Abstract
In the living room of his Besiktas apartment, surrounded by a group of jovial men and women, Harutyun Megerdichian collapsed into his chair, blood streaming from his chest. Taken to the hospital, he died there the next day. Soghmon Tehlirian had fired a gun through the large window facing the street. He had hit his target and put an unexpected end to the dinner party. This paper draws on the Istanbul and the international press, archival material, and personal memoirs to investigate the political reckoning unfolding in Occupied Istanbul. It takes the murder of Megerdichian, an “informant” to the Unionist regime during the war, as a crucial touchstone of postwar debate. It suggests that beyond the trials of the wartime cabinet, Occupied Istanbul became an arena of political reckoning and settling score. The Azerbaijani politician Behbud Khan was shot and killed in front of the Pera Palace Hotel in 1921. The same year, Megerdichian’s assassin, Tehlirian, tracked down and killed Talat in Berlin. This paper explores the various responses and reactions in Occupied Istanbul to the string of political assassinations that followed the armistice.
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