Talaat Pasha (1874-1921), pictured here in 1917 or 1918. Talaat was one of the “Three Pashas” effectively ruling Turkey during the war, and in 1915 began the organization of the Armenian Genocide in his role as Minister of the Interior.

February 14 1915, Constantinople [Istanbul]–In the course of the fighting in the Caucasus between the Turks and the Russians, the Turks had increasingly begun to view the Armenian population of the area, on both sides of the border, as the enemy. While it is certainly true that the Armenian population in Russia strongly declared for the Czar, the same cannot be said of the large Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire. Nevertheless, the Armenians became an easy group to blame for the defeat at Sarikamish, rather than the poor planning by Enver Pasha and his German advisors.

By February, planning was almost certainly underway for measures of some form to be taken against the Armenians. The exact extent is still unclear; records of the planning of extralegal activities are understandably sketchy. Two separate Armenian sources refer to a meeting of top membership of the Young Turks, held either on February 14 or some other time in the early months of 1915, and one source provides a transcript. It is unclear exactly where the Armenians got a hold of their information, making it impossible to verify; the most likely possibility (if the transcript is factual) is from Ottoman government files in the months after the end of the war when many Young Turk leaders were put on trial.

With these extensive caveats in mind, here are some selections from the supposed minutes of this alleged meeting:

Talaat Pasha: In their own interests, the Germans are today appealing to us for help, but what assurances do we have that, after winning the war, they will not abandon us and stretch out their hand to the Armenians and Greeks? For we must not blind ourselves to the fact that they comprise the vital forces in this country, by virtue of their intelligence and business acumen – indeed, in everything. We, on the other hand, are civil servants or officers.

Ziya Gökalp: We must bear in mind that Greece is always suspect and that it is sooner or later going to go to war against us. By giving the Armenians a good knock on the head, we will, by the same stroke, silence all our adversaries, and the policy we adopted towards the Armenians will become a nightmare for Greece, which obviously will not care to see the more than 2 million Greeks in Turkey suffer the same fate as the Armenians.

Kara Kemal: I grant that both Talaat’s point of view and yours may be right, but we also have to consider the opposite. If, God forbid, we should lose the war, we will simply have helped bring on our own destruction with our own two hands. I know the Armenians much better than you do: if we treat them with a little consideration, by fulfilling one of every five demands that they are likely to make, it is still possible to win them over to our side. Yes, to be safe, let’s organize their deportation, but let’s not massacre a group from which we’ll be able to profit some day, after converting them to Islam…

Dr. Mehmed Nâzim: I’m surprised to hear that some of our comrades are still standing up for the Armenians, when it is precisely the Armenians who are making life unbearable for our army in the border region and preventing us from advancing onto Russian territory. In Russia, besides the regular forces, thousands of volunteers are joining the fight against us, while thousands of Armenian deserters have simply upped and disappeared. We have to attack the Armenian question at the root, by wiping this nation out without a trace. I believe I speak for Beha Bey as well: the two of us can finish this job. You have only to make the decision.

Halil: Don’t forget that this war is a game of poker in which you also have to consider the possibility that you may lose….What is to be gained [in this case] by wiping out the Armenians? The radical elimination of the Armenian question? But isn’t it true that, if the Entente carries the day, Anatolia will fall into Russian hands? I think that, by eliminating the Armenians, we’ll only make the post-war situation of our country harder to bear, and that even harsher conditions may be forced on us as a result.

Ziya Gökalp: …But what if the Armenians are manipulated by the Russians into causing internal disorders and making our task more difficult?

Talaat Pasha: In my capacity as minister of the interior, it is my personal responsibility to use what I consider to be the appropriate means of dealing with the Armenians. It’s true that, so far, they seem to be loyal, but the Dashnaktsutiun can change its tactics tomorrow. When that party was on the point of adjourning its congress in Erzerum, we asked it whether, if we went to war with Russia, it was going to march with us against her. The answer we received did not give us much reason for hope. The Dashnaktsutiun responded categorically that it wasn’t in a position to foment a rebellion against Russia in the Caucasus. As for its role in Turkey, it was to consist in advising the Armenians to enlist in the army and help our government in every way it could. However, the same Dashnaktsutiun was secretly sending volunteers to the Caucasian front under the command of its principal leaders.

While some of these statements ring false (especially Talaat’s seeming praise of the Armenians in his first statement), they generally seem to correspond to the known opinions of each of the men as attested by other, Turkish sources. The consensus appeared to be that the Armenian population posed a serious problem on the Caucasian front; the disagreement was over whether Armenians should only be deported from the border regions, or whether they should be eliminated entirely.

Sources include: Randal Grey, Chronicle of the First World War (Volume I); Raymond Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History.