Hacı Topal Osman Ağa (1883 – 2 April 1923) also known as Osman the Lame, was a Turkish officer, a militia leader of the National Forces, a volunteer regiment commander of the Turkish army during the Turkish War of Independence who eventually rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, and was a perpetrator of the Armenian and Pontic genocides.
He was the commander of Mustafa Kemal's special Bodyguard Regiment. He showed usefulness in the War of Independence, but in 1923, when it was decided that he was the instigator of Trabzon Deputy Ali Şükrü Bey's murder, he was detained. He was captured and injured during the clashes, but he was killed by İsmail Hakkı Tekçe.
Early life and Balkan Wars
He was born in Giresun in 1883 and was of Turkish origin, more particularly the Chepni tribe. His father, Feridûnzâde Hacı Mehmed Efendi, was a hazelnut merchant. In his youth he helped with the family business and became a partner in a sawmill. He married and had two sons. Despite his father paying his military service price, he refused to stay and joined the 1912–1913 First Balkan War with his 65 friends. They fought in Çorlu. A Bulgarian cannonball wounded his right kneecap during the war. He refused to have his leg amputated, so the doctors only took out the shrapnel from his knee without anesthesia, causing him to become lame ().
World War I
While still limping, Osman Ağa joined World War I with 93 friends, later joined by 6 prisoners in Trabzon. They charged the Russian army, causing many casualties for the Russians but also the death of 6 friends of Osman Ağa. During the war, he caught typhoid, leading to him returning to Giresun. After recovering, he returned to the war. He joined the 37th Division in Bayburt, which eventually retreated to Harşit. The Russians couldn't go any further. Osman Ağa returned to Giresun to recruit more soldiers and went back to fight with 1500 young volunteers. After the October Revolution took place, the Russians withdrew from the battle, leading the Turks to reconquer Batum. Osman Ağa's battalion was the first one to enter Batum.
Armenian and Greek genocides
Topal Osman was known to have been responsible for massacres against Armenians and Greeks during the Ottoman civil war in the Pontus region where he was stationed during World War I. While in Trabzon, Osman made a name for himself in the spring of 1915 as commander of a squadron of gangs. Osman, along with Ishak Çavuş and Bayıroğlu Hüseyin, was known to have partaken in the drowning and massacres of the local Armenian population. During this time, Osman had also profited from the confiscation of assets and property belonging to the Armenians.
In 1916, Osman and a band of men attacked a Pontian Greek farming village, named Prossori, in Trebizond Vilayet. The men raped village women, killed young men, stole what they wanted from the houses, and beat a priest to death. On threat of death, the surviving villagers had to sign a document saying that the attackers were Armenian.
Osman made similar attacks on Pontian Greeks after the war. In 1920, he and his men imprisoned all the Christian men of Giresun and held them for ransom. They raped the Christian women while their husbands and fathers were imprisoned. Every evening, Osman's team killed five or six prisoners.
In Çarşamba in 1921, Turks rounded up the Christian women. The majority were sent on a death march, while a selected minority of "good-looking women...were being held for the pleasure of the troops under Osman Ağa," according to an American observer serving aboard the USS Overton. Such attacks by Osman and his men were overt and frequent. An American serving aboard the USS Williamson spoke to a local man, who said that "what had happened made him ashamed to be a Turk." In Merzifon that same year, Osman and his men broke into Christians' houses at night, raping, killing, or kidnapping the inhabitants. They also stole what they wanted from the townspeople. Many Christians took shelter in the local French school; Osman's brigands abducted and raped the women and girls, killed the men and boys, and later burned the school. Osman's band abducted many women and girls as they left the town. Some Turkish townspeople took part in the attacks, while those sympathetic to their Christian neighbors found themselves unable to stop the slaughter. Osman later traveled to Trebizond and began robbing houses, but was driven off by a Turkish gangster called Yahya.
Again in 1921, Topal Osman and his men traveled to Giresun and nearby Tirebolu. The same pattern repeated: They killed or deported the majority of local Pontian Greeks, but selected some women and girls for the troops' use.