Naim Bey

Naim Bey was allegedly an Ottoman official, chief secretary of the Deportation Committee in Aleppo. "The Committee was charged by the Central Government of Turkey with the official responsibly of deporting via Aleppo the uprooted Armenians with the ultimate aim of exterminating them." It is not clear if Naim Bey was an actual or a fictitious person.

Allegations in The Memoirs of Naim Bey

Main article: The Memoirs of Naim Bey

According to A. Andonian, Naim Bey did not flee with the Turkish officials after the arrival of the British at Aleppo, but remained, and in order to calm his deeply disturbed conscience handed to Andonian many official documents under his disposal received from the Central Government as regard the exterminations of the Armenians. Andonian then arranged for publication in book form.

The Memoirs of Naim Bey was first published in London in 1920 with an introduction by Viscount Gladstone.

The telegrams printed in these memoirs state explicitly that the government had decided to annihilate all Armenians living in Turkey.

According to the book there were huge massacres after 1916: at Ras-ul-Ain, the present terminus of the Baghdad Railway, where 70,000 were killed, and at Der-el-Zor, where 200,000 Armenians were slaughtered.

If authentic, the documents provided in Naim Bey's memoirs are clear evidence supporting the claim of Armenian Genocide. Particularly incriminating are the telegrams of the wartime interior minister, Talat Pasha. If authentic, they provide proof that Talat Pasha gave explicit orders to kill all Turkish Armenians – men, women, and children.

One telegram dated September 16, 1915, notes that the Committee on Union and Progress had decided to destroy completely all the Armenians living in Turkey. Those who oppose this order and decision cannot remain on the official staff of the empire. An end must be put to their [the Armenians'] existence, however criminal the measure taken may be, and no regard must be paid to either age or sex nor to conscientious scruples.

Did Naim Bey exist?

Şinasi Orel and Süreyya Yuca released the work The Talaât Pasha "telegrams" : Historical fact or Armenian fiction? in 1983. They concluded that the Andonian documents are forgeries. Some international scholars became convinced by their work, others raised questions about the authenticity of the Andonian documents and again others believed furthermore that the Andonian documents are authentic despite the discrepancies. (For details see the debate about the authenticity in The Memoirs of Naim Bey)

Within their elaboration, Orel and Yuca noted that they could not find the name of Naim Bey neither in various official Ottoman registers nor could they find any reference to such a person. Orel and Yuca concluded that "it seems impossible to make a definite judgement on the question of whether or not Naim Bey was an actual person. If not a fictitious person created by Andonian, he clearly must have been a very low-ranking official, who could not have been in a position to have access to documents of a secret and sensitive nature.

The accounts of German consuls and ambassadors who were on the spot in Anatolia during the years in question also do not give information about a person named Naim Bey. The German consul in Aleppo during the First World War years, Walter Rössler, whom the documents were sent by Johannes Lepsius for reasons of authentication (the documents should be authenticated to be used at the Soghomon Tehlirian-trial), stated that he could not recall the name "Naim Bey". He announced in the same report that he will ask the nurse Beatrice Rohner if she knows a person named Naim Bey. Rössler stated furthermore that consul Hoffmann could also be able to give a reasonable judgment. There is no outcome in the German archives of the announcement that Rössler has made.