Spectacular Documentation from the Architect: Talaat's Widow Gave a Turkish Historian a Confidential Report Held by Talaat that Shows Over 1 Million Armenians Disappeared

Report of a work by Ara Sarafian

The Gomidas Institute sells the report as a book but also offers a free download which GPN is proud to present here.  Please click here for the download.

In 2011 the Gomidas Institute in London published Talaat Pasha's Report on the Armenian Genocide, 1917. Ara Sarafian: Editor and introduction.


"Talaat Pasha's Report on the Armenian Genocide is the closest official Ottoman view we have of the Armenian Genocide, Sarafian said.  The report was undoubtedly prepared for Talaat Pasha and meant for his private use.  It was not meant for publication and probably only survived because Talaat was assassinated in 1921 and his widow gave the report to a Turkish historian [Bardakchi] who eventually published it."

This work is a serious appraisal of a report found in the possession of Talaat Pasha, the Ottoman Minister of Interior responsible for the Armenian Genocide of 1915.  It concludes that the report was a confidential account of the Armenian Genocide based on Ottoman records.  It presents Talaat's data in detail and includes additional materials such as two illustrative color maps and appendixes.

British-Armenian journalist and director of the London-based Gomidas Institute, Ara Sarafian travelled to Istanbul to launch his book.  During a joint press conference with other writers, Sarafian responded to attacks by Turkish writers about the book.

The history of the spectacular documentation is that the documents were given to a Mr. Bardakci (pronounced bard-AK-chuh) by Mr. Talaat’s widow, Hayriye, before she died in 1983, include lists of population figures. Before 1915, 1,256,000 Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire, according to the documents. The number plunged to 284,157 two years later, Bardakci said.

Bardakci  published the documents in 2008 in a book, The Remaining Documents of Talaat Pasha.  Bardakci has become, rather unwillingly, part of this ferment. The book is a collection of documents and records that once belonged to Mehmed Talat, known as Talaat Pasha, the primary architect of the Armenian deportations.

Bardakci says the killings were "not a Nazi policy or a Holocaust."  "These were very dark times.  It was a very difficult decision.  But deportation was the outcome of some very bloody events.  It was necessary for the government to deport the Armenian population."

A New York Times article comments on Bardakci's statement: "This argument is rejected by most scholars, who believe that the small number of Armenian rebels were not a serious threat to the Ottoman Empire, and that the policy was more the product of the perception that the Armenians, non-Muslims and therefore considered untrustworthy, were a problem population."

Hilmar Kaiser, a historian and expert on the Armenian Genocide, said the records published in the book were conclusive proof from the Ottoman authority itself that it had pursued a calculated policy to eliminate the Armenians. "You have suddenly on one page confirmation of the numbers," he said. "It was like someone hit you over the head with a club.”  Mr. Kaiser said the before and after figures amounted to “a death record.”  “There is no other way of viewing this document,” he said. “You can’t just hide a million people.”