Talaat would be caught sending a telegram saying "Things are going well. I'll soon reach my goal." With two of his friends from the post office, he was charged with tampering with the official telegraph and arrested in 1893. He claimed that the message in question was to his girlfriend. The Jewish girl came forward to defend him. In 1896 he was imprisoned for having been part of a Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) cell together with his brother-in-law Ismail Yürükoğlu. Sentenced to two years in jail, he was pardoned but exiled to Selanik (Thessaloniki), where he became a postal clerk in July 1898.