By Harut Sassounian / Publisher, The California Courier
It
is not often that I cover murder mysteries, but I am making an exception given
the unusual circumstances of an Ottoman Crown Prince's 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, 1921 issue of The Pittsburgh Press, titled: "Patiently Tracked to His
Hiding Place and Killed: How the Bloodthirsty Turkish Grand Vizier, Talaat
Pasha, Who Planned the Murders of a Million Armenians Met His Fate." This
news report was occasioned by Soghomon Tehlirian's assassination of Talaat on
March 15, 1921, in Berlin.
- 27 -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's career is that he paved his
way to this supreme office by murdering the heir to the throne, Crown Prince
Youssouf Eddine, a nephew of the reigning Sultan. The young prince had
protested strongly against Talaat's announced policy of exterminating the
Armenians. Talaat, seeing a prospect of serious opposition, shot the prince
like a dog."
To ascertain the veracity of this surprising news item, I
conducted a lengthy internet search and consulted publications in English,
French, Turkish, Spanish, and Armenian, based on the different spellings of the
Prince's name: Youssouf Eddine, Yusuf Izzeddin, Yusuf Izzettin, etc. 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: 'Shehzade Yusuf Izzedin olduruldu mu, intihar mi
etti?' [Crown Prince Yusuf Izzedin was killed or committed suicide?].
The first account is the one mentioned by The Pittsburgh
Press claiming that the Crown Prince was killed by Talaat for opposing the
extermination of the Armenian people.
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 halfpast seven this morning in the bedroom
of the harem pavilion of the summer-house at Zindjirly, by opening the veins of
his left arm."
This formal statement was met with widespread skepticism,
giving rise to a third explanation for the Crown Prince's demise. French
Minister of State Yves Guyot, in the preface to his book's English edition,
'The Causes and Consequences of the War,' published in 1916, wrote that those
who had read the official communiqué were convinced that the Young Turks "made
the heir to the throne 'commit suicide.' Information from many quarters
confirms that suspicion."
Guyot and other chroniclers asserted that War Minister
Enver Pasha had Izzeddin killed for opposing the Ottoman alliance with Germany
during World War I. "After the bombardment of Odessa by the Turkish fleet
he [Izzeddin] indicated his disapproval in no uncertain manner. From that
moment he was doomed," wrote the French Minister.
Guyot also described in detail a secret meeting in 1915
attended by Talaat, Enver and other Young Turk leaders, during which Enver
advocated the elimination of the Crown Prince, who was "assassinated on
the day before he was to start for Europe," according to Guyot.
Bishop Grigoris Balakian, a prominent survivor of the
Armenian Genocide, affirms in his memoirs, 'Armenian Golgotha,' that the Crown
Prince was "killed by Enver and Talaat's criminal clique…. Enver himself
killed Yusuf Izzedin at the imperial farm of Balmomji." Having witnessed
the dead bodies of thousands of Turkish soldiers at the
Battle of the Dardanelles, the Crown Prince protested to
Enver that "the Dardanelles is the grave of the Turkish Army." He was
murdered after threatening Enver with a pistol.
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).
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