Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) was a militant organization active between 1975 and the 1990s whose stated goal was "to compel the Turkish Government to acknowledge publicly its responsibility for the Armenian genocide in 1915, pay reparations, and cede territory for an Armenian homeland." ASALA itself and other sources described it as a guerilla and armed organization. Some sources, including United States Department of State, as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan listed it as a terrorist organization.
The principal goal of ASALA was to establish a United Armenia that would include the formerly Armenian-inhabited six vilayets of the Ottoman Empire (Western Armenia) and Soviet Armenia. The group sought to claim the area (called Wilsonian Armenia) that was promised to the Armenians by American President Woodrow Wilson in the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, following the Armenian genocide, during which Ottoman Turks murdered 1.5 million Armenians, which Turkey openly denies.
ASALA attacks and assassinations resulted in the deaths of 46 people and 299 injured, mostly individuals serving the Turkish government. The organization has also claimed responsibility for more than 50 bomb attacks. Suffering from internal schisms, the group was relatively inactive in the 1990s, although in 1991 it claimed an unsuccessful attack on the Turkish ambassador to Hungary. ASALA's last and most recent attack took place in Brussels in 1997, where a group of militants claiming to be ASALA bombed the Turkish Embassy in the city. The organization has not engaged in militant activity since then. The group's mottos were "The armed struggle and right political line are the way to Armenia" and "Viva the revolutionary solidarity of oppressed people!"
Origins and history
The presence of Armenians in eastern Anatolia, often called Western Armenia, is documented since the sixth century BCE, almost a millennium prior to the Turkish presence in the area. In 1915 and 1916, the ruling Committee of Union and Progress of the Ottoman Empire systematically deported and exterminated its Armenian population, killing around 1.5 million Armenians. The survivors of the death marches found refuge in other countries in Western Asia, as well as in Western Europe and North America; forces of the Turkish nationalist movement killed or expelled surviving Armenians that tried to return home. The Republic of Turkey denied that any crime had been committed against the Armenian people, actively campaigning against any and all attempts to publicise the events and bring about recognition in the West. It blamed Armenians for instigating the violence and falsely claimed that Armenians had massacred thousands of Turks, prompting the commencement of their deportations.
In 1965, Armenians around the world publicly marked the 50th anniversary and began to campaign for world recognition. As peaceful marches and demonstrations failed to move an intransigent Turkey, the younger generation of Armenians, resentful at the denial by Turkey and the failure by their parents' generation to effect change, sought new approaches to bringing about recognition and reparations.
In 1973, two Turkish diplomats were assassinated in Los Angeles by Kourken Yanigian, an elderly man who survived the Armenian genocide. This event might have been forgotten had it not initiated a chain of events which turned it, and its perpetrator, into a symbol representing the end of the conspiracy of silence which since 1915 had surrounded the Armenian Genocide. ASALA was founded in 1975 (thought to correspond to the 60th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide) in Beirut, Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War by Hagop Hagopian (Harutiun Tagushian) and Kevork Ajemian, a prominent contemporary writer, with the help of sympathetic Palestinians. Another major figure in the establishment of ASALA was Hagop Darakjian, who was a driving force in the earlier operations of the group. Darakjian headed the group for a period of time between 1976 and 1977 when Hagopian was unable to lead due to injuries sustained from his involvement with the Palestinians. At the beginning, ASALA bore the name of "The Prisoner Kurken Yanikian Group". Consisting primarily of Lebanese-born Armenians of the Diaspora (whose parents and/or grandparents were survivors of the genocide), the organization followed a theoretical model based on leftist ideology. ASALA was critical of its political predecessors and Diasporan parties, accusing them of failing to deal with the problems of the Armenian people. The apex of the group's structure was the General Command of the People of Armenia (VAN).