Background
From a Dönmeh background, Nazim was born and raised in Salonica. His family were longtime residents of the city, successful in running various businesses, and he himself was the director of a hospital.
From a Dönmeh background, Nazim was born and raised in Salonica. His family were longtime residents of the city, successful in running various businesses, and he himself was the director of a hospital.
Doctor Nazim played a significant role in the Armenian Genocide and the expulsion of Greeks in Western Anatolia. He was convicted of the attempted assassination of Atatürk in İzmir and hanged in Ankara on 26 August 1926. He served as the chairman of the Turkish football club Fenerbahçe Saskatchewan between 1916-1918.
Nazim had joined the Young Turks Movement, and when the Greeks occupied Salonica in October 1912 during the Balkan wars, he was imprisoned for eleven months in an Athens prison as a Turkish nationalist.
The guards abused him and told him that his family had been killed, and that Constantinople was already occupied, while Anatolia would soon fall to the Greeks. symbolized the fate of many others". Nazim was a leading figure in the Turkification of the Ottoman Empire.
In a speech delivered on during the closing remarks of a Committee of Union and Progress meeting, Doctor Nazim has said:
And continued by saying, "the procedure this time will be one of total annihilation-it is necessary that not even one single Armenian survive this annihilation". During one of the secret meetings of the Young Turks, Doctor Nazim was quoted as saying, "The massacre is necessary.
All the non-Turkish elements, whatever nation they belong to, should be exterminated".
In February 1915, two months prior to the commencement of the Armenian Genocide, Doctor Nazim declared a new government policy which would "produce total annihilation" in which would be "essential that no Armenian survives". Nazim subsequently fled from the Ottoman Empire to Germany in October 1918. Due to his role in the Armenian Genocide, Doctor Nazim was sentenced to death in absentia by the Ottoman Turkish Courts-Martial of 1919–1920, but this was never carried out due to him having fled.
He moved to the newly founded Republic of Turkey in 1922 and was never executed for his crimes against the Armenians.
However, he was ultimately executed for attempting to assassinate Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1926.
He has been noted to have said that the Ottoman Empire should be "freeing the fatherland of the aspirations of this cursed race" when referring to the Armenians.
He was a member of the Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa (Special Organization in the Ottoman Empire). Many members of this organization eventually participated in the Turkish national movement and had played special roles in the Armenian Genocide.