Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide - Bogosian Eric - Страница 30

At the offices of the ARF newspaper Jagadamard (Battlefront),3 Tehlirian placed a notice of inquiry listing the names of his mother, his younger brother Avedis (the one he had met in his dream), and his older brothers’ wives and children. After chewing the fat with the editor about what he had seen in the east, Tehlirian was approached by a woman, Yeranuhi Danielian, who introduced herself as a friend of friends, a teacher who lived with her mother nearby. She invited the young soldier to dinner. At least, that is the way the story has been told many times. In fact, Danielian was an Armenian activist and her mother’s home was well known to politically minded Armenians in Constantinople. However it came to pass, the meeting was propitious.

Danielian was a Hnchag, not a Tashnag like Tehlirian. In the world of Armenian politics, the Hnchags were rivals to the Tashnags, espousing a more Marxist revolutionary agenda. The Hnchags, like the Tashnags, embraced violence to draw attention to their cause. The schism between the Hnchags and the Tashnags had worsened after the latter chose to ally themselves with the Committee of Union and Progress in 1908. But both Tashnags and Hnchags had been targeted by the CUP, and now, ten years later, all surviving Armenians were fighting on the same side.

On their way to supper, Tehlirian learned for the first time that Talat, Enver, Djemal, and the leaders of the Special Organization had fled and were hiding out in Europe. The young soldier also learned that the arrests and murders that had begun on April 24, 1915, in Constantinople had eviscerated the Armenian political elite. Armenians needed to take action on many fronts, particularly getting aid to survivors and caring for orphans, and yet with most of the leadership dead, the community was effectively paralyzed. What was worse, many Ottoman leaders and their allies who had planned and executed the destruction of the Armenian community were still at large, in many cases securely tucked away in what was left of the Ottoman bureaucracy. For example, the muhtar of Danielian’s district, Harutiun Megerdichian, an Armenian who had helped compile the lists of names used for the April 24 arrests, was now residing comfortably only a few blocks away.

This last piece of news shocked Tehlirian. He demanded, “Why don’t they take vengeance?”4 Danielian explained that the surviving Armenians of Constantinople no longer had the stomach for violent retribution. Many who had remained hidden during the war had not seen what Tehlirian had seen, had not lived through what he had lived through. These were city folk, accustomed to hanging out in coffeehouses and debating politics, not soldiers trained for action. Anyone with the guts to stand up to the authorities had been arrested and killed. Tehlirian made note of the name: Megerdichian.

While Tehlirian was making connections in Constantinople, peace negotiations had stalled in Paris. In a last-ditch attempt to create headaches for Russia, Britain had recommended that the United States assume a “mandate” over Armenia. “Mandates” and “protectorates,” terms that rang with a benevolent air, were the new way to describe the links between stronger and weaker states. In the post–World War I era, all the major powers would “protect” weaker nations once thought of as “colonies.” But this greater “Armenia” (not to be confused with the tiny Republic of Armenia) was unusual because it had no natural borders, and in fact the Armenians themselves did not constitute a majority in most of the territory considered a potential homeland for them.

Though the president of the United States had sponsored this plan at first, it was an untenable concept. Any mandate would require stationing American troops in Anatolia, an unstable and foreign territory with no port to protect it. The British then went further and suggested that the United States “protect” all of Asia Minor (Turkey). Their motives were transparent. If the United States, under the guiding hand of Woodrow Wilson, occupied the eastern half of Asia Minor, it would in effect create an impregnable wall between Russia and Britain’s significant oil-rich territorial possessions in Persia and Mesopotamia. If Russia were to make any attempt to invade southward, it would be forced to engage the Americans. This was an appealing scenario for British leaders, who thought they could sell such a plan to the idealistic and inexperienced American leadership.

As for the nationalistic Tashnags and Hnchags, although in the past they had never specifically lobbied for an independent territory carved from the Ottoman Empire, a mandate would solve many problems. It even suggested a rebirth of the ancient Armenian kingdom. Also, a mandate would immediately end the ongoing conflict between the tiny embattled Republic of Armenia and what remained of the Turkish troops in the eastern end of the Ottoman Empire. Those hostilities had persisted while talk of a mandate had only served to inflame Turkish nationalism.

Despite Wilson’s seemingly good intentions, the United States had little will to enter into such a deal, let alone enforce it. A mandate for Armenia could not be sold to Congress, where the proposal died, along with Wilson’s celebrated League of Nations and his famous Fourteen Points. The Wilsonian era was at its end. By the fall of 1919, the president could no longer lobby for his agenda. He had suffered a stroke from which he would never fully recover. Moreover, now that the war was technically over, powerful men in the United States like Cleveland Hoadley Dodge, who publicly supported the Armenian cause and had helped raise millions for Near East relief, were now thinking of Turkey not so much as an antagonist than as a future partner. To further complicate matters, the Americans were not allowed to participate directly in the Turkish component of the Paris peace talks because the United States had never officially declared war on the Ottoman Empire.

Likewise, the Armenians had hoped for inclusion in treaty negotiations in Paris. Instead they were barred from the room because the infant Republic of Armenia had not been a party to the war proper. Two Armenian delegates had arrived in Paris nevertheless: Avedis Aharonian and Boghos Nubar, representing the two distinct aspects of the embattled Armenian nation. Nubar was the Armenian son of Egyptian aristocracy and a former member of the Ottoman elite. He represented what remained of the former Armenian Ottoman establishment, in which church and business leaders tried to work with the authorities. He lobbied for the conservative upper crust of the Armenian diaspora. Aharonian was a Tashnag who had been imprisoned by the Russians, and was now an active leader in the new Armenian state. He represented a stubborn nationalism, as well as socialist ideals.

Boghos Nubar complained in a letter to the New York Times:

Our volunteers fought in the French Foreign Legion and covered themselves with glory. In the Legion d’Orient they numbered over 5,000 and made up more than half of the French contingent in Syria and Palestine, which took part in General Allenby’s decisive victory. In the Caucasus, without mentioning the 150,000 Armenians in the Russian Armies, about 50,000 Armenian volunteers under Andranik, Nazarbekoff and others, not only fought for four years for the Entente, but after the breakdown of Russia, they were the only forces in the Caucasus to resist the advance of the Ottoman Empire, whom they held in check until the Armistice was signed. They helped the British in Mesopotamia by preventing the Germano-Turks from attacking elsewhere.5

Two years earlier, as the Bolsheviks abandoned the war, they had upset the international applecart by publicizing the secret Sykes-Picot agreement, which would partition out Turkey’s territories and resources to the predicted “winners,” Britain and France. The plan was amended after the Bolsheviks made it public, because Woodrow Wilson (who had been ignorant of the secret accord) had expected the United States to share in any divvying up of the Ottoman Empire. The Americans entered the war late, but their men and materiel had saved the day, so they felt they had a right to any spoils.