Genocide as Patriotic Work Ethic: A Critical Reading of Mustafa Reşat's Memoirs

Abstract

This article centers on the life of the late Ottoman and early Turkish Republican bureaucrat Mustafa Reşat to investigate how he turned into a genocide technocrat. It examines his career and decisions at critical junctions and depicts him as an outstanding representative of a category of perpetrators who prepare the propitious infrastructure, ground, and climate for such large-scale violence as the Armenian Genocide. By shifting the perspective to the type, scale, and level of perpetrating violence, this paper sheds light on how Mustafa Reşat used his administrative and political knowledge and experience to serve Talat Pasha, who was already organizing the deportation and extermination of Armenians. Drawing upon hitherto unmined sources such as his memoirs, it demonstrates how an ultranationalist and dedicated Ottoman bureaucrat played a pivotal role in determining the main contours of the Turkish state's mindset on the "Armenian and Kurdish Questions".