Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide - Bogosian Eric - Страница 71

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ASALA members had received training and inspiration from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Beirut. In the PLO, ASALA saw a model for terrorism as a political tool: a disenfranchised people who had no political muscle would make their case through violence. Neither ASALA nor the Justice Commandos ever hid the fact that Operation Nemesis was an important model for their groups.¹⁷ Yanikian had set things in motion. In two decades, ASALA, the Justice Commandos, and other groups committed literally hundreds of “actions.”

In time, ASALA’s best-known leader, Hagop Hagopian (probably an alias), would break from the PLO. Hagopian then allied himself with the notorious Abu Nidal, founder of Fatah, and ASALA would become even more ruthless and sinister. (Nidal’s trademark was random killing.) Alienated members finally assassinated Hagopian in April 1988, whereupon ASALA disintegrated. By this time the vast majority of Armenians were disgusted by the killings of innocent people, and many spoke out clearly against the actions of ASALA and other terrorist groups. The violence had made the world more aware of the genocide, but murdering those who had had no direct hand in the tragedy was sickening.

Bombings and killings within Turkey strained Turkish-American relations, too. Turkey felt that the Western governments were not making a genuine effort to apprehend the culprits. A U.S.-Turkish Committee on Armenian Terrorism was formed in 1982 with an eye toward legislation to curtail the operations.¹⁸ But ASALA and the Justice Commandos had fallen into disarray on their own, and by the early 1990s, they were no longer active. Nonetheless, many members of the Turkish diplomatic corps had become hardened by the killing of their colleagues. Most people in Turkey had forgotten the crimes of their elders, but a new generation of Turkish officials would never forget the Armenian terror actions of the 1970s and 1980s. An indifference toward Armenians turned into a deep animosity, stiffening a resolve never to admit to the “so-called genocide.”

In the early hours of November 3, 1996, on a dark and desolate stretch of the Istanbul-Izmir highway near Susurluk, a speeding Mercedes rammed into a gasoline tanker truck and exploded into a ball of fire. Three bodies were pulled from the scorched wreck: a former deputy head of the Istanbul Police Department; a fugitive hit man and heroin trafficker; and his “beauty queen” lover. The sole survivor was Sedat Bucak, a member of the Turkish parliament and a Kurdish tribal landlord who had formed his own militia to fight Kurdish rebels.

False passports, pistols equipped with silencers, and machine guns were found in the trunk of the wreck. The hit man, Abdullah Catli, was not only a drug runner but also a former leader of the ultranationalist “Grey Wolves.” (“Grey Wolf” is a term of affection synonymous with Kemal Ataturk.) For years he had been wanted by the authorities for his involvement in the 1978 murder of seven leftist university students. On Catli’s body was found a false diplomatic passport as well as a gun license signed by the Turkish interior minister, Mehmet Agar.

In size, contemporary Turkey and Armenia are fractions of their former realms, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Armenia. Today, the two republics share a closed border.

After it was learned that Agar had met with the group just prior to the accident, he was forced to resign. The “Susurluk Incident” ignited an uproar in Turkey because it definitively revealed for the first time links between the government, terrorist organizations, and drug traffickers. It exposed a long-suspected underlying “Deep State” (Gizli Devlet) that secretly ran Turkey behind an appealing facade of official democracy. It seemed that an invisible network made up of politicians, military officers, and intelligence operatives was collaborating with criminal organizations to form the true leadership of the world’s “only Islamic democracy.” After Susurluk, the center of power shifted in Turkey, and in subsequent elections an Islamic-oriented government took over.

That was twenty years ago, and the political landscape of Turkey remains in flux. As governmental factions struggle with one another, it is very clear that Turkey is not a democracy in the sense that the West understands the term. Censorship and cronyism, torture and corruption are the rule, not the exception.¹⁹ “Islamist” leaders have not yet given way to “jihadist” leaders in Istanbul, because to embrace religious groups too closely would be the wrong move in “secular” Turkey. The veneration of Ataturk remains supreme, while Kemalism as a political philosophy is seen to be in decline under the current leadership.

Perhaps the “Deep State” is losing its grip as well. The trial beginning in 2008 involving the so-called Ergenekon conspiracy (a supposed secularist clandestine group accused of plotting against the Turkish government) may or may not be directed at a genuine organization. Many believe that the Ergenekon arrests, in which hundreds, including journalists, military officers, and opposition lawmakers, have been taken into custody and charged with crimes against the state, are targeting a paper tiger for the purposes of undermining enemies of the current regime.²⁰

In January 2007, Hrant Dink, the Armenian Turkish editor of Agos, an Armenian journal published in Istanbul, was gunned down as he stepped outside his office. His killer was Ogun Samast, a seventeen-year-old Turk with links to the nationalist, pro-Turanist organizations Great Union Party and the Grey Wolves. Dink was a man of tremendous integrity who risked his life by writing editorial appeals for reconciliation between Armenians and Turks. His reasonableness and courage became an irritant to radical elements in Turkey. His murder came after a year of death threats. After Samast’s arrest, photographs of the killer were posted online. In one photo he is flanked by genial Turkish policemen posing before a Turkish flag.

The Turkish public responded to Dink’s killing with a massive protest. At Dink’s funeral, two hundred thousand mourners crowded the streets of Istanbul carrying signs stating simply “We Are All Hrant Dink” and “We Are All Armenians.” In September 2010, the European Court of Human Rights concluded that the Turkish government had violated Dink’s right to life by not trying to prevent his murder and, in addition, taking no concrete action to punish the police for their inaction. Despite parliamentary, judicial, and civil efforts to further expose this apparent action by the “Deep State” network, there have been no significant consequences as a result of these investigations.

As I write these last words of this book, I realize that in the end it is impossible to communicate the immensity of the crime I’ve come to know through my research. Though this effort is a tapestry of history and politics, of leaders and soldiers and assassins, the core of what this book is really about is almost unfathomable. As I checked my last edits of the manuscript and rechecked some of my source materials, particularly Raymond Kevorkian’s massive work on the genocide, Wolfgang Gust’s collection of memoirs, and Verjine Svazlian’s collection of eyewitness testimony, I was overwhelmed by the vastness and sheer brutality of the crime.

Genocide is a word. Like the words “love” or “God,” it seems to be comprehensible. But in fact it cannot be grasped, it cannot be taken in. It is the unspeakable made verbal. Yet it is very much a part of our lives. Every week we read in the newspaper about violence in the form of massacres and terror attacks. And for this reason, we think we understand the meaning of the word when we hear of genocide. But war or environmental calamity has the quality of circumstances out of control. Genocide is different. What happened to the Armenian population in Turkey during World War I was intentional. Men made decisions, men made plans, and those men executed those plans.

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