Operation Nemesis

March 16, 2015
Fans of Bogosian’s one-man shows (Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead) will recognize his provocative sensibility in this book’s very first paragraph, in which he recalls being told by his grandfather, “If you ever meet
a Turk, kill him.” Bogosian doesn’t linger on this advice, given to him when he was four: he presents it as an alarming but not unusual consequence of the Armenian genocide of 1915, which his grandfather escaped (but other family members did not). From there, Bogosian drops the memoir and launches into an engrossing, heavily-researched account of Operation Nemesis, the code name for an international campaign, carried out by Armenian survivors, to assassinate the various Turkish heads of state who orchestrated the genocide. The details read like a Hollywood epic, but Bogosian plays it straight, letting the facts tell the story without sensationalizing or romanticizing. Though the author is well known as a playwright, actor, and novelist (Perforated Heart), this is his first work of nonfiction, and the book’s scope is ambitious: it also covers centuries of Armenian history and the rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire. For those familiar with this terrain, Bogosian has uncovered a little-known aspect of it in fascinating detail. For everyone else, this is a highly readable introduction.

February 1, 2015
Actor, playwright and novelist Bogosian (Perforated Heart, 2009, etc.) retells the horrors of the Turkish attempt to eradicate the Armenians: the century's first ethnic cleansing.The Ottoman Empire was primarily Muslim but mostly tolerated Jews and the Christian Armenians. However, they were treated as second-class citizens, required to pay extra taxes, never eligible for public office and banned from intermarriage. In an attempt to modernize, a group of "Young Turks" allied with the Armenian Revolutionary Federation in 1908 to overthrow the empire. Though it was a bloodless coup, it soon became apparent that the Young Turks had no need for the Armenians. The country was ruled by the Committee of Union and Progress, a government as ruthless and cruel as the old sultan. The CUP was led by a triumvirate of Djemal Pasha, Talaat Pasha and Enver Pasha; by 1913, any semblance of democracy was lost. Then, in late April 1915, prominent Armenian leaders were rounded up and disappeared. This was the beginning of the genocide about which Hitler said, "[W]ho remembers the Armenians?" The killings, massacres, torture and deportations of Armenians went on through World War I. War-crime trials by the occupying British were ineffectual. Bogosian explores the life of survivor Soghomon Tehlirian, a young man who was fixated on revenge for the deaths of his people. In 1919, the ARF approved a "special mission" called Nemesis to find and execute the guilty parties, and Tehlirian was the perfect man for their mission. He found Pasha in Berlin and killed him, then stood trial, thereby bringing the world's attention to the fate of the Armenians. The author gives a clear, concise view of Turkey's history in the 20th century, and it's not pretty. Difficult reading, but an extremely well-written political statement about Turkey-not just then, but as it is now.

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March 15, 2015

This year marks the centennial of nearly one million Armenians being deported and killed by the leadership of the fading Ottoman empire. Playwright and novelist Bogosian (Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll) relates the horrors imposed on the Armenian community as a backdrop to another story: Operation Nemesis, the postwar effort by Armenian militants to assassinate former Ottoman leaders responsible for the tragedy. Driven by revenge and the desire to publicize the atrocities, U.S.-based Armenian radicals organized assassinations throughout Europe. Bogosian profiles young Soghomon Tehlirian, a willing recruit seeking to avenge the death of his family, who succeeded in the 1919 shooting of Talat Enver, one of the overseers of the massacres. The author tells the story of the killing with color and verve; it culminates in a trial in Berlin during which Tehlirian conveyed the guilt of the Ottoman leaders so effectively that he justified his act and was found not guilty. VERDICT While Bogosian imbues the saga of Tehlirian and subsequent murders with suspense and excitement, much of the book is uneven, a carelessly constructed collection of anecdotes and snippets of Turkish and Armenian development. Bogosian is more of a storyteller than a historian; his fascinating account loses some of its power in the episodic presentation of the long and often tragic history of the Armenian people.--Elizabeth Hayford, formerly with Associated Coll. of the Midwest, Evanston, IL

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