The collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War created a judicial, political, and moral vacuum. In its place emerged a series of tribunals, investigations, and diplomatic maneuvers designed to address the catastrophic violence and dislocation of the war years — most prominently, the suffering of the Ottoman Armenian population during the 1915 deportations (tehcir). Yet these legal experiments were never neutral arenas of justice. They were forged in the crucible of defeat, shaped by foreign occupation, and entangled with the strategic aims of imperial powers and domestic factions alike.
This monograph examines that turbulent legal landscape through two intimately connected episodes: the Divan-ı Harb-i Örfî courts-martial of 1919–1920 and the lesser-known “Second Istanbul Tribunals” of 1920–1922. Together, these tribunals illustrate the dangers of politicized justice — and the methodological challenges they pose to historians seeking to reconstruct the past.
The first tribunals, convened under Grand Vizier Damat Ferit Paşa’s government, were born under the guns of Allied fleets occupying Istanbul and the Straits. They operated under martial law, compiled evidence through politicized commissions, tried many defendants in absentia, and issued verdicts at a pace incompatible with legal deliberation. Even Britain’s own high commissioners — who had every incentive to validate their outcomes — condemned the proceedings as a “farce” and “of no account” (FO 371/4172, 28 June 1919; FO 371/6504, 3 March 1920).
The second phase, initiated under Grand Vizier Ahmet Tevfik Paşa, represented a conscious attempt to correct those defects. New cabinet decrees revisited previous verdicts (MV 252/136), reformed tribunal procedures (DUİT 54/1–11, 23 April 1920), and transferred certain cases from military to civilian jurisdiction (Takvim-i Vekayi, No. 3689, 7 February 1921). These changes aimed to build a more credible judicial framework — one rooted in Ottoman law rather than in the political imperatives of occupation.
Yet these efforts were thwarted by the very powers that had demanded accountability. British authorities, dissatisfied with the Istanbul trials yet unwilling to allow a truly independent Ottoman process, removed dozens of suspects to Malta. There, after exhaustive evidence-gathering from Ottoman, British, and American archives, the Attorney General concluded that “no evidence is available which would be sufficient to sustain a charge” (FO 371/6506, 29 July 1921). Most detainees were quietly released, and the Ottoman courts were left hollowed out, deprived of both defendants and jurisdiction.
This story is not merely a chapter of Ottoman legal history. It is a cautionary tale about the fragility of law under conditions of foreign domination, political vendetta, and ideological crusade. It reminds us that legal processes, no matter how solemn their form, cannot be divorced from the power structures that sustain or subvert them. And it demonstrates the historian’s task: to disentangle judicial rhetoric from archival evidence, to weigh verdicts against procedural reality, and to resist the temptation to treat politically compromised tribunals as unassailable sources of truth.
The following chapters pursue that task in two stages. Part I examines the origins, structure, and operation of the Divan-ı Harb-i Örfî courts, exposing their political character and evidentiary shortcomings. Part II turns to the “Second Tribunals” under Tevfik Paşa, charting their reformist ambitions and documenting how Allied interference curtailed them. Together, they reveal a continuum: from show trials crafted to appease victors, to aborted attempts at legal sovereignty — and, ultimately, to the erasure of justice itself under the shadow of empire.