Attacks
See also: List of attacks by ASALAAccording to the MIPT website, there had been 84 incidents involving ASALA leaving 46 dead and 299 injured, including the following:
On October 22, 1975, Turkish Ambassador in Austria, Danis Tunaligil was assassinated by three members of ASALA. Two days later, Turkish Ambassador in France, Ismail Erez and his chauffeur were killed. Both ASALA and JCAG claimed responsibility.
The first two ASALA militants, arrested on October 3, 1980, were Alex Yenikomshian and Suzy Mahserejian, who were wounded after the accidental explosion of a bomb in a hotel in Geneva.
During the 1981 Turkish consulate attack in Paris (Van operation) ASALA militants held 56 hostages for fifteen hours, it became the first operation of its kind. Militants demanded to release political prisoners in Turkey including two Armenian clergymen, 5 Turks and 5 Kurds. Coverage of takeover received one of the highest television ratings in France in 1981. Among those who supported the militants during the trial were Henri Verneuil, Mélinée Manouchian, the widow of the French resistance hero, Missak Manouchian, and singer Liz Sarian.
One of the most known attacks of ASALA was Esenboga airport attack on August 7, 1982 in Ankara, when its members targeted 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 attack in its aftermath and appealed to other members of ASALA to stop the violence.
On August 10, 1982, Artin Penik a Turk of Armenian descent, set himself on fire in protest of this attack.
On July 15, 1983, the ASALA carried out another attack at the Orly Airport near Paris, in which 8 people were killed, most of them not being Turks. The attack resulted in a split in ASALA, between those individuals who carried it out, and those who believed the attack to be counter productive. The split resulted in emergence of two groups, the ASALA-Militant led by Hagopian and the 'Revolutionary 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.
Afterwards, French forces promptly arrested those involved. 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 cause "just", and four Armenians arrested for taking hostages at the Turkish Embassy in September 1981 were given light sentences."
Read more about this topic: Armenian Secret Army For The Liberation Of Armenia
Famous quotes containing the word attacks:
“There exists, at the bottom of all abasement and misfortune, a last extreme which rebels and joins battle with the forces of law and respectability in a desperate struggle, waged partly by cunning and partly by violence, at once sick and ferocious, in which it attacks the prevailing social order with the pin-pricks of vice and the hammer-blows of crime.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“We are supposed to be the children of Seth; but Seth is too much of an effete nonentity to deserve ancestral regard. No, we are the sons of Cain, and with violence can be associated the attacks on sound, stone, wood and metal that produced civilisation.”
—Anthony Burgess (b. 1917)
“We are seeing an increasing level of attacks on the “selfishness” of women. There are allegations that all kinds of social ills, from runaway children to the neglected elderly, are due to the fact that women have left their “rightful” place in the home. Such arguments are simplistic and wrongheaded but women are especially vulnerable to the accusation that if society has problems, it’s because women aren’t nurturing enough.”
—Grace Baruch (20th century)