Arshavir Shiragian The Legacy

The Legacy: Memoirs of an Armenian Patriot chronicles the extraordinary story of Arshavir Shiragian who embarked on an international man hunt to track down and assassinate the Turkish masterminds of the Armenian Genocide. During World War I, the Ottoman Empire undertook a systematic extermination of its Armenian subjects from their historic homeland. Several of the key perpetrators fled to Europe as 1.5 million Armenians lay dead. In The Legacy, Shiragian recounts how he located and assassinated the men responsible for this crime against humanity. He describes how he tracked down and killed the Grand Vizier, Sayid Halim Pasha, in Rome. A few months later, Shiragian, together with Aram Yerganian, located and shot dead Jemal Azmi Pasha, the governor-general of Trebizond, and Dr. Behaeddin Shakir Bey, the mastermind of the Armenian Genocide.

A masterful account of the assassins who hunted down the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide In 1921, a tightly knit band of killers set out to avenge the deaths of almost one million victims of the Armenian Genocide. They were a humble bunch: an accountant, a life insurance salesman, a newspaper editor, an engineering student, and a diplomat. Together they formed one of the most effective assassination squads in history. They named their operation Nemesis, after the Greek goddess of retribution. The assassins were survivors, men defined by the massive tragedy that had devastated their people. With operatives on three continents, the Nemesis team killed six major Turkish leaders in Berlin, Constantinople, Tiflis, and Rome, only to disband and suddenly disappear. The story of this secret operation has never been fully told, until now. Eric Bogosian goes beyond simply telling the story of this cadre of Armenian assassins by setting the killings in the context of Ottoman and Armenian history, as well as showing in vivid color the era's history, rife with political fighting and massacres. Casting fresh light on one of the great crimes of the twentieth century and one of history's most remarkable acts of vengeance, Bogosian draws upon years of research and newly uncovered evidence. Operation Nemesis is the result--both a riveting read and a profound examination of evil, revenge, and the costs of violence.

An analysis of the Turkish position regarding the Armenian claims of genocide during World War I and the continuing debate over this issue, the author offers an equal examination of each side's historical position. The book asks "what is genocide?" and illustrates that although this is a useful concept to describe such evil events as the Jewish Holocaust in World War II and Rwanda in the 1990s, the term has also been overused, misused, and therefore trivialized by many different groups seeking to demonize their antagonists and win sympathetic approbation for them. The author includes the Armenians in this category because, although as many as 600,000 of them died during World War I, it was neither a premeditated policy perpetrated by the Ottoman Turkish government nor an event unilaterally implemented without cause. Of course, in no way does this excuse the horrible excesses committed by the Turks.

This book explores the genealogy of the concept of 'Medz Yeghern' ('Great Crime'), the Armenian term for the mass murder and ethnic cleansing of the Armenian ethno-religious group in the Ottoman Empire between the years 1915-1923. Widely accepted by historians as one of the classical cases of genocide in the 20th century, ascribing the right definition to the crime has been a source of contention and controversy in international politics. Vartan Matiossian here draws upon extensive research based on Armenian sources, neglected in much of the current historiography, as well as other European languages in order to trace the development of the concepts pertaining to mass killing and genocide of Armenians from the ancient to the modern periods. Beginning with an analysis of the term itself, he shows how the politics of its use evolved as Armenians struggled for international recognition of the crime after 1945, in the face of Turkish protest. Taking a combined historical, philological, literary and political perspective, the book is an insightful exploration of the politics of naming a catastrophic historical event, and the competitive nature of national collective memories.

Seven decades after the destruction of the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire, the Armenian genocide remains largely ignored by governments and forgotten by the world public, even though the annihilation of Armenians was headlined around the world in 1915. Scholarly investigation of the Armenian genocide is just beginning, made more difficult by the tendency of many establishment figures to rationalize the past and the attempt of perpetrator governments and their successors to deny the past.This volume is a pioneering collective attempt to assess and analyze the Armenian genocide from differing perspectives, including history, political science, ethics, religion, literature, and psychiatry. Focusing on the general implications of denial, rationalization, and responsibility, it is particularly important as a precursor to the study of the Holocaust and other genocides.

The first English-language biography of the de facto ruler of the late Ottoman Empire and architect of the Armenian Genocide, Talaat Pasha (1874-1921) led the triumvirate that ruled the late Ottoman Empire during World War I and is arguably the father of modern Turkey. He was also the architect of the Armenian Genocide, which would result in the systematic extermination of more than a million people, and which set the stage for a century that would witness atrocities on a scale never imagined. Here is the first biography in English of the revolutionary figure who not only prepared the way for Ataturk and the founding of the republic in 1923, but who shaped the modern world as well. In this explosive book, Hans-Lukas Kieser provides a mesmerizing portrait of a man who maintained power through a potent blend of the new Turkish ethno-nationalism, the political Islam of former Sultan Abdulhamid II, and a readiness to employ radical "solutions" and violence. From Talaat's role in the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 to his exile from Turkey and assassination--a sensation in Weimar Germany--Kieser restores the Ottoman drama to the heart of world events. He shows how Talaat wielded far more power than previously realized, making him the de facto ruler of the empire. He brings wartime Istanbul vividly to life as a thriving diplomatic hub, and reveals how Talaat's cataclysmic actions would reverberate across the twentieth century. In this major work of scholarship, Kieser tells the story of the brilliant and merciless politician who stood at the twilight of empire and the dawn of the age of genocide.

Turkey’s bid to join the European Union has lent new urgency to the issue of the Armenian Genocide as differing interpretations of the genocide are proving to be a major reason for the delay of the its accession. This book provides vital background information and is a prime source of legal evidence and authentic Turkish eyewitness testimony of the intent and the crime of genocide against the Armenians. After a long and painstaking effort, the authors, one an Armenian, the other a Turk, generally recognized as the foremost experts on the Armenian Genocide, have prepared a new, authoritative translation and detailed analysis of the Takvim-i Vekâyi, the official Ottoman Government record of the Turkish Military Tribunals concerning the crimes committed against the Armenians during World War I. The authors have compiled the documentation of the trial proceedings for the first time in English and situated them within their historical and legal context. These documents show that Wartime Cabinet ministers, Young Turk party leaders, and a number of others inculpated in these crimes were court-martialed by the Turkish Military Tribunals in the years immediately following World War I. Most were found guilty and received sentences ranging from prison with hard labor to death. In remarkable contrast to Nuremberg, the Turkish Military Tribunals were conducted solely on the basis of existing Ottoman domestic penal codes. This substitution of a national for an international criminal court stands in history as a unique initiative of national self-condemnation. This compilation is significantly enhanced by an extensive analysis of the historical background, political nature and legal implications of the criminal prosecution of the twentieth century’s first state-sponsored crime of genocide.