The historian of the Ottoman Empire who ventures into reality long enough to examine the activities of Armenian terrorist organizations in the past decade, is immediately struck by the high degree of similarity between the stated aims, the choice of targets, the tactics utilized, and the rhetoric employed by today's Armenian terrorist groups, and those of their nineteenth and early twentieth century counterparts. On the assumption that the study of the past does at times provide some insight into the present, and even the future, I have chosen today to trace some of the “threads of continuity” running throughout the history of armed Armenian political violence. Having done so, and fully cognizant of the risk I run in front of an audience among whom are so many distinguished psychologists, I will then venture into an analysis of some of the factors in Armenian society which serve to ensure that each succeeding generation seems to produce and nurture a new group of terrorists. Specifically, I will examine the treatment accorded each generation of Armenian terrorists by their contemporaries, in an attempt to illustrate the manner in which such individuals are traditionally held up to the next generation’s youth as “Armenian National Heroes.’ Stated differently, they are eulogized in such terms that they cannot help but be perceived by the young as ‘role models.’

In a recent paper, Dr. Gerard Libaridian, the Director of the Zoryan Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, attempted to come to grasp with what he termed: “The Roots of Political Violence in Recent Armenian History” [Libaridian, 1983]. Under the heading of ‘Root Causes’ he wrote:

“In general it seems that political violence and more specifically political assassinations, have come to life in Armenian society as a reaction against the repressive regimes of the Ottoman and Russian Empires before the First World War. Empires which seem to have left no way, no more peaceful way anyway, for the Armenians to achieve any kind of progress. In the case of the Armenians particularly, as opposed to larger entities, such as the Turks themselves, or the Russians themselves, their inability because of the smaller size of the Armenians, their inability to affect the larger events within the Empires of which they were a part, seems to have directed them to a more individual type of action which political assassination is.”

Compare this view with that expressed in a 1977 letter to the New York Times, written by the Armenian National Committee in Boston, where we read:

“Some Armenians have apparently lost faith in the willingness or capacity of the world’s governments to listen to, or act on, peaceful appeals,” [Times, May 30, 1977].

One fact is immediately apparent. If Libaridian is correct in ascribing nineteenth century Armenian political assassination as resulting from the frustration felt by Armenians who were unable to effect change in the Russian and Ottoman Empires from ‘within,’ and the ANC letter is correct in viewing today's assassinations as stemming from the frustration felt by Armenians unable to influence the world’s governments from ‘without,’ it become relatively easy to understand why the level of today’s violence is so great. Viewed differently, whereas the goal of creating an independent Armenian State in Eastern Anatolia, is certainly shared by both past and present Armenian terrorists, the fact that today's terrorists are forced to try to do from ‘outside’ what their nineteenth century counterparts were unable to accomplish from ‘inside,’ points to a higher ‘frustration level’ among the current crop of terrorists. For, after more than a century of violence, the goal their ‘terrorism’ ostensibly addresses, the creation of an independent Armenian state, is further from reality today than it was a hundred years ago. This does not imply, however, that we should complacently view todays acts of terrorism as a ‘last gasp effort.’ To the contrary, yet another ‘thread of continuity’ linking the nineteenth and twentieth century Armenian terrorists is their shared inability to comprehend the realities of the world around them. In the same manner that the nineteenth century Armenian revolutionaries failed to see that the geographically dispersed nature of the Armenian minority of the Ottoman population, preordained that their ‘nationalism’ would not share the success of other Ottoman ethnic minorities and result in the creation of an independent Armenia, carved out of a portion of the Ottoman Empire; so, too, are their twentieth century descendents incapable of grasping the fact that a strong turkey will never accede to the demands of a handful of terrorists. In other words, one factor totally lacking in the makeup of past and present Armenian terrorists, is logic!

 Nor has this message changed today. Only six months ago, ASALA executed two Armenians (one of them an American) in Lebanon who were charged with having served as C.I.A. “informants” in regard to the planned (at)tack on the Istanbul Kapolt Carst, some months earlier, [Spectator, January 7, 1984: p. 16].

The result is a “curtain of fear which makes it extremely difficult for law enforcement authorities of all nations to permeate the ranks of Armenian terrorists. For Armenians know full well what their fate will be if they are labeled as “informers” by the terrorists.

The irony of this situation is, that while Armenian terrorists have throughout the past one hundred years consistently failed to obtain their goals vis-â-vis their enemies, be they the Russian or Ottoman Empires or the Government of the Republic of Turkey, they have succeeded in creating the desired climate of terror among their fellow Armenians, the very community they claim to be working on behalf of. This is the sole success of a century of Armenian terrorism.

While this ‘curtain of fear’ may well account for the almost total silence of any voices within the Armenian communities of the world (with the exception of the Turkish Armenians), to openly speak out against the activities of Armenian terrorists, it does not account for the fact that many prominent Armenians in Western Europe and the United States of America have frequently used the flurry of press interest occasioned by the latest terrorist attack, to make statements which at least tacitly support such activities. As an example of this attitude we may cite the statement of Mr. Kevork Donabedian, the editor of the Armenian Weekly, an ethnic newspaper published in the United States, which was reported in an article in the Christian Science Monitor

“As an Armenian, I never condone terrorism, but there must be a reason behind this. Maybe the terrorism will work. It worked for the Jews. They have Israel, “[Monitor, November 18, 1980].

This attitude which may be typified as the “of course we don’t condone terrorism, but we must understand the deep sense of frustration experienced by these young men as a result of the great historical injustice done to the Armenians by the Turks, etc. etc.”, is repeated in the wake of every assassination, by a variety of Armenian academicians, spokesmen, and religious leaders. What it amounts to is nothing more than a token distancing of oneself from the actual event with the almost ritual “of course we don’t condone terrorism,” followed by a repetition of the same catalogue of charges concerning allegations of “massacres” and “genocide” against the Ottoman Empire of 1914-1915. Be the spokesman an Armenian-American or a French-Armenian, the litany seldom varies. As for the intent, it never varies. It is the justification of the actions of the terrorists, on the grounds that their ancestors were the victims of an historical injustice. Albeit de facto, this represents nothing less than an acceptance of the actions of the terrorists. What such individuals are really saying is: “while I wouldn’t want to hold the gun myself, those who do are performing a useful service on behalf of the ‘Armenian Cause’.”

Lest this indictment sound too harsh, I should now like to turn to a rather detailed ‘case study of the manner in which those few terrorists who have been apprehended, have been treated, and are being treated by the Armenian community as a whole.

This discussion will focus on an examination of two periods of terrorism, that which I will term the ‘Post World War I Round’ and the ‘Current Round,’ which began in 1973 and continues until the present.

Following the end of World War I, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, or the Dashnaks as they are more commonly known, formed a network known as ‘Nemesis’ designed to track down and assassinate former members of the Young Turk Government. Their first victim was the former Minister of the Interior, Talät Pasha, who was gunned down on March 15, 1921, while walking on the street in Berlin. His assassin was an Armenian named Soghomon Tehlirian. Nine months later the former Ottoman Minister of Foreign Affairs, Said Halim Pasha, was assassinated by an Armenian named Arshavir Shirakian in Rome. Barely four months later, this time working with an accomplice named Aram Yerganian, Shirakian struck again. This time his victims were two former Young Turk officials, Bahaeddin Sakir Bey and Cemal Azmi Bey, who were shot in Berlin on April 17, 1922. A few months later Cemal Pasha was gunned down in Tiflis by two Armenians [Walker, 1980: p. 344]. And the killing continued...

Soghoman Tehlirian

Of more import to us here, than the assassinations themselves, was the response then and now of the Armenian community at large to these events. Tehlirian, the assassin of Talât Pasha, was arrested in Berlin and charged with murder. Within days of his arrest, a “Soghomon Tehlirian Defense Fund” was established in Berlin, which rapidly grew as Armenians worldwide, and in particular in the United States, sent their contributions to Berlin. Aided by the legal advice thus purchased, Tehlirian was acquitted after a cursory two day trial, For the next forty years, until his death in San Francisco (1960), Tehlirian was accorded the status of an ‘Armenian National Hero.’ Indeed, the 1968 book by James Nazer entitled, “The First Genocide of the Twentieth Century,” places this ‘title’ beneath his photograph [Nazer, 1968]. The author likewise granted the epitaph of ‘Armenian National Hero’ to Shiragian and Yerganian, two of Tehlirian’s fellow ‘Nemesis’ members.