Mehmed Kemâl
Mehmed Kemâl Bey (born March 1, 1884 in Beirut ; died April 10, 1919 in Istanbul ) was an Ottoman administrator and teacher.
Life
Mehmed Kemâl attended school in Antalya and Izmir . He then studied at Mülkiye , today's Ankara University . In 1909 he completed his training as a Kaymakam (district administrator). He then worked in Rhodes as a middle school teacher and was in Doyran in 1911, in Gebze in 1912 , in Karamürsel in 1913 and from 1915 Kaymakam of the Boğazlıyan district ( kaza ) . In this capacity he participated in the genocide of the Armenians in his area of office. There was considerable resistance to the massacres among the Turkish population in the region. In 1916 he was employed as a kaymakam in a district of Damascus . In October of the same year he was working in an authority in İzmit . In 1919 he was sentenced to death by a military tribunal and executed. At his trial before the Yozgat Tribunal on March 29, 1919, he declared that he was acting as a civil servant and that he was doing his job as a civil servant and that he did not need to have a guilty conscience. The main stress point was the written testimony of a local mufti . Because of the massacres and looting, he was sentenced to death under Article 170/171 of the Ottoman Military Penal Code. On April 10, 1919, the sentence was carried out on Beyazit Square in Istanbul.
Aftermath
According to his legacy, Mehmed Kemâl was buried in the Kuşdili cemetery in Istanbul's Kadıköy district . On October 10, 1922, he was declared a "National Martyr" ( Ottoman şehid-i millî , Turkish Millî Şehit ) by a decree of the Grand National Assembly . On the basis of a special law from 1926, the Turkish state gave his family two apartments from the confiscated property of deported Armenians . In 1973 his grave was renovated through an initiative of the Mülkiye Alumni Association and Mehmed Kemâl was given the title “Martyr of the Nation”. His grave was declared a "memorial of honor".
Individual evidence
- ^ Q&A: Armenian genocide dispute. Retrieved March 10, 2014 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kemâl, Mehmed |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Mehmed Kemâl Bey (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Mass murderer in the genocide of the Armenians |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 1, 1884 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Beirut |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 10, 1919 |
| Place of death | Istanbul , Ottoman Empire |