The most powerful personality among the founders of the Ottoman Freedom Society in Salonica was a postal official, Talat. He was born in 1874 in Edirne into a family of junior civil servants. His father, an examining magistrate, came from a village in the mountainous south-eastern corner of present-day Bulgaria. Because of his peasant origin, his powerful build and his dark complexion, Talat was sometimes called a gypsy by his opponents.
