York 2006. 483 pages. . Retrieved June 25, 2016
  4. ↑ Ben Kiernan: Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur. Yale University Press, 2007. p. 413.
  5. ↑ Jay Winter: America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Cambridge University Press, 2009. pp. 64-65.
  6. ↑ Bitmeyen Savaş, p. 195.
personal data
SURNAME Kut, Halil
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Halil Pasha
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Ottoman governor and commander in World War I.
DATE OF BIRTH November 22, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Istanbul
DATE OF DEATH 4th August 1957
Place of death Istanbul