Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia Հայաստանի ազատագրութեան հայ գաղտնի բանակ |
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![]() Flag of the ASALA |
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Operational | 1975[1] to 1986[2] |
Led by | Hagop Hagopian Monte Melkonian Hagop Tarakchian[3] |
Objectives | "To compel the Turkish Government to acknowledge publicly its responsibility for the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915, pay reparations, and cede territory for an Armenian homeland."[1] |
Active region(s) | Turkey, United States, Lebanon, Western Europe, Armenia, and Middle East. |
Ideology | Marxism-Leninism, Greater Armenia |
Major actions | Assassination of a number of Turkish diplomats and their relatives. Bombing of Turkish, French and Swiss targets for varying motives. Several minor bombing attacks against US airline offices in Western Europe. |
Notable attacks | Armed attack and bombing of the Esenboğa International Airport, Ankara.[4] Bombing of Turkish airline counter at Orly Airport (Paris).[1] |
Status | Dissolved |
The Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) was a militant[5] Marxist-Leninist organization, that operated from 1975 to 1986[2] and was responsible for the assassination of many Turkish diplomats and their families. The group also operated under other names such as The Orly Group and the 3 October Organization.[6] The intention of ASALA was purportedly "to compel the Turkish Government to acknowledge publicly its alleged responsibility for the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915, pay reparations, and cede territory for an Armenian homeland".[1] ASALA was listed as a terrorist organization by the United States in 1980s.[7]
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ASALA was founded in 1975 in Beirut, Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War by Hagop Hagopian (Harutiun Tagushian) and Kevork Ajemian,[8] a prominent contemporary writer, with the help of sympathetic Palestinians.[6] Consisting primarily of Lebanese-born Armenians of the Diaspora (whose parents and/or grandparents were survivors of the Armenian Genocide), the organization followed a theoretical model based on leftist ideology.[9] The group's activities were primarily assassinations of Turkish diplomats and politicians in Western Europe, in the United States and the Middle East.[6] Their first acknowledged killing was the assassination of the Turkish diplomat, Daniş Tunalıgil, in Vienna on October 22, 1975. A failed attack in Geneva on October 3, 1980, in which two Armenian militants were injured resulted in a new nickname for the group, the 3 October Organization. The ASALA's eight point manifesto was published in 1981.
ASALA, trained in the Beirut camps of Palestine Liberation Organization, is the best known of the guerilla groups responsible for assassinations of at least 36 Turkish diplomats.[10]
According to MIPT website, there had been 84 incidents involving ASALA leaving 46 people dead, and 299 people injured including the following:[3]
The ASALA's most criticized attack was on August 7, 1982 in Ankara at the Esenboğa International Airport, when its members targeted both diplomats and non-diplomat civilians for the first time. Two militants opened fire in a crowded passenger waiting room. One of the shooters took more than 20 hostages while the second was apprehended by police. Altogether, nine people died and 82 were injured. The arrested militant Levon Ekmekjian condemned the ASALA in the aftermath of the attack and appealed to other members to leave and stop the violence. The Esenboga attack also precipitated a split in the group over tactics, between the Nationalists (ASALA-Militant) led by Hagopian and the 'Popular Movement' (ASALA-Mouvement Révolutionnaire) led by Monte Melkonian. While Melkonian's faction insisted on attacks strictly against Turkish officials and the Turkish government, Hagopian's group disregarded the losses of unintended victims and regularly executed dissenting members. On August 10, 1982, Artin Penik a Turk of Armenian descent, set himself on fire in protest of this attack.[13][14][15][16]
Prominent Armenian poet Silva Kaputikyan in 1983 wrote "Its raining my sonny" poem dedicated to the memory of ASALA member Ekmekjian.[17]
On July 15, 1983, the ASALA carried out another attack at the Orly Airport near Paris, in which 8 people were killed. The attack resulted in a split in ASALA, between those individuals who carried it out, called the "Orly Group," and those who believed the attack to be counter productive.[18] Afterwards, French forces promptly arrested those involved.[19] Moreover, this attack eliminated the suspected secret agreement that the French socialist government made with ASALA, in which the government would allow ASALA to use France as a base of operations in exchange for refraining from launching attacks on French soil. Belief in this suspected agreement was further bolstered after "Interior Minister Gaston Defferre called [ASALA's] cause "just," and four Armenians arrested for taking hostages at the Turkish Embassy in September 1981 were given light sentences."[20]
With the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 the group lost much of its organization and support. Sympathetic Palestinian organizations including the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) withdrew their support and passed materials to the French intelligence services in 1983, detailing ASALA operatives. The last attack committed by the ASALA was the attack on the bullet-proof limousine carrying the Turkish Ambassador to Budapest (December 19, 1991). The ambassador was not injured in the attack, which was claimed by ASALA in Paris.[12]
ASALA's founder Hagop Hagopian was assassinated on a sidewalk in an affluent neighborhood in Athens, Greece on April 28, 1988. His assailants, Hovsep A., Vartan G., Garabed K., and Albert "Sultan-Minas", were all former ASALA members and lieutenants of Hagopian. His body was riddled with several bullets while he was walking with two women at 4:30 in the morning.[21] Tarakchian died of cancer in 1980. Assassinations of former members continued in Armenia into the late 1990s.[22]
Continuous attacks prompted Turkey to accuse Cyprus, Greece, Syria, Lebanon, and the Soviet Union of provoking or possibly funding the ASALA.[6] Although they publicly distanced themselves from the ASALA,[6] Turkey's Armenian community came under attack by Turkish nationalists in reaction to the group's actions. This became apparent after the assassination of Ahmet Benler on October 12, 1979 by Armenian militants in the Hague. The reaction to the attack led to the bombing of the church of the Armenian Apostolic Patriarchate in Istanbul on October 19 in retaliation.[23]
According to Tessa Hofmann, Turkish officials frequently used the accusation of collaboration with the ASALA and foreign Armenian circles to incriminate extreme left-wing Turkish opposition groups.[23]
After the ASALA terrorist attack against the Esenboğa International Airport in August 1982 the then President of Turkey Kenan Evren issued a decree for the elimination of ASALA. The task was given to the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (Turkish: Millî İstihbarat Teşkilâtı, MİT) Foreign Operations Department. The capture of Levon Ekmekjian and the revelations he made to the MİT gave important insides on how ASALA was structured and operated. In the early Spring of 1983 two teams of Turkish intelligence operatives and members of the “Special Warfare Department” were sent to France and Lebanon.[24]
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