Talat Pasha Black Book

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This article is on the handwritten notes by the grand vizier Talat Pasha, as disclosed by the journalist Murat Bardakçı. For other meanings of the term, see Black Book. For the other "Black Book" in the Turkish context, the novel by Orhan Pamuk, see The Black Book (1990 novel).

Talat Pasha Black Book refers to the handwritten notes taken in a personal notebook by Talat Pasha, the Ottoman Minister of Interior (later grand vizier) and disclosed in 2005 by the Turkish journalist Murat Bardakçı. The notes consists of 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].