Introduction

The documents published here contain original records related to the Divan-iHarbiÖrfitrials (Court Martial) that took place between 1919-1922 in Istanbul in which ministerial members of the wartime Cabinet, administrators of the Union and Progress party and other defendants were tried for crimes related to what was referred to at the time as the “tehcirvetaktil” (deportation and killings) of Ottoman Armenian citizens during 1915-7. The documents are from a total of 12 trials and contain indictments, transcripts of hearings and judgments.
In actuality, the number of trials that were heard between 1919-1922 in the Istanbul Divan-iHarbiÖrfi on the Armenian ‘deportation and killings’ reached 62, however information on only 12 of those can be found in the Takvim-iVekayi, or official register. The information available is either in the form of complete transcripts of all the hearings (in the trial against the Union and Progress administrators and the Cabinet Members, for example); or only a select few of some of the hearings and judgments (the trial against the ‘Responsible Secretaries’); or of judgments alone (trials like the Yozgat and Trabzon cases);or of the Padishah approvals of judgments (trials like the Bayburt and Erzincan cases). No information can be gleaned from the Takvim-iVekayi on the remaining 50 trials and whatever information we do have has been obtained from newspaper accounts of that period. Of these 50 trials, 22 of them came to a conclusion, 17 of which ended with the defendants being acquitted. Of the remaining 28, 8 were dismissed for insufficient grounds to justify investigation. There is no information available to tell us what occurred with the other 20 trials.
Detailed information on both the documents published here and all of the trials that took place during that period can be obtained from this book: Vahakn N. Dadrian, Taner Akçam, TehcirveTaktil Divan-iHarb-iÖrfiZabıtları, IttihadveTerakki’ninYargılanması (1919-1922) (Turkish); Vahakn N. Dadrian and Taner Akçam, Judgment in Istanbul, The Armenian Genocide Trials, (Berghahn Books: New York, 2011).
The articles that appear in the book contain detailed information on subjects such as the political environment in which the trials took place, conditions of that time, prison conditions, capital punishment that was meted out and the identities of those executed, along with a list of the trials and how they concluded. My hope is that the documents published here will be a major help in pulling aside the curtain of fog that surrounds those terrible events of the Armenian Genocide of 1915