{"id":70733,"date":"2013-06-26T02:14:31","date_gmt":"2013-06-25T23:14:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=70733"},"modified":"2022-11-27T17:02:00","modified_gmt":"2022-11-27T14:02:00","slug":"talaat-killed-the-ottoman-crown-prince-for-opposing-the-armenian-genocide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2013\/06\/26\/talaat-killed-the-ottoman-crown-prince-for-opposing-the-armenian-genocide\/","title":{"rendered":"Talaat Killed the Ottoman Crown Prince For Opposing the Armenian Genocide?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Sassunian<\/div>\n

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It is not often that I cover murder mysteries, but I am making an exception given the unusual circumstances of an Ottoman Crown Prince\u2019s death in 1916 and its possible link to Talaat<\/span> and the Armenian Genocide.<\/div>\n

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The first clue was an article I came across in the April 3, 1921 issue of The Pittsburgh Press, titled: “Patiently Tracked to His Hiding Place and Killed: How the Bloodthirsty Turkish Grand Vizier, Talaat<\/span> Pasha, Who Planned the Murders of a Million Armenians Met His Fate.” This news report was occasioned by Soghomon<\/span> Tehlirian<\/span>\u2019s assassination of Talaat<\/span> on March 15, 1921, in Berlin.<\/div>\n

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One paragraph, in particular, buried in the middle of the lengthy article, contained a shocking revelation: “Perhaps the strangest fact of all in connection with Talaat<\/span>\u2019s career is that he paved his way to this supreme office by murdering the heir to the throne, Crown Prince Youssouf<\/span> Eddine<\/span>, a nephew of the reigning Sultan. The young prince had protested strongly against Talaat<\/span>\u2019s announced policy of exterminating the Armenians. Talaat<\/span>, seeing a prospect of serious opposition, shot the prince like a dog.”<\/div>\n

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To ascertain the veracity of this surprising news item, I conducted a lengthy internet<\/span> search and consulted publications in English, French, Turkish, Spanish, and Armenian, based on the different spellings of the Prince\u2019s name: Youssouf<\/span> Eddine<\/span>, Yusuf<\/span> Izzeddin<\/span>, Yusuf<\/span> Izzettin<\/span>, etc.<\/div>\n

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While most of these sources agree that the Crown Prince died under suspicious circumstances, they present three distinct narratives on how he met his untimely death. There is even an entire Turkish book on this mystery, titled: \u2018Shehzade<\/span> Yusuf<\/span> Izzedin<\/span> olduruldu<\/span> mu, intihar<\/span> mi etti<\/span>?\u2019 [Crown Prince Yusuf<\/span> Izzedin<\/span> was killed or committed suicide?].<\/div>\n

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The first account is the one mentioned by The Pittsburgh Press claiming that the Crown Prince was killed by Talaat<\/span> for opposing the extermination of the Armenian people.<\/div>\n

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The second explanation for the premature death of the Crown Prince is that he committed suicide by slashing his wrists. The Young Turk government issued the following official announcement on Feb. 3, 1916: “In consequence of the malady from which he suffered so long, His Highness the Heir to the throne committed suicide at half-past seven this morning in the bedroom of the harem pavilion of the summer-house at Zindjirly<\/span>, by opening the veins of his left arm.”<\/div>\n

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This formal statement was met with widespread skepticism, giving rise to a third explanation for the Crown Prince\u2019s demise. French Minister of State Yves Guyot<\/span>, in the preface to his book\u2019s English edition, \u2018The Causes and Consequences of the War,\u2019 published in 1916, wrote that those who had read the official communiqu\u00e9<\/span> were convinced that the Young Turks “made the heir to the throne \u2018commit suicide.\u2019 Information from many quarters confirms that suspicion.”<\/div>\n

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Guyot<\/span> and other chroniclers asserted that War Minister Enver<\/span> Pasha had Izzeddin<\/span> killed for opposing the Ottoman alliance with Germany during World War I. “After the bombardment of Odessa by the Turkish fleet he [Izzeddin<\/span>] indicated his disapproval in no uncertain manner. From that moment he was doomed,” wrote the French Minister.<\/div>\n

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Guyot<\/span> also described in detail a secret meeting in 1915 attended by Talaat<\/span>, Enver<\/span> and other Young Turk leaders, during which Enver<\/span> advocated the elimination of the Crown Prince, who was “assassinated on the day before he was to start for Europe,” according to Guyot<\/span>.<\/div>\n

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Bishop Grigoris<\/span> Balakian<\/span>, a prominent survivor of the Armenian Genocide, affirms in his memoirs, \u2018Armenian Golgotha,\u2019 that the Crown Prince was “killed by Enver<\/span> and Talaat<\/span>\u2019s criminal clique\u2026. Enver<\/span> himself killed Yusuf<\/span> Izzedin<\/span> at the imperial farm of Balmomji<\/span>.” Having witnessed the dead bodies of thousands of Turkish soldiers at the Battle of the Dardanelles, the Crown Prince protested to Enver<\/span> that “the Dardanelles is the grave of the Turkish Army.” He was murdered after threatening Enver<\/span> with a pistol.<\/div>\n

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Those who think that the assassination of a Crown Prince is too far-fetched to be credible should realize that such palace intrigues were a common practice during the long history of the Ottoman Empire. All too often, Sultans would orchestrate the murder of scheming heirs, and rival siblings would kill each other to pave the way for their own accession to the throne. In fact, 15 of the 36 reigning Sultans either abdicated (3), were overthrown (7) or were murdered (5).<\/div>\n

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      It is not often that I cover murder mysteries, but I am making an exception given the unusual circumstances of an Ottoman Crown Prince\u2019s death in 1916 and its possible link to Talaat and the Armenian Genocide.     The first clue was an article I came across in the April 3, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4101,"featured_media":70598,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3488],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-harut-sassounian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}