Monday, June 29, 2015

Review: Operation Nemesis

Published 27 June 2015 in the Winnipeg Free Press:
Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide
By Eric Bogosian
Little, Brown and Company, 376 pages, $31

Reviewed by Mike Stimpson

A sensational murder trial in Germany is at the core of this provocative work of popular history.

On a Berlin street in March 1921, Soghoman Tehlirian killed Mehmet Talat Pasha by shooting the exiled Turkish statesman in the back of the head. There were plenty of witnesses, and Tehlirian freely admitted to the homicide, but a jury acquitted him after a short trial.

The jury sympathized with the 25-year-old defendant, who said he was avenging the 1915 massacre of his parents, siblings and countless other Armenians at the hands of Turkish nationalists led by the man he shot.

What the jury -- indeed, the world -- didn't know at the time was that the slaying of Talat Pasha was part of an international conspiracy to assassinate those behind what would eventually be known as the Armenian genocide of 1915-1916.

Operation Nemesis is the first non-fiction book for Eric Bogosian, an Armenian-American writer and actor best known as the star of the Oliver Stone film Talk Radio (based on a play Bogosian wrote) or as Capt. Ross in a few seasons of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. He set out to write a screenplay about Tehlirian, but instead has produced this moving examination of crimes against humanity and vigilante justice.

The tome has three parts. In Part I, Bogosian traces Turkish-Armenian relations back to early Christianity and explains key events leading up to the "ethnic cleansing" of Christian Armenians by Muslim Turks in the Ottoman Empire when the First World War was young.

The second section is about Tehlirian and the Nemesis conspiracy, named after the Greek goddess of retribution.

Bogosian's skills as a storyteller come out in these middle chapters. Tehlirian is a fleshed-out, three-dimensional character here, an introspective young man so tortured by what might be termed "survivor's guilt" that he is perplexed and disappointed by the cheerfulness of Nemesis teammates in Berlin. His single-minded dedication to the cause makes him a fascinating and sympathetic protagonist.

There's even a love story woven into the narrative. Tehlirian meets a beautiful young Armenian when he's stationed as a soldier in Tbilisi, Georgia, during the war, and reunites with her after the trial. They marry and eventually move to San Francisco, where an Armenian-American millionaire gives the hero a job.

Nemesis operatives assassinated six more former Turkish leaders in Europe in the year or so after the Berlin shooting.

The Tehlirian/Nemesis tale has great movie potential. It's like the story told in Steven Spielberg's Munich, about Israeli operatives getting revenge for slayings committed at the 1972 Summer Olympics.

Unlike the Israelis in Spielberg's film, the Nemesis participants didn't have the resources of a wealthy state (or any state) at their disposal. Also, they were working in a time when international communication was by telegraph.

The book concludes with a few chapters on the emergence of Turkey out of the old Ottoman Empire in the 1920s, Turkey's official denial of the Armenian genocide, and Armenians' continued quest for justice and acknowledgment of the genocide.

The official position of Turkey is that Armenians were not systematically killed and therefore it wasn't genocide. Bogosian contends the Turkish position is hogwash, and has done the research to back up his assessment.

Though he doesn't portray Tehlirian and company as flawless heroes, he clearly sympathizes, saying they "were appealing to a higher, final justice. One that exists somewhere between heaven and earth."

History buffs, especially those who like their history spiced with drama, should appreciate the fine job Bogosian has done in turning an obscure corner of the past into a genuine page-turner.