Gabriel Noradunkyan

Gabriel (Kapriel) Efendi Noradunkyan (, ; 6 November 1852 Constantinople - 1936 Paris) was an Ottoman Armenian statesman and bureaucrat. He served as the Minister of Trade in 1908 and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Ottoman Empire from July 22, 1912 to January 23, 1913 during the reign of Mehmed V and the prime ministership of Ahmed Muhtar Pasha and Kâmil Pasha.

Life and career

Gabriel Noradunkyan was born in the Selamsız neighborhood of the Üsküdar district of Constantinople on 6 November 1852. He was the son of Krikor Noradunkyan, a local bread maker to the Imperial Palace. Having received his elementary education at home, Gabriel Noradunkyan attended the local St. Joseph's French High School in the Kadıköy district where he graduated from in 1869.

In 1870, after graduating from Saint Joseph University, Noradunkyan continued his education in Law and Political Science at Sorbonne University in Paris. While in Paris, Noradunkyan also studied at the Collège de France and furthered his studies in Political Science at the Ecole des Sciences Politiques. He returned to Istanbul in 1875 and became a professor of law at the Mekteb-i Hukuk-ı Şahane.

Noradunkyan was an ardent supporter of the establishment of an independent Armenian state in Anatolia. After the Treaty of Lausanne was signed, he moved to Paris, France where he was the head of a variety of Armenian aid organizations. He became the vice-president of the Armenian General Benevolent Union.

He knew Ottoman Turkish, Armenian, Italian, French, and English.