From Beirut to Karabakh

Armed patrol. Asala members on the border with Azerbaijan's Nakhichevan, January 1990

In September 2020, the second war broke out between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the internationally unrecognized Republic of Artsakh, the Armenian name for the Nagorno-Karabakh exclave in Azerbaijan. At that time, the Azerbaijani ambassador to Turkey, Khazar Ibrahim, claimed that Armenia had brought fighters from two terrorist groups into the combat zone in order to conquer further parts of Azerbaijan with their support. These terrorist groups are the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (Asala). There was no evidence of this. Ibrahim's claim was probably propaganda aimed at generating approval among the Turkish public for Azerbaijan's Turkish-backed military action.

To this end, Ibrahim tried to create the impression that Azerbaijan was fighting two of the main enemies of the Turkish state. While the Asala has been largely forgotten in Europe and the USA since it stopped armed struggle in the early 1990s, it is still present in Turkey as an enemy. This is explained not only by the history of this group, but also by the context of the Turkish-Armenian conflict, which dates back to the end of the 19th century. It reached its historical climax in the genocide of the Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire, which began in 1915, and the war that broke out in 1920 between the newly founded Armenian state and Ataturk's Turkey.

The Asala emerged in Beirut in the mid-1970s as a liberation nationalist group and combined Armenian nationalism with Marxism-Leninism.

As a political organization, Asala emerged in the mid-1970s in Beirut, Lebanon, as a liberation nationalist group and combined Armenian nationalism with Marxist-Leninist ideology. Their goal was to free former Armenian settlement areas in the east of what is now Turkey, the so-called Western Armenia, from “Turkish colonialism” and to remind the world of the forgotten Armenian genocide. 1975 marked its 60th anniversary. Ten years earlier, there had been global memorial events for the first time by the Armenian diaspora, which largely consisted of survivors of the genocide and their descendants.

Particularly in California and France, the western centers of the Armenian diaspora, a politicizing generation of young Armenians was influenced by the civil rights movement and the New Left. This generation also addressed the question of what it means to them to be Armenian in light of the deaths of contemporary witnesses to the genocide and the integration of their descendants into the societies of the host countries. A question that some answered with a modernizing and radicalizing nationalism.

Beirut was the third important and perhaps the most important political center of the Armenian diaspora and also of Armenian nationalism until the 1970s. Armenian parties that had formed with the emergence of a national Armenian movement in the Ottoman Empire at the end of the 19th century continued to exist here, above all the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), the so-called Dashnaks. At the same time, Lebanon was also a center of armed, primarily Palestinian, organizations with a Marxist-Leninist program. Among other things, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which led the armed struggle against Israel, had its headquarters here.

The co-founder and leader of Asala, Harutiun Tokaschian, better known as Hagop Agopjan, who was born in Mosul, Iraq, began his political career in the ranks of armed Palestinian groups before founding Asala with their support. This origin may also largely explain the anti-Zionist anti-Semitism that can be found in Asala statements. The group chose to carry out attacks on international representatives of the Turkish state as their form of action. In doing so, it placed itself in the tradition of armed revenge against the perpetrators of the genocide. At the beginning of the 1920s, ARF militants liquidated those responsible for the genocide as part of “Operation Nemesis,” including the former Interior Minister and Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, Mehmed Talât Pasha, in Berlin in 1921.

The group chose to carry out attacks on international representatives of the Turkish state as their form of action. In doing so, it placed itself in the tradition of armed revenge against the perpetrators of the genocide.

The Asala was not the only organization to continue this tradition in the 1970s and 1980s. There were the ARF-affiliated Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide (JCAG), which also carried out attacks on Turkish diplomats between 1975 and 1987, killing 25 people. In general consciousness, however, it was above all the Asala that was identified with Armenian terrorism. In fact, in November 1977, the Asala and JCAG attacks led to a secret meeting between Turkish Foreign Minister İhsan Sabri Çağlayangil and senior representatives of the Armenian diaspora. Çağlayangil wanted to explore whether an agreement was possible that could lead to an end to the attacks. As expected, the first meeting did not produce any results and once again highlighted the rifts that existed between the descendants of the murdered and displaced persons and the representatives of the Turkish state, which denied any responsibility for these crimes. A few weeks later, the Turkish government coalition collapsed. Çağlayangil's successors did not continue efforts to find a negotiated solution. Instead, Turkish secret services hunted down the Asala members. From the perspective of the Turkish right, the Armenian nationalist terrorism of the 1980s and 1990s was revived in the Asala, which is still seen in these circles today as a justification for the violent persecution of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

The fact that the Asala was only able to survive as an armed organization until the end of the 1980s was not only due to the persecution by the Turkish state. The organization largely laid the foundation for its downfall itself. An attack on Paris' Orly Airport in 1983, which claimed eight lives, led to a split in the organization. A group led by the young American Armenian Monte Melkonian, who criticized the attack as a "fascist act," split off. Agopyan subsequently had several “traitors” executed. He himself was shot dead on the street in Athens in 1988; both Turkish secret service agents and Asala militants are considered suspects.

At this point, however, the Asala had already largely broken down. The collapse of the Soviet Union, the emergence of an Armenian nation-state and the simultaneously escalating Karabakh conflict opened up a new field of activity for some of their former fighters. Melkonian and several other Asala militants joined forces fighting in Karabakh in 1991.

Melkonian rose to become one of the most prominent Armenian commanders in the war against Azerbaijan. To this day, there is debate about what responsibility he bears in this role for war crimes committed by Armenian troops. Barely a year before the end of the Karabakh war in 1994, which ended in Azerbaijan's defeat, Melkonian was killed in a battle with Azerbaijani soldiers and was buried as a national hero in Yerevan. In a military cemetery next to Melkonian's resting place there are graves and memorial stones for dozens of other Asala fighters. Asala militants, released after serving long prison sentences in Western Europe and the United States, settled in Armenia over the years.

In the fall of 2023 there were several attacks on Armenia's only synagogue in Yerevan. A Telegram channel that calls itself "Asala Young" claimed responsibility for this - with the historic Asala saying that it had no youth organization, was not present in Armenia and had nothing to do with the attack.

Contrary to the Azerbaijani government's claims, there is no evidence that the Asala is anything more than a circle of grizzled and honored veterans in Yerevan today. However, it is still a reference point not only for the regime in Baku, but also in nationalist Armenian circles. The Asala's anti-Semitism in particular has recently served as a starting point. In the fall of 2023 there were several attacks on Armenia's only synagogue in Yerevan. A Telegram channel that calls itself "Asala Young" claimed responsibility for this, wanting to take action against the "Jewish center" that "spies in the interests of Tel Aviv and Aliyev's Zionist junta" - with the historic Asala saying that it has no youth organization, is not present in Armenia and has nothing to do with the attack.

The reason for this was the war in the Gaza Strip and Israel's military-political cooperation with Azerbaijan under President Ilham Aliyev. The aim of this is to form a counterweight to Iran in the Caspian Sea region; There are more Azeris living in Iran than in Azerbaijan itself. The cooperation also contributed to the modernization of the Azerbaijani army and its current military superiority, which enabled the conquest of the Republic of Artsakh and the expulsion of its residents in 2023.