Talaat Pasha
Legacy

Talaat Pasha is widely considered one of the main architects of the Armenian Genocide by historians. Raphael Lemkin, then a law student who followed Talaat's trial, later coined the term genocide to describe what Talaat master minded against the Armenians and Assyrians, and later what Germany committed against Jews.

In his posthumously published memoirs, he propagated a "national myth – that all Ottoman Armenians were rebels, betrayers, secessionists, and that they were responsible for the massacres that took place in 1915–1916". The memoirs were published many times especially when the Armenian genocide was under discussion.

Biographer Hans-Lukas Kieser states that many Jews engaged in "open propaganda for him and CUP causes" despite Talaat's involvement in genocide, and that this continued even after his death into the late twentieth century.

Talaat Pasha is viewed as a "great statesman, skillful revolutionary, and farsighted founding father" in Turkey, where many schools, streets, and mosques are named after him. In Turkey, Talaat and the rest of the Three Pashas are only criticized for causing the Ottoman Empire's entry into World War I and its subsequent partitioning by the Allies. Mustafa Kemal criticized Talaat and his colleagues for their policies during and immediately prior to the First World War.

Kieser writes in his biography of Talaat in Talaat Pasha: Father of Modern Turkey, Architect of Genocide.

The Ottoman signature political animal held up a distorting mirror to Europe. It showed the worst yet nevertheless real sides of Europe, scaled up. Unconcerned by rules and ethics, arguing that he saw both broken numerous times by the European powers, he began to use the ruthless arms of a comparatively weak actor also wanting empire: extortion and aggression toward weaker ones who could not fight back.
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