The Tehcir Law (tehcir in Turkish means "deportation"; official name Sevk ve İskân Kanunu "Dispatchment and Settlement Law") was passed by the Ottoman Parliament on May 27, 1915 and allegedly came into force on June 1, 1915, with publication in Takvim-i Vekayi, the official gazette of the Ottoman State. The temporary law expired on February 8, 1916.

The Tehcir Law was part of the special measures against the Armenian population taken by the Ottoman Empire during World War I. This was coupled by a second set of order given to the "Special Organization" for the elimination of the evacuated population also including the alleged taking care of the vacated properties.

Ottoman archives document that Armenian evacuation started as early as March 2. 1915.

After the expiration of the "Tehcir Law" evacuation and massacres still followed. On 13 September 1915, the Ottoman parliament passed the "Temporary Law of Expropriation and Confiscation," stating that all property, including land, livestock, and homes belonging to Armenians, was to be confiscated by the authorities.

Talaat Pasha (also transliterated as Tala'at Pasha or Talat Pasha (Ottoman Turkish: طلعت پاشا, born Mehmed Talaat (Ottoman Turkish: محمد طلعت, Turkish: Mehmed Talât or Mehmet Talat) (1874–1921) was one of the leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress that controlled the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.

He was born in Edirne Vilayet. He was of Pomak descent. His career in Ottoman politics began by becoming Deputy for Edirne in 1908, then Minister of the Interior, and finally in 1917 Grand Vizier. He fled the empire with Enver Pasha and Djemal Pasha in 1918, and was assassinated in Berlin in 1921 by Soghomon Tehlirian, a survivor of the Armenian Genocide.

Mehmed Talaat, when Interior Minister, ordered on April 24, 1915 the arrest of Armenian leaders in Istanbul, and requested the Tehcir Law of May 1915 that initiated the genocide of the Ottoman Empire's Armenian population.

Mehmed Talaat was born in 1874 in Kırcaali town of Edirne Vilayet into the family of a junior civil servant working for the government of the Ottoman Empire. His father was from a village in the mountainous southeastern corner of present-day Bulgaria. He had a powerful build and a dark complexion. His manners were gruff, which caused him to leave the civil preparatory school without a certificate after a conflict with his teacher. Without earning a degree, he joined the staff of the telegraph company as a postal clerk in Edirne. His salary was not high, so he worked after hours as a Turkish language teacher in the Alliance Israelite School which served the Jewish community of Edirne.