Mustafa Arif Deymer (1874–1954) was a Turkish politician who served both the

Ottoman government The Ottoman Empire developed over the years as a despotism with the Sultan as the supreme ruler of a centralized government that had an effective control of its provinces, officials and inhabitants. Wealth and rank could be inherited but were j ...

and the

Turkish Republic Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...

. He served as the Ottoman interior minister from 1918 to 1919 and as minister of education in 1921. During the Turkish Republican era, he became

governor A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...

Kırklareli Province Kırklareli Province ( tr, ) is a Provinces of Turkey, province in northwestern Turkey on the west coast of the Black Sea. The province neighbours Bulgaria to the north along a long border. It borders the province of Edirne to the west and the ...

. He is also noted for providing important

testimony In law and in religion, testimony is a solemn attestation as to the truth of a matter. Etymology The words "testimony" and "testify" both derive from the Latin word ''testis'', referring to the notion of a disinterested third-party witness. La ...

in the aftermath of the

Armenian genocide The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was ...

Life and career

Mustafa Arif was born in

Thessaloniki Thessaloniki (; el, Θεσσαλονίκη, , also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece, with over one million inhabitants in its Thessaloniki metropolitan area, metropolitan area, and the capi ...

, Greece in 1874. He studied civil service. He subsequently served as a civil servant in his hometown of Thessaloniki. He was then appointed as the Ottoman interior minister from 1918 to 1919 after

Talaat Pasha Mehmed Talaat (1 September 187415 March 1921), commonly known as Talaat Pasha or Talat Pasha,; tr, Talat Paşa, links=no was an Ottoman politician and convicted war criminal of the late Ottoman Empire who served as its leader from 1913 t ...

resigned from his post.
Profile at

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical c ...

On 21 October 1920, Mustafa Arif Bey was appointed as the head of the

Council of State A Council of State is a governmental body in a country, or a subdivision of a country, with a function that varies by jurisdiction. It may be the formal name for the cabinet or it may refer to a non-executive advisory body associated with a head o ...

. He served this post until 19 August 1921. Thereafter, in 1921, he became the minister of education. In 1924, after the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Arif served on the commission board of the

Turkish Red Crescent Turkish Red Crescent (Turkish: ''Türk Kızılay'' (official) or ''Kızılay'' (for short)) is the largest humanitarian organization in Turkey and is part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. The organization was founded i ...

during negotiations over the

population exchange between Greece and Turkey The 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey ( el, Ἡ Ἀνταλλαγή, I Antallagí, ota, مبادله, Mübâdele, tr, Mübadele) stemmed from the "Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations" signed at ...

. On 27 July 1930, Mustafa Arif Deymer became governor of Kırklareli province, and served this position until 13 April 1932.

Armenian genocide testimony

The

was the Ottoman government's systematic extermination of its minority Armenian subjects inside their historic homeland, which lies within the territory constituting the present-day Republic of Turkey. Mustafa Arif served as Interior Minister in 1918, succeeding Talat Pasha after the latter stepped down. Arif established a governmental commission that examined the period of the massacres. On March 18, 1919, the commission concluded that 800,000 Armenians had perished during these events. The figure became reputable after other Turkish historians such as

Yusuf Hikmet Bayur Hikmet Bayur (also known as Yusuf Hikmet Bayur, 1891–1980) was a Turkish politician. He was born in Istanbul (then known as Constantinople by the Western World). He was the grandson of Kâmil Pasha, one of the Grand Viziers of the Ottoman Empire ...

used the figure in their research and writing. Mustafa Arif testified as follows regarding the Armenian genocide: He also stated: "The atrocities committed against the Armenians reduced our country to a gigantic slaughterhouse." Mustafa Arif concluded that "Nobody asserts that it did not happen", and that the responsibility for the massacres belonged solely to the government of the time.

References

{{authority control Politicians from Thessaloniki 1874 births Witnesses of the Armenian genocide 1954 deaths Political people from the Ottoman Empire Turkish politicians

Life and career

Armenian genocide testimony

See also

References