Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide - Bogosian Eric - Страница 37

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Or not. As individuals, these men were avenging the deaths of hundreds of thousands, but there was also an institutional aspect to their actions. Both the ARF and the CUP were underground organizations with no compunctions about deploying violence in order to achieve their goals. They were neither democratic nor entirely legal, dependent on secrecy and hierarchy for smooth operations. As a result, each recognized in the opposing party a shared code of violence and clandestine methodology. Raymond Kevorkian, the venerable historian of the Armenian Genocide, put it this way when he spoke with me in Paris: “You must understand. The Tashnags and the Ittihad, they were like lovers who now hated one another.”¹³

Tehlirian was different. He had no taste for violence, nor did he want to deal in payback. Rather, he was an idealist who had volunteered to fight in a patriotic war and been transformed by the experience. After the disappearance of his family, the fight had become nothing less than an existential mission. Without it, he feared he might lose his sanity. This deep resolution, founded on the sanctity of his objectives, made his discipline absolute. He constrained himself, through illness and depression, to focus on his objective, no matter what he had to do to reach it. Manifesting such singleness of purpose, Tehlirian himself became exactly what the Tashnag organization wanted: a virtual weapon that would get the job done.

Though he had no aptitude for languages, he did the best he could to learn German. He familiarized himself with the Stadtplan of Berlin, memorizing the location and layout of all major train stations. He ignored his own poor health. Finally, he forced himself to remain as patient as a stone. Tehlirian understood that allowing his passions to get the better of him could endanger the ultimate goal of killing the man who had murdered his mother. Tehlirian removed every aspect of himself that in any way hampered his mission. His personal needs were the last thing on his mind. Unlike Garo, Natali, Shiragian, and the others, Tehlirian seems to have been almost egoless. In this respect, Tehlirian was unique.

The hunt began in earnest while Berlin, wrapped in a damp, penetrating cold, was relatively quiet. During the stakeout one day, the Nemesis team noticed a striking woman wrapped in a black astrakhan coat entering Azmi’s shop. Hazor wandered inside and eavesdropped as she conversed with Azmi. All he could make out were her words “Yes, if he agrees.” As the mysterious woman departed the shop, Tehlirian insisted on following her despite the group’s misgivings. She stopped at number 165 Wilhelmstrasse. Beyond a snow-encrusted garden door, the woman in black ascended the stone steps, produced a key, and entered the building. This house became a new spot to watch.

It was dusk by the time Tehlirian returned to the Tiergarten Hotel. He found Hazor with two new “friends”: Vaza and Haigo. The young men traded notes, and it was revealed for the first time that Dr. Behaeddin Shakir, the notorious former head of the Special Organization, was also in Berlin. Perhaps Enver was here as well? Was it possible that the woman Tehlirian had followed was Enver’s wife? The two locations were kept under surveillance for a full two weeks, but the woman was not seen again. Servants came and went; nothing more. The lead had gone nowhere.

Enver Pasha’s presence in Berlin was significant because Enver represented the wing of the Ittihad that was seeking solidarity with Islamic rebels in Central Asia. This subgroup of Turkish nationalists envisioned a pan-Turkic or even a fabulous “pan-Turanist” empire that would include those “homeland” regions of Central Asia where Turkic peoples represented a majority. “Pan-Turania” was a nationalist dream, a chain of revived Turkic/Muslim khanates extending from the Mediterranean to China. In the pan-Turanist scenario, Turkey would link up with Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan to establish an Islamic/Turkic empire running along the entire southern flank of Russia.

The pan-Turanist ambition was a variant of the “pan-Islamic” dream in which every Muslim-majority nation would unify to form a vast multinational Islamic empire. That scenario had never been popular with Turkish leaders because they viewed Arabs as subordinates and adversaries, not confederates. Still, Islamic unity in either a pan-Turanist or pan-Islamist scenario was appealing to the former CUP leadership. First of all, such ideas would be attractive to Muslims all over Europe and Asia, building a populist base. Second, Islamic or Turkic revolution threatened British and Russian interests, providing Enver and his cronies leverage when dealing with the major powers.

Talat and Enver disagreed in their opinion of these pan-Islamic and pan-Turkic alliances. Enver wanted the pan-Turkist movement to be coordinated from Moscow, where he had begun to set up a base of operations. Enver had ingratiated himself with the Soviet leadership, claiming that he could be the man to resolve the friction with their Muslim territories. He had even attended the Soviet-sponsored First Congress of Peoples of the East in Baku in September 1920, claiming to represent the Islamic nations of the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya). Enver’s courting of the Soviets was in line with the Turkish nationalists who wanted to preserve good relations with this powerful neighbor. Kemal’s forces fighting in Anatolia desperately needed the hard cash and weapons the Soviets were, for the time being, supplying.

Talat, by contrast, never trusted Lenin or Stalin as true allies. As Talat would explain in an interview only days before his death, “The Turk and the Bolshevik [have] nothing in common but a temporary alliance, a convenience from the point of view of Russia that answered a need from the point of view of Turkey.”¹⁴ Talat envisioned a completely different scenario. Unbeknownst to Enver, he was testing the waters for an alliance with the British, a relationship that Enver would never have agreed to.

Because Talat did not see an upside to a partnership with Moscow, he wanted any secret pan-Turkic organization to be based in Berlin. Once things settled down in the heartland of Turkey proper, Talat hoped to return home and join Mustapha Kemal, planning to share in the supervision of the reconstituted nation. As far as the exiled CUP leadership was concerned, the war with Great Britain and France was not over. There was much unfinished business, particularly in the form of any peace treaties. Talat, Enver, and their cohorts understood that they should bide their time until these treaties were settled in a way that was favorable to Turkey. After that, it would be safe to return to Turkey and continue business as usual.

But Talat and Enver had to wait for Mustapha Kemal to decide it was time to allow them reentry into the territories he controlled. (They could not return via Constantinople because they had been condemned to death in absentia and would be arrested by the British authorities there.) To Talat’s consternation, Kemal was biding his time. He explained to his fellow Ittihadists that before the former CUP leaders could return, a beachhead for the new Republic of Turkey had to be firmly established. Grudgingly, Talat, Enver, and the others busied themselves beyond the borders, trying to build unity among the non-Ottoman Soviet Islamic/Turkic republics.

In other words, Talat, Enver, and the former CUP leadership needed Mustapha Kemal, but with every passing month of conflict, Kemal needed them less. If he succeeded in chasing the Greeks, French, and British out of Asia Minor, he wouldn’t need them at all. “The Young Turks, anxious for restoration of their power, were the rivals of Kemal, and he prudently kept them from gaining control of his movement.”¹⁵

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