Behaeddin Shakir


Behaeddin Shakir or Bahaeddin Shakir was an Ottoman politician. He was a founding member of the Committee of Union and Progress and director of the Shuraï-Ummett, a newspaper that supported the Committee. During World War I he was part of the leadership of the Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa. At the end of that war he was detained with other members of the CUP, first by a local Ottoman court martial and then by the British government. He was then sent to Malta pending military trials for crimes against humanity, which never materialized, and was subsequently exchanged by Britain for hostages held by Turkish nationalist forces.

Armenian Genocide

Behaeddin Shakir was a central figure of the Teşkilat-i Mahsusa. and has been described as "one of the architects of the Armenian Genocide". This is sometimes used as proof of a state organized genocide using the tehcir process of the Tehcir law. Halil Berktay says that local administrators objected to Behaeddin Shakir's deportation orders and called for his arrest. Dissidents were usually replaced by hardliners; sometimes twice if the replacement was not pliant.
In the autumn of 1919, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation decided to punish the executors of the Armenian Genocide. Under Operation Nemesis, Aram Yerganian and Arshavir Shirakian were given the task to assassinate Cemal Azmi and Shakir who were both in Berlin. On April 17, 1922, Shirakian and Yerganian encountered Azmi and Shakir walking with their families on Uhlandstrasse street. Shirakian managed to kill Azmi and wound Shakir. Yerganian immediately ran after Shakir and killed him with a shot to his head. The assassins were never detained.