Murat Bardakçı
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Murat Bardakçı is a Turkish journalist with particular focus on Ottoman history and Turkish music history, as well as a regular contributor as a columnist in the newspaper Sabah presently.
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[edit] Biography
Bardakçı was born in 1955 in İstanbul. An economist by training, he was trained in the Turkish classical music by some of the most-reputed contemporary masters, in lute and singing at first, with his primary interests directed more towards theory and musical history later. He published several researches on musical history (notably the biographies of the composers Maragalı Abdülkadir and Refik Fersan) and with the start of a journalistic career in Hürriyet, expanded the scope of his writings on Ottoman and general Islamic history, with marked emphasis on the 19th and the early-20th centuries.
Two of his books on the end of the Ottoman dynasty, "Son Osmanlılar" (The last Ottomans) and Şahbaba, a biography of Mehmed VI Vahideddin, became best-sellers in Turkey, the former also having been carried over to the screen in the form a TV serial.
[edit] Murat Bardakçı and Talat Pasha Black Book
Murat Bardakçı is also the revealer of Talat Pasha Black Book, Ottoman Minister of Interior (later grand vizier) Talat Pasha's recording of relocations of Turkish-Muslim and Armenian Ottoman citizens in World War I conditions. Published by Bardakçı for the first time in 2005,[1] they were handed over to him by Talat Pasha's widow, Hayriye Talat Bafralı, along with a batch of other documents comprising letters he had sent her and telegrammes exchanged between Committee of Union and Progress members. In April 2006, Bardakçı re-edited the black book in full, adding parts that were missing in the first publication. The 1915-1916 resettlements cited in Talat Pasha Black Book of 702,905 Turks from regions under threat of occupation by Russian forces and of 924,158 Armenians in accordance with 27 May 1915 Tehcir Law are qualified as exposing the genocide by one Armenian source which goes on to recall the clauses of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide.[2] Nor do the cited figures fall in discordance with a 29 February 1916 letter sent to the US Secretary of State from the embassy in İstanbul reporting upon the number of Armenian immigrants (for Syria only).[3]
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Turkish paper denies genocide (unsigned reproduction of Murat Bardakçı's 27 April 2005 article in Hürriyet. Caucasian Knot, Moscow-based news agency (28 April 2005).
- ^ 'Black Books' expose genocide. Ashot Ter-Grigorian, Caucasian Knot (28 April 2005).
- ^ Despatch dated 8 February 1916 from the American consul in Aleppo reporting on the number of Armenian immigrants in his district and their needs. Gomidas Institute (29 February 1916). Funds were liberated on the basis of the numbers provided.
