According to historian Hans-Lukas Kieser, despite being one of the worst perpetrators, Reshid "is perceived as a patriot and martyr in official Turkish-nationalist diction.

[7] He then pursued a career in state administration that on the 9 October 1909 took him as a Kaymakam to İstanköy and in February 1910 he was promoted to Mutasarrıf in Hums, Tripolis, where he worked until his removal in June 1911.

[1] During his tenure as district governor of Karesi, he had organized the forced deportation of the Ottoman Greeks (Rumlar) in the Aegean, whom he no longer considered to be faithful citizens of the empire.

[16] According to the Venezuelan officer and mercenary Rafael de Nogales, who visited the region in June 1915, Reshid had recently received a three-worded telegram from Talat Pasha to "Burn-Destroy-Kill," an order cited as official government approval of his persecution of the Christian population.

Talat Pasha's concern for these valuables resulted in an investigation into Reshid for embezzlement, which found that he had amassed a personal fortune from the killings.

A doctor, Hyacinth Fardjalian, attested, "I myself saw Rechid Bey arrive at Aleppo by a train bound for Constantinople with 43 boxes of jewellery and two cases of precious stones.

[30] The Ministry of Economy saw to it that his wife Mazlûme Hanım was properly cared for and in 1928 provided shops formerly belonging to deported Armenians to help support her livelihood.

Reshid's family was also given two houses and, in a 1930 decree signed by President Mustafa Kemal and other members of the cabinet, was allocated further Armenian properties.

[31] Even though he is now known as the "Butcher of Diyarbakir",[32][33][34] Reshid claimed, during a conversation with Rafael de Nogales, to bear no legal or moral responsibility for the systematic massacre of Christians in his province, as he only followed orders from the Minister of the Interior, Talat Pasha.

According to De Nogales, "Talat had ordered the slaughter by a circular telegram, if my memory is correct, containing a scant three words: Yak - Vur - Oldur, meaning, 'Burn, demolish, kill'.

The authenticity of that terrible phrase was confirmed by the press of Constantinople after the Armistice with the publication of a certain telegram which the Ottoman commission engaged in investigating the massacres and deportations had discovered among the papers of the Committee of Union and Progress.

"[35] Süleyman Nazif, the former Vali of Mosul, had a very different opinion and testified after the Armistice, "The catastrophic deportations and murders in Diyarbekir were Reshid's work.