Committee of Union and Progress - Disbandment

Disbandment

Further information: Turkish Courts-Martial of 1919-20

The dissolution of the CUP was achieved through military trials.

As the military position of the Central Powers disintegrated in October 1918, the government resigned. A new Grand Vizier, Ahmed Izzet Pasha, negotiated the Armistice of Mudros at the end of the month. The position of the CUP was now untenable, and its top leaders fled three days later.

British forces occupied various points throughout the Empire, and through their High Commissioner Somerset Calthorpe demanded that those members of the leadership who had not fled be put on trial, a policy also demanded by Part VII of the Treaty of Sèvres formally ending hostilities between the Allies and the Empire. The British carried off 60 Turks thought to be responsible for atrocities to Malta, where trials were planned. The new government obligingly arrested over 100 party and military officials by April 1919 and began a series of trials. These were initially promising, with one district governor, Mehmed Kemal, being hanged on April 10.

Any possibility of a general effort at truth, reconciliation, or democratization was, however, lost when Greece, which had sought to remain neutral through most of World War I, was invited by France, Britain, and the United States to occupy western Anatolia in May 1919. Nationalist leader Mustafa Kemal (with obvious relation to the CUP official, see the 31 March Incident) rallied the Turkish people to resist. Two additional organizers of the genocide were hanged, but while a few others were convicted, none completed their prison terms. The CUP and other Turkish prisoners held on Malta were eventually traded for almost 30 British prisoners held by Nationalist forces, obliging the British to give up their plans for international trials.