The Committee of Union and Progress took the reins of the Ottoman government through a coup d'état in 1913 . At the height of World War I and during the final years of the Ottoman Empire , when the ethnic cleansing policies of non-Muslim Greek , Armenian , and Assyrian minorities were underway , Minister of War Enver Pasha issued an edict ( ferman ) on October 6 , 1916 , declaring : Enver Pasha did not change the geographical names belonging to Muslim minorities ( i.e. Arabs and Kurds ) due to the Ottoman government 's role as a Caliphate . His decree inspired many Turkish intellectuals to write in support of such measures . One such intellectual , Hüseyin Avni Alparslan ( 1877 – 1921 ) , a Turkish soldier and author of books about Turkish language and culture , was inspired by the efforts of Enver Pasha , writing in his book '' Trabzon İli Lâz mı ? Türk mü ? '' ( Is the Trabzon province Laz or Turkish ? ) that : It is not known how many geographical names were changed under the ordinance . The ultimate overarching objective behind it failed due to the collapse of the Ottoman government and trials of its leaders before Ottoman and European courts for massacres against ethnic minorities committed in 1915
Greek
Greek genocide
Geographical name changes in Turkey