"Examples of ethnic cleansing can be found at least as far back as biblical times, but the slaughter that was to befall the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 was unprecedented in scope and definition. The intensity of the violence, and the staggering numbers of people murdered in such a short period of time — almost one million people — introduced to the world a new phenomenon: genocide, the attempt to eradicate a people, physically and culturally."
Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide by Armenian-American Hollywood actor and scriptwriter Eric Bogosian tells the true story of the plot to kill the Turkish architects of the Armenian genocide. The first half of the book highlights the atrocities carried out during the XX century's first genocide. This was not the first nor the last time that Turks would attempt to completely eradicate the Armenians and other Christians living in Anatolia, it simply was the one genocidal campaign that wiped out the greatest number of Armenians. The atrocities were not limited to killings, however; there was also the mass rape of women, as well as the forcible seizure of Armenian property by Turkish civilians.
The second half of the book follows the killing of Talaat Pasha, the deposed Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire and one of the masterminds behind the Armenian genocide. Bogosian carries the reader across Turkey to Armenia to Europe, the US and finally to Berlin on the trail of the assassin — Soghomon Tehlirian. Tehlirian was a soldier who heroically fought the Turks while serving in several military campaigns, and who witnessed firsthand the horrors of the genocide carried against his people. The deaths of his family haunted him, and he was recruited by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) to carry out the first mission in Operation Nemesis. Tehlirian's trial in Berlin drew tremendous publicity to the Armenian genocide, and it inspired the later assassinations of other Turks involved in the planning and carrying out fo the genocide.
Although the bulk of the second half of the book is dedicated to Tehlirian's life and mission, there is also an informative section on the other assassinations. All in all, a total of 10 Turks and a handful of Armenian collaborators were killed during Operation Nemesis. Bogosian gives a comprehensive background on the plot, the difficulties and obstacles that had to be overcome in order to carry it out, and the successes and failures of each mission. His narrative talent honed in Hollywood comes through as these missions take on a neo-noir feel making for an excellent read.
The very last chapters are dedicated to the macabre attitude of the modern Turkish republic towards the Armeninan genocide, which is one of total denial and repression. I knew that Turks campaigned vigorously overseas to deny the genocide ever happened, but was shocked to find out that it is illegal to even speak about it in Turkey and that a journalist was murdered in Istanbul in 2007 for simply doing just that. Today, Turkey is a nation that denies the very existence of Armenians, who have a 2,000-yearold civilization and who were the very first nation to adopt Christianity as a state religion.
The reader comes away with the conclusion that Operation Nemesis wasn't so much revenge, as it was justice meted out in its most concise form. The Turks targeted for assassination had been condemned in absentia in courts of justice and were sentenced to death; they thought they had escaped their sentences by sneaking into Europe only to find they were being tracked by the ARF. It is telling that modern day Turkey reveres the men that fell to the ARF's bullets as heroes.
Bonus: Here is a modern version of a traditional Armenian folk song that celebrates Tehlirian's killing of Talaat Pasha: Gini Lic
