Krikor Zohrab
Krikor Zohrab ( Armenian Գրիգոր Զօհրապ , Turkish Kirkor Zöhrap ; born June 26, 1861 in Beşiktaş , Istanbul , Turkey ; † August 2, 1915 near Urfa ) was an Ottoman - Armenian lawyer, writer and politician.
Zohrab studied at the Dar-ül Fünun , before he went to the Armenian schools Makruhian, Targmantschaz and Lusaworitschian. His literature teacher was Tovmas Tersian . In the Dreyfus affair , Zohrab wrote a letter of defense, whereupon the Comité juif sent him a gold medal with the portrait of Dreyfus and a letter of thanks.
After the uprising of the Young Turks and the enforced restoration of the constitution in 1908, Zohrab returned to Istanbul from exile. He welcomed the return of the liberal Prince Sabahaddin and, like the majority of Armenians , supported the new regime. He was one of the founders of the Ottoman Constitutional Club. At its founding event, which was attended by 50,000 people, Zohrab said in Turkish: “Our common religion is freedom”. In the same year he was elected as one of two Istanbul Armenians on the proposal of the Constitutional Club as a member of the Ottoman Parliament. He was also a member of the presidium of the 80-member Armenian National Chamber.
He prepared a report in which he denounced the continuation of the persecution of the Armenians initiated by Sultan Abdülhamid II and proposed an investigative commission made up of Turks and Armenians. This was supposed to cover the dismissal of governors and officers who had participated in attacks, the indictment of murderers and looters, the return of confiscated land to its rightful owners, the possibility of the return of Armenians who had fled to their homeland, an end to the forced payment of money Armenian farmers to Ottoman dignitaries and provide relief to the population suffering from famine. Zohrab was a member of the Liberal Union , but spoke in parliament on behalf of members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Daschnak) who did not speak the Ottoman language sufficiently. He played a key role in the parliamentary committee that drafted the bill to reform the judicial system.
In 1909 he criticized the government for the Adana massacre .
He was arrested by the Ottoman government during the mass arrest of the Armenian intellectuals on "Red Sunday" , April 24, 1915, which initiated the genocide of the Armenians . At the end of July he was brought from Aleppo to Urfa . On August 2, agents of the Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa under Çerkez Ahmet murdered him in a ravine called Şeytan Deresi in the outskirts of Urfa. The murderers were sentenced to death by an Ottoman military court in Damascus.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Tome 1: Revue d'histoire arménienne contemporaine . Ed .: Raymond H. Kévorkian . Paris 1995, p. 254 .
- ^ Raymond Kévorkian: The Armenian Genocide. A Complete History. IB Tauris, London / New York 2011, pp. 53, 55.
- ^ Kévorkian: The Armenian Genocide. 2011, p. 63.
- ^ Kévorkian: The Armenian Genocide. 2011, pp. 65-66.
- ^ Kévorkian: The Armenian Genocide. 2011, p. 67.
- ^ Fuat Dündar: Crime of Numbers. The Role of Statistics in the Armenian Question (1878-1918). Transaction Publishers, 2010, p. 92.
- ^ Kévorkian: The Armenian Genocide. 2011, p. 616.
- ↑ Guenter Lewy : The Armenian Case. The politicization of history. What happened, how it happened, and why it happened. Edition divan. Klagenfurt / Celovec 2009, p. 137.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Zohrab, Krikor |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Zohrap, Grigor |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Armenian lawyer and politician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 26, 1861 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Beşiktaş , Istanbul |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 2, 1915 |
| Place of death | at Urfa |