Tahsin Bey

Hasan Tahsin Bey (27 August 1878 – 5 December 1939; surnamed Uzer after 1934) was an Ottoman and later Turkish bureaucrat and politician.

Throughout his career as a politician, Tahsin served as a governor to several Ottoman cities including Aydın, Erzurum, Van and the province of Syria.

He was the son of Ibarahim Ağa and Hatice Hanim, and the childhood friend of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

[9] In December 1934, Hasan Tahsin adopted the last name Uzer through Atatürk's insistence during the introduction of the Surname Law.

[2] Missionary doctor Clarence Ussher, who was stationed in Van, relates in his memoir An American Physician in Turkey: A Narrative of Adventures in Peace and War, that Hasan Tahsin, the "strong and liberal-minded"[10] vali of the province, whose governance was relatively peaceful, was replaced in February 1915 with Cevdet Bey, brother-in-law of the Turkish commander-in-chief, Enver Pasha.

He appealed to the Third Army commandment stationed near Erzurum to stall the deportations, since he believed that the deportees' lands, assets, and lives would be in jeopardy.

Historian Raymond Kévorkian thus notes that Tahsin "joined the ranks of the valis, mutesarifs, and kaymakams who displayed a degree of reluctance to apply the deportation orders because they were perfectly conscious of what these implied for the people involved.

[15] These military personnel, according to Tahsin himself, were under orders of the central government, and directly involved in the "cleansing" of the Armenians around Erzurum.

[16] Tahsin had to comply with the deportation orders, albeit reluctantly, so as to prevent harsher measures from occurring.

Tahsin reportedly told Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, the German vice consul of Erzerum, that he was against the deportations but that he had to "obey" in order to "soften it.

"[16] This was also confirmed by American missionary Robert Stapleton's testimony which says that Tahsin rejected all orders to massacre Armenians, but was "overruled by force majeure.