"Commanded by my Mother's Corpse": Talaat Pasha, or the Revenge Assassination of a Condemned Man. Issue 2 (3rd April 2018) - Garibian, Sévane
ABSTRACT: Talaat Pasha, the chief instigator of the Armenian genocide, died at the hands of an assassin in 1921 in Berlin, where he was living in hiding under a false name. His killer, the survivor and avenger of the genocide, Soghomon Tehlirian, sought to use his own trial as a platform to condemn the acts of the murderer of his people – a murderer who had already been sentenced to death in absentia in his own country by a court martial in Constantinople. This perpetrator now lies in a mausoleum built in memory of the "heroes of the fatherland" on the hill of the Monument of Liberty alongside his erstwhile Minister of War, Enver Pasha, in the very heart of Istanbul. This chapter aims to shed light on the link between the perpetrator's violent end, the treatment of his remains, and the negationist policy which is still in place in Turkey.