Hafız Mehmet served as a deputy in Trabzon , where an estimated 50,000 Armenians were killed during the Armenian Genocide . Since Trabzon was a coastal city of the Black Sea , the method employed to kill was mainly mass drowning . Hafız Mehmet witnessed such drownings of Armenians off the coast of Ordu , near Trabzon , and provided testimony of his eyewitness accounts during a 21 December 1918 parliamentary session of the Chamber of Deputies : Hafız Mehmet stated that he and other deputies knew beforehand that the Young Turk government had an underlying aim to exterminate the Armenian population . He also said that those tasked to carry out the responsibility were members of the Special Organization , a special task force under the auspices of the imperial Ottoman government , but that these individuals received orders directly from Cemal Azmi , the governor of the Trabzon province . Mehmet testified that he attempted to stop the massacres by trying to speak with Interior Minister Talat Pasha directly but that Talat never responded to his inquiries and never questioned the actions of the politicians in Trabzon
Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide
Hafız Mehmet