Young Turks - Aftermath and Legacy

Aftermath and Legacy

The founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, is quoted on the front page of the August 1, 1926 The Los Angeles Examiner as saying:

These left-overs from the former Young Turk Party, who should have been made to account for the millions of our Christian subjects who were ruthlessly driven en masse, from their homes and massacred, have been restive under the Republican rule ... They have hitherto lived on plunder, robbery and bribery and become inimical to any idea, or suggestion to enlist in useful labor and earn their living by the honest sweat of their brow ... Under the cloak of the opposition party, this element, who forced our country into the Great War against the will of the people, who caused the shedding of rivers of blood of the Turkish youth to satisfy the criminal ambition of Enver Pasha, has, in a cowardly fashion, intrigued against my life, as well as the lives of the members of my cabinet.

As to the fate of the Three Pashas, during Operation Nemesis, Soghomon Tehlirian, whose family was killed in the Armenian genocide, assassinated the exiled Talat in Berlin and was subsequently acquitted after a German jury. Djemal was similarly killed by Stepan Dzaghikian, Bedros Der Boghosian and Ardashes Kevorkian for "crimes against humanity". in Tbilisi, Georgia. Enver was killed in fighting against the Red Army near Baldzhuan in Tajikistan (then Turkistan)