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May 13 - May 25, 2021
the region [as] Faisal fruitlessly sought a common front with Turkish, Kurdish and Egyptian nationalists.”
The British certainly knew that Talat was hiding out in Germany. Intelligence officer Sir Andrew Ryan had personally demanded that Germany return Talat and his associates to Turkey for trial.
Documents show clearly that, unable to extricate Talat from Germany, British spies kept tabs on him and knew exactly where he was living.
There is definitive proof that assassination of Turkish leaders had been put on the table by the Brits as early as 1919.
What Talat didn’t seem to understand was that although the British may have welcomed any plots
against the Russians, Islamic revolution was their greatest fear.
In fact, with India, Egypt, and Mesopotamia under his command, King George V ruled over more Muslim subjects than any other monarch in the world.
Pan-Turanism was an exciting idea for Turkish nationalists. It was a potential nightmare for the British.
Caught up in Hamlet-like indecision, the conspirators sought some kind of concrete evidence that the man who lived at 4 Hardenbergstrasse was indeed the former leader of Turkey. Apparently they got the proof they needed.
Was it possible that British intelligence tipped off the Tashnags? It would have been very easy for Scotland Yard to let the ARF leadership in Geneva know where Talat was living.
Is it just a coincidence that Tehlirian moved to Hardenbergstrasse only a few days after Herbert met with Talat? What is also interesting is what Herbert does not say. Herbert obsessively kept a daily journal, but he writes nothing on the day Talat is killed.
The day after the assassination he states in an offhand manner, “This morning the papers told me of the murder of Talaat.” This is an intriguing entry, given that Herbert had just spent two full days with the man only three weeks before his death.
Perhaps he was not an out-and-out spy. But Herbert did serve as a model for the fictional character Sandy Arbuthnot in John Buchan’s best-selling spy thriller Greenmantle, published in 1916.
It is not hard to see why British leaders would embrace the idea of working solely with Kemal.
If Talat and Enver could be taken out of the picture (as they were), General Kemal would be the only man with whom Britain would have to negotiate.
Talat believed that he was first in line to lead postwar Turkey.
Talat could handle Enver Pasha, and he could handle Kemal. This put the two leaders on an inevitable collision course—one that was obvious to any serious observer of postwar Turkey.
Only one man had the armies and the strategic know-how to stand in the way of the British grand design for the Middle East. That man was General Mustapha Kemal.
Removing or undermining Talat and Enver would make Kemal happy. And the British wanted oil concessions. Ergo, quid pro quo.
Once he had secured the borders of his state, the new leader of Turkey avoided confrontation with the West. Combining boldness with caution would be a trademark of Mustapha Kemal for his entire career. (Ataturk was so afraid of assassination that he stayed away from Constantinople/Istanbul for decades after his ascension to power in Turkey.
A brilliant pragmatist, Kemal Ataturk knew how far to push the British and when to give in.
A final tantalizing piece in this jigsaw puzzle is that the nation of Iraq was established by the British on March 16, 1921—one day after Talat’s assassination. And as we’ve seen, among Aubrey Herbert’s best friends were Gertrude Bell, Mark Sykes, and T. E. Lawrence—all people who were deeply involved in British
intervention in the Mi...
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For all these reasons, it is interesting that it was around this time that Herbert met with Talat in Germany. Within days after that meeting, someone confirmed Talat’s whereabouts to the Nemesis crew, sealing his fate. A few days later, Talat was
dead.
Glory to him who wielded the avenging thunderbolt! Soghomon Tehlirian exercised holy vengeance. He is the symbol of our Nemesis. —Flyer circulated in the Armenian American communities
A young man had assassinated a world leader. Seven years earlier the Great War had been sparked when a twenty-year-old Serbian, Gavrilo Princip, assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, in late June 1914. Now, another young man in his twenties had killed another important political figure. This time the killer was from Armenia, which, like Serbia, had been a longtime territory of the Ottoman Empire. The powerless were killing the powerful and the world was transfixed.
This trial was not only about Tehlirian and Talat but also about the Armenians and the Turks.
Many outside Germany believed that the Kaiser’s military had aided and abetted the deportations and killings.
This was yet another item to add to Germany’s unenviable résumé as a warmonger and aggressor state.
Germany’s leaders could not afford to let the trial become an examination of their involvement with the murderous Ittihadists because at that very moment, terms that could dramatically affect the Fatherland were being negotiated at the Paris treaty conferences.
Since a trial was unavoidable, it was imperative to put full responsibility onto “the Turk” rather than “the Hun.” This was not simply a matter of reputation; this was about the survival of the German nation. Germany could not move on until the treaties were signed. The trial must not be allowed to make matters worse.
The prosecution needed to paint the Turks with the blackest brush possible.
The sensational killing had made headlines worldwide. A rootless immigrant had murdered a convicted war criminal.
The expensive defense team had been underwritten by a well-endowed fund covering all of the defendant’s needs. Prominent members of the Armenian expat community, having no prior connection to the man, were eager to come to the aid of their new hero.
His actions had been bold, fearless. In the world’s
eyes, Tehlirian was a David standing up to the powerful Turkish Goliath. To many he was more than sympathetic; he was heroic.
The judge, the jury, and the world also knew that about a year earlier, a postwar tribunal in Constantinople had convicted Talat of war crimes and sentenced him to death in absentia.
His experience as a captive of the Turkish criminals was so severe that he had been psychologically damaged for the rest of his life. For the duration of the trial, the judge would treat Tehlirian with kid gloves, fearful of triggering an “epileptic fit.”
The implications of the case before Judge Lehmberg strained the rule of law, went beyond strict legal concepts of guilt and innocence, generating moral, philosophical, even existential questions.
For all these reasons, the trial favored Tehlirian. But there was one catch. If Tehlirian told the “whole truth and nothing but the truth,” he didn’t stand a chance.
And even if Tehlirian was prepared to sacrifice himself on the altar of justice, it was nevertheless crucial that he lie. He had to provide cover for those who had financed and planned the killing—the operatives working in Boston, Syracuse, Paris, Berlin, Geneva, and Constantinople. He had to protect them so that they could plan and execute more
reprisals.
One more factor, invisible to the court, loomed over the proceedings: the leaders of Operation Nemesis wanted to use this trial to reveal to the world what had...
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Tehlirian would be walking a tightrope as he balanced truth and fiction. He had to escape punishment while furthering the cause of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation.
Because Tehlirian was presenting a version of events that had in fact never actually taken place, it was essential that the details dovetail and that no slipups be made. So he avoided specifics, never giving his interrogators an opportunity to uncover a flaw in his story.
No one seemed to notice that this man who supposedly took German classes every day could hardly speak the language.
Often he refused to understand a question or avoided answering it at all. He was rarely challenged.
Turks have explained that the idea of the concentration camps came from the example of the English with the Boers in South Africa.
Preserving the myth of the lone gunman was also a pragmatic decision. The leadership couldn’t risk Tehlirian’s getting caught in another assassination attempt. Such an arrest would undermine his story and endanger other agents in the field. The effectiveness of Nemesis depended on the greater truth remaining hidden.
