I. Introduction: A Judiciary in the Shadow of Defeat

The Armistice of Mudros, signed on 30 October 1918, ended Ottoman participation in the First World War but inaugurated a new era of political and legal upheaval. Allied fleets occupied the Straits and, soon after, the imperial capital itself. The Ottoman state — already fractured by wartime losses, economic collapse, and domestic political rifts — now confronted the additional pressure of foreign demands for “accountability” for wartime atrocities. Chief among these were allegations of crimes committed during the wartime deportations (tehcir) of the Armenian population in 1915–1916.

In this environment, the new government led by Grand Vizier Damat Ferit Paşa sought both to distance itself from the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) and to demonstrate to the victorious Allies that “justice” was being served. The vehicle for this political strategy was the establishment of extraordinary wartime courts-martial — the Divan-ı Harb-i Örfî — empowered to investigate and try former officials on charges ranging from embezzlement to “massacre.” These tribunals were to become the most famous (and controversial) legal proceedings of the Ottoman postwar era.

II. Origins and Structure of the Tribunals

The institutional framework for the Divan-ı Harb-i Örfî was laid within weeks of the armistice. On 23 November 1918, the imperial government created the Mazhar Commission, vested with sweeping powers to collect testimony, subpoena documents, and compile evidence against CUP leaders and provincial officials. This material was fed into newly constituted military tribunals under martial law, first established on 16 December 1918. The Istanbul tribunal, the most prominent, sat at the War Ministry (Harbiye Nezareti), while provincial panels operated in Ankara, Erzincan, and other cities.

The structure of these courts departed significantly from ordinary Ottoman criminal procedure. Judges were appointed directly by the executive, defendants were often tried in absentia, and defense counsel had limited access to prosecution files. Evidence was rarely subjected to cross-examination, and verdicts were issued with unusual speed. The purpose, as the British High Commission observed, was not judicial precision but political demonstration. As Admiral Somerset Gough-Calthorpe reported to London:

“The trials appear to be intended to placate public opinion abroad rather than to establish individual guilt.” (FO 371/4172, 28 June 1919)

III. Early Trials and Political Objectives

The first major case — that of Mehmet Kemal Bey, kaymakam of Boğazlıyan — illustrates the tribunals’ character. Accused of participating in the deportations and deaths of Armenians in Yozgat, Kemal was tried, convicted, and executed within days. The verdict, published in Takvim-i Vekayi No. 3540 (11 April 1919), was framed as a model of accountability, but its procedural defects were glaring: much of the evidence came from unverified witness statements compiled by the Mazhar Commission, and defense arguments were dismissed summarily. British observers noted the speed of the process as evidence of political intent rather than legal deliberation.

Subsequent trials followed a similar pattern. Prominent CUP figures such as Talaat Pasha, Enver Pasha, and Cemal Pasha were convicted in absentia, as were provincial officials accused of “massacres.” Many of these verdicts were based on hearsay evidence or on documents of uncertain provenance, including the controversial Naim-Andonian “telegrams,” whose authenticity was disputed even by contemporary observers (Lewy, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey, pp. 112–115).

The political purpose of these proceedings was clear. As historian Ferudun Ata notes:

“The primary objective was to signal to the Allied powers that the new Ottoman government was prepared to punish those responsible for wartime policies — even if that meant circumventing the norms of due process.” (İşgal İstanbul’unda Tehcir Yargılamaları, p. 87)

IV. British Assessment and the Turn to Malta

Despite their utility as propaganda, the Divan-ı Harb-i Örfî tribunals failed to satisfy the British government’s legal standards. Reports from successive high commissioners in Istanbul were uniformly scathing. Admiral John de Robeck, Gough-Calthorpe’s successor, advised the Foreign Office that the tribunal findings “cannot be held of any account” and should not be relied upon in any future prosecution (FO 371/6504, 3 March 1920). The trials, he argued, were “tainted by political influence and lack of proper evidence.”

Frustrated by these deficiencies, Britain decided to remove key suspects from Ottoman jurisdiction altogether. Beginning in May 1919, dozens of former officials were arrested and deported to Malta. The goal was to build legally admissible cases in a neutral forum using evidence gathered from Ottoman, British, French, and American archives. But after nearly two years of investigation, the British Attorney General concluded in a memorandum dated 29 July 1921 that “no evidence is available which would be sufficient to sustain a charge” (FO 371/6506). All detainees were released, many as part of a prisoner exchange.

V. Historiographical Cautions: Courts as Sources, Not Verdicts

The Divan-ı Harb-i Örfî tribunals have long been cited in Armenian nationalist historiography as judicial confirmation of genocide. Yet a century of scholarship — including the work of Guenter Lewy, Justin McCarthy, and Ferudun Ata — cautions against such simplistic readings. The conditions under which the tribunals operated — foreign occupation, political vendetta, compressed procedures, and unreliable evidence — render their verdicts of limited historical value. Even Britain, the occupying power most invested in prosecuting Ottoman officials, refused to treat them as credible.

As historian Uluç Gürkan argues:

“A tribunal’s verdict is only as reliable as the process that produced it. The Istanbul trials were legal in form but political in substance — a fact demonstrated by the failure of the Malta prosecutions, which found no admissible evidence on which to proceed.” (Malta Yargılamaları ve Delil Sorunu, p. 43)

VI. Conclusion: The Limits of Occupation Justice

The Divan-ı Harb-i Örfî courts-martial were not, in any meaningful sense, impartial instruments of justice. They were the juridical expression of a defeated state’s attempt to appease its conquerors and rewrite its recent past. Their procedural irregularities, political motivations, and evidentiary shortcomings — recognized even by their Allied overseers — render their findings unreliable as historical evidence.

Yet these tribunals also set the stage for what followed. Their discrediting prompted the Ottoman state, under Grand Vizier Ahmet Tevfik Paşa, to attempt a more credible judicial process — one that would prioritize legality over expediency. That experiment, and the reasons for its failure under imperial pressure, are the subject of Part II.