Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 101 - Soghomon Tehlirian: The Luger of Justice

Episode Date: April 27, 2020

The Ottoman Empire, fueled by Turkish Nationalism, launched a genocidal campaign of violence against their own Armenian subjects. This is the story of how the Armenian people struck back. Sources: Bogosian, Eric. Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide. 2015. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, and with me, as always, is Nick. What's up, Nick? Great. Our essential worker nick every day every no matter what you do uh as as pointless as it is every day in uniform you're somehow essential yeah yeah thank you for your service saving lives man every day one swept motor pool at a time uh so you might not know this uh well actually before we get there we've never been topical before in our lives like at any anniversary

i think the closest we came was recently our napoleon series because it's like in the winter kind of uh we have attempted to remember certain historical dates to have an episode that's topical on them. We have failed every time in over 100 episodes now. Today is the day we pull it off. Fly the banners. Fly them. It's the podcast version of a participation trophy.

It's like the fucking Bart Simpson cake. At least you tried. So this might come as a shock to you but i am very armenian i know you do have reindeer nose syndrome yeah uh and so uh on this month is armenian genocide remembrance day and we will not is it yeah yeah i will not be talking about the armenian genocide because there's other podcasts how is this topical so because uh so imagine uh you've seen inglorious bastards right great movie you know how hitler gets machine gunned by jews fantastic that happened in real life for the armenians really we killed turkish hitler have you talked to quentin tarantino uh i mean him

have differing opinions on feet and i don't think we'd get along too well also he's a huge piece of shit but and this is that story so play fucking system of a down cue up the Armenian national anthem pour yourself some coffee isn't that the Armenian national anthem anyway

yeah it's just chop suey I like Ariel's Ariel's is pretty good chop suey too have you ever heard the name Sogaman Tetlerian my anthem anyway? Yeah, it's just Chop Suey. I like Ariel's. Ariel's is pretty good. Chop Suey too. Have you ever heard the name Sogaman Tetlerian? No. He lives in your, well, lived in your city of LA. Really? Yeah, and there's a monument to him there to this day.

What? Yeah, he is something of an Armenian national martyr. There's Armenians in LA? Oh man, let me tell you a little bit about your state. Where the fuck are they at? Everywhere. Fuck, there's more armenians in the greater la area than there is in armenia really yeah like whenever you want to go back to la whenever anybody and like mostly in glendale but a ton in la uh like whenever anybody ran into me like detroit's like should you be in california like really yeah uh like the joke is glendale is

part of greater armenia because there there's so many Armenians there. I've been to Glendale. Yeah, like there's signs in Armenian and stuff like that. I think you guys are just hiding from society. Well, we learned our lesson what happened last time we stuck out. So, you know. But before we get to talking about Sogaman Tetlerian and Operation Nemesis, we have to talk a little bit about Armenian history.

Because a background on a lot of this stuff is pretty important. To make a several thousand year long story kind of short, the Armenian people are some of the most consistently fucked over people in human history. Their noses, their hair. If there was a podium of fucked over people, the Jewish people are definitely number one. We're probably pulling in number two and the Kurds are probably number three. I don't know. Recent history.

Kurds are on the podium. They're definitely number one, but like historically, I mean, I might be a little bit biased because the Kurds definitely assisted in the Armenian genocide. So like it sucks. Don't do that.

But if there's a podium of fucked over groups of people and that'd probably be it um armenian food is good armenian food's fucking delicious that's why the turks tried to kill us all so they could steal our hummus bastards uh now what could be feasibly be considered uh as armenian people and culture or at least a collection of tribes that would become them first popped up around the bronze age, pretty much ever since and stretching all the way up until the 1990s and the fall of the Soviet union, the Armenian people have pretty much been under one control of an M one

empire or another, almost continuously throughout history. They very rarely have been able to rule themselves. And there's actually, if you consider historical greater Armenia and the six village, it's, it still isn't. Kind of like Northern Ireland is controlled by the Brits.

There is six villages or provinces called the Six Villiets that are still part of Turkey. And that is like our Northern Ireland, except nobody cares about us. Is there any sweet, like how there is Irish music? Is there any sweet Armenian? Armenian is Irish music is there any sweet Armenian revolutionary music absolutely and it is bad as in good no I don't know if you've ever listened to like caucus music

it's just move it down so you remember watching Borat yeah when he's like you never heard of Gorgie Buczek kind of like that. It sounds a lot like that. That might be offensive towards Armenians.

I'm Armenian, I can say it. Our music's terrible. Our music sucks, man. Maybe it's because I was born in Michigan, but I have absolutely no appreciation for traditional Armenian music.

Why, because you weren't born in Glendale or L.A.? Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's actually, the second this episode gets published, there's going to be a convoy from Glendale to LA. Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's actually, the second this episode gets published, there's going to be a convoy from Glendale to Washington to kill me. I'll be in that convoy.

They're probably rolling with System of Doubt because even they're like, yeah, our music sucks, we know, but only we can see it. I like System of Doubt. And actually, Serge Tonkin did a lot of solid revolutionary work in the recent Armenian revolution, bloodless revolution that happened there. So he's pretty cool uh kim kardashian go

fuck herself though uh not that that's yeah i forgot not that's it's on topic or anything i just feel like i need to say that because this is this is the episode where i get all the armenian all the armenian weight off my chest and just like dog out people i don't like uh they like acknowledge their armen? Oh, definitely. When it's convenient. So, no? So, like, never. I mean, they do it from time to time.

I think mostly, I don't know what they're trying to be except Instagram stars or something. I don't know. If I learned one thing, it's that if this podcast fails, I'm going to have to try to sell a sex tape and start a new career over so i don't know how that would work not good i would actually go into debt i would owe money yes everybody would just like i i need five dollars for watching that please i always make my the joke where oh i'm gonna be a dancer but i'm gonna end up owing money i'm gonna work

on the side of the street i'll end up you on the side. You're going to try to be an exotic dancer, so I'm just going to punch you in the face because you offend them. Now, there were brief spurts of independence, even sometimes like their own kingdoms and dynasties that would stretch like 100 or so years. But hey, it would never really last. Though being on the bridge between the East and the West, so to speak, as Armenia is,

that meant Armenians got to enjoy many flavors of different flavors, like the Baskin Robbins of shitty imperialism. So the East and the West. This included various Hellenistic Greek states, various Persian states, Parthian, Sassanids, and Romans. And after all this, they found Jesus by becoming the first Christian state in the world in 301. So, like, cool, I guess. In between getting stabbed by various different sword styles, like, Jesus is cool! Why isn't he stopping this?

It turned out Jesus couldn't save the Armenian people from the tides of history. Shotty carpentry. Yeah, it's because he built tables with three legs. I think there's a Kids in the Hall skit. I don't remember. Did you ever watch Kids in the Hall? No. So it canadian it was almost like a canadian saturday night live but it was funny uh and they i think they had a skit about how jesus was a shitty carpenter and he's like see look at this table and i have like three legs and it's just like fell

and falling over yeah uh they were eventually conquered by the byzantines the muslim caliphates iranians and the seljuk turks at the peakiphates, Iranians, and the Seljuk Turks. At the peak of the Ottoman-Persian War, the Armenian capital of Yerevan changed hands no less than 14 times in 200 years. Jesus. Not a lot of continuity. No. I mean, the capital is one of the more continuously inhabited places, the longest continually inhabited place in the world. And I have to think it's also been

conquered probably the most not good luck you guys are used to change that's uh not really um it's weird that uh armenia for even though every single one of these empires were in their own shape way tried to destroy armenian culture it still exists like the the, the Soviets, but mostly the Russians after Stalin, really tried to destroy it. Lenin allowed Armenians to have their own culture and language because he was a racist and he thought Armenians were an elevated race.

So like, take that one with a grain of salt. We get to keep our language for a really shitty reason. We're not going to look too hard at that. And then when Stalin took over, he believed in Russian ch chauvinism which was you know russian dominance of the soviet union so he destroyed armenian churches he uh outlawed armenian language uh and and taught russian in schools to try to drown it out easy to take out an armenian house when it's made out of uh uh excuse me sir i'll have you know by then they were mostly brick uh but i think

your house is currently made of grape leaves i hope so i am a giant dolma just waiting to be eaten by the celestial gods uh now armenia began to split in half between the east and the west when they were torn apart by imperial powers around them like biggie and tupac yes you know the main problem between East and West Armenia isn't the fact they speak a completely different language now. It's the rap wars. Something that I should point out continues to this day, like I told you about in the Six Provinces.

The Armenians controlled the Western half while the Iranians held on to the East. Though eventually the Russian Empire swooped in and kicked the Iranians out, taking the east for themselves in 1829. In the west, the Ottomans controlled the Armenians much the same way as it controlled most of its

subjects. In the way of the most successful empires throughout history, if that's a concept that really truly exists, they pretty much allowed the armenians to keep on doing their own thing now solid they were allowed to keep their or their their early ideas of national identity culture and language and even their religion uh though there was a law saying that no because i mean the ottomans were consider themselves a caliphate so

like like yeah you can keep your churches but if you build any fucking new ones, we'll kill you. So I was like, ooh, okay. Now, that actually was largely ignored, and they got away with it for a really long time. But the Ottomans also kind of sucked at administrating an empire. The Armenians were Christians, and the Ottoman Empire was ruled under Islamic law. So they were considered what's called

dimi or a non-islamic people under the protection of muslims this meant as long as they paid their taxes which were heightened because they were a religious minority uh the ottoman government largely did not care what they did hypothetically that was not always like the mafia it is it's a i mean empire is nothing but a giant continent-wide fucking protection racket. Though it was far from a peaceful existence with Turks and Kurds raiding and attacking Armenian villages. With the government going like, hey, what can we do to stop that? Like, they did nothing really to protect Armenians. Also, there was like, at the time, there was Janissaries, which were non-Muslim children would be kidnapped, effectively.

It was like institutional kidnapping. And they were moved to the capital to become elite soldiers. And they're effectively slaves. It wasn't a great system. It was eventually abolished. I can't remember the year. Because it was incredibly unpopular, kidnapping people's children like that. because it was incredibly unpopular,

kidnapping people's children like that. And we actually talked briefly about the Janus Aries in our bonus episode when we ate all the rations because they had their bread poisoned and replaced dirt and a whole bunch of them got killed. Are you trying to say that we ate those biscuits that are poisoned? The poison is the long con because that episode was months ago

and we're still kicking. Now, they were never really considered equal to the Muslim population of the Ottoman Empire and that goes for all religious minorities a lot of Armenians rose to prominence within Ottoman society however higher Armenian society was considered something of like the I hate this word

but like the wonks of the Ottoman Empire like they were nerds they were really good at trades and banking uh literature press and art uh unfortunately this those are all things that are kind of considered like elite uh which meant they're really easy to target you as controlling society if that sounds familiar or not like those goddamn quote-unquote zionists controlling hollywood or media like wwe yeah everything pretty much the same like the same uh script that would be used against jews in germany and had been used against jews previously pretty much everywhere was used against armenians even though the vast majority of armenians were dirt

fucking poor and living at like subsistence farming. But like because one guy happened to become the minister of foreign affairs, which was crazy. And he was the only Armenian to get up that high because like technically they weren't allowed to because he's a Christian. But like 70% of Armenians were like penniless peasants. Yeah. So like they were the successful entrepreneur class of Armenians was like penniless peasants. Oui, that's a lot. So like, the successful entrepreneur class of Armenians was very fucking small. Were they selling shakes or something?

I think most of it was banking. So the Ottoman Empire, since they followed Islamic law, they could not have loans with interest rates on them, which technically is Catholic law as well uh but that's pretty much been ignored forever uh that's one of the reasons why if you remember all the way back to the uh the the peasants um crusade uh the the poppers crusade episode when uh they could not get loans because nobody wanted to give them money because they're broke as shit so they went to germany and

got a whole bunch of loans from Jewish bankers because they're like, yeah, sure, but you have to pay us interest. Then they just killed the bankers. So kind of the same thing. They were Christians, so they're like, yeah, we'll bank with whatever. Give us fucking interest. And the Ottomans were more than happy to take that deal, even though it was kind of religiously illegal.

But nobody is really that pious when it comes to paying their bills. Right. So they ended up, like some of the Armenians, ended up being pretty high up in the financial sector, which is never good if you're a minority in the world. Because it's really easy to be like, you know, we would have more money if it wasn't for these enter a group that you hate. Oh, yeah. Okay. The problem was the Ottoman Empire was largely falling apart. You know,

the so-called sick man of Europe that you hear so much about around world war one. It was coming apart at the seams for generations, mostly through bad governance, incompetent bureaucracy, and just like no infrastructure. They never really tried to modernize whatsoever. Like all of Europe at that point

had undergone an industrial revolution. The Ottoman Empire had as well, but much later and kind of half-assed. Like there would be, like the Western Ottoman Empire was significantly more advanced than the East because they're like, nah, we don't really care.

There are Armenians out there. But like they're 40% of the population. Those people are out there. Non-Turkish, non-Muslims were up to 40% of the Ottoman population. So like, they ignored almost half of the country because like, fuck them. Like, that doesn't work well.

And also, like a lot of places during World War I, nationalism was starting to become a thing uh because you know the there in the ottoman empire was like greeks bulgarians uh romanians stuff like that uh there was obviously armenians uh as rich georgians uh so like people like man we should try to do this thing on our own why the fuck are we in this empire and the ottomans can't have that! So that's a whole lot of massacres.

But actually, the Armenians didn't really want to be independent. They wanted to be equals. They're like, we're fine being in the empire. It's worked out kind of okay with us, but we would like to actually not be second class citizens because we call God something different. That's fair. Yeah, not asking a lot. Was it asking a lot though?

Oh yeah. Yeah. It's like, I mean, we see that now when like people just want to be treated like everybody else. People are like,

what? You're attacking my beliefs. Yeah. Yeah. I strongly believe that's fine to wear blackface during Halloween. Ooh.

Ooh. No, don't do that. You're not getting candy from this house. Like the Armenians were just like, yeah, face during Halloween. Ooh. Ooh. No, don't do that. Not a good move. You're not getting candy from this house. Like, the Armenians were just like, yeah, this kind of, the empire kind of blows, but like, we've tried to do this thing on our own. It never really worked out. But like, can we just pay the same taxes?

The currency isn't really going for us, so. Can we just pay the same taxes as the Muslims? Like, that'd be fine. They're like, no, you're asking too much. Can we like, I don't know, vote? Now, that didn't really go great. And the decline in Ottoman power led to lashing out by the government of the empire against those religious minorities.

So like a tantrum. It was if your tantrum killed 10,000 people. I've never had that big of a tantrum it was if like your tantrum killed like 10 000 people i've never had that big of a yeah well then the greeks broke away uh like having they decided like fuck this we're gonna we're gonna shoot some turks uh and they broke away via war and uh so the armenians were like well now's a good chance you know the ottomans are getting weak they lost to the greeks like we want to be equal we want more power we want a constitution stuff like that so the ottomans crack down and the armenians like fuck that we're fighting back uh that's when a group knows the armenian revolutionary federation a largely

socialists slightly nationalist collection of activists aren't uh found weapons aren't people and train them how to defend themselves. Now, the ARF is, the ARF is, it's pretty, pretty factional, like most leftist organizations. And I'm not going to go too deep into their politics when it comes to the schisms.

And they've had a few of them, but in the beginning, they were largely like, they wanted to be within the Ottoman Empire, but like, fuck around and find out like, we'll fight you. Yeah. We're the ARF. Yeah and find out like we'll fight you yeah we're the ARF yeah we'll ARF all over you

you ever been ARFed? ARFed with an old bolt action rifle now the ARF also conducted direct action like raiding the Ottoman central bank in the middle of Constantinople because they're like you know what they killed a whole bunch

of Armenians out east, so we're going to kill fucking Turks in the middle of your capital so nobody starts paying attention to us. That's the capital. Not a great idea, because they're like,

okay, well, we're just going to kill more Armenians. That's a big power move. Yeah, it's a big power move. They didn't have a lot of power. They slaughtered thousands of Armenians in reprisal.

Ooh-wee. Yeah. Eventually, the Sultan of the Empire fell in a revolution himself led by the young turk movement uh now the young turks the shitty government not the shitty cable channel uh wanted to really hurt from them lately it's best that you don't that's good their host is a turk uh who was an armenian genocide denier for a very long time and i have strong feelings towards the young turks because in essence would how would you feel if you were like a jewish person and like welcome to the

itzen group of news like you wouldn't like that yeah welcome to the welcome to the final solution hour like what they he literally named a news that's not a good hour. No, it's not good. He named a fucking news channel after a genocidal dictatorship that killed a million Armenians. If not, like, almost two million. Everybody seems really fine with it. It's a credible source to other people. No, it's very credible.

And, like, it's super popular. I mean, to be fair, he has, like, come out and kind of apologized. He hasn't completely backpedaled on it. He blamed it, like, you know, my family's Turkish. I was educated by them, blah, blah, blah. has like come out and kind of apologized he doesn't completely backpedaled on it he blamed it like you know i was you know my family's turkish i was educated by them blah blah like go fuck yourself change the name of your news network i don't care what you say right like you know that's like wearing a nazi armband like look guys i understand that you really don't like

me here but i'm gonna stay and i'm not gonna take off off my Nazi armband. This is what I was taught. I just won't drop a hard K word. Like, I'm not cool with this. No. Yeah. I mean, it's fuck that dude.

But anyway, now at first the young Turk movement was kind of good. I will give them that. They wanted a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament, which they did not have quite yet. And they supported equality among all of the empire's minorities and Turks. The umbrella. Yeah.

And the Armenians were like, fuck yeah. And they supported the Young Turks. They even signed an agreement in 1907 to support the Young Turks against the absolute rule of the Sultan. And, you know, eventually the Young Turks succeeded. absolute rule of the Sultan. And eventually the Young Turks succeeded, leading to elections and an overwhelming Young Turk majority movement moved

into Parliament. And they attempted to roll out reforms. And that went about as well as you can imagine. There was massacres in Hamadan against the Armenians that the Young Turks had absolutely nothing to stop or punish anybody about. And then in 1913, a wing of the Young Turk movement

known as the Committee of Union and Progress just kicked out all the progressives and pretty much installed a dictatorship by force. But now it's important that they have a different name, but the Committee of Union and Progress was a wing of the Young Turk Party. So they're the same. It's like Tea Partiers and the Republicans or, you know, whatever. Like, just because

you call yourself different doesn't mean you're not a part of them. Right. So, like, people come at me whenever I get pissy about the Young Turk news network.

Like, well, the Young Turks didn't commit the genocide. The CUP did. Like, where the fuck do you think they came from? Like, in the first wave of Young Turk elections, a Young Turk

by the name of Talat Pasha who ended up becoming the goddamn Hitler of the Armenian people was elected, a young Turk by the name of Talat Pasha who ended up becoming the goddamn Hitler of the Armenian people, was elected as a young Turk. Fuck you! Like I said, this is my big Armenian episode,

so my very niche complaints get to come out. I like this Joe rant. I can go on for so long. This is a good one. Now, the parliament hypothetically had the power to stop the CUP from taking power, but the CUP is like,

but we have the army. And the parliament's like, it's all yours. It's all yours. We don't want to die. And they took over as a dictatorship after that. It was like a triumvirate. There's three of them.

The three Pashas and Talat Pasha was their grand vizier, which is prime minister. The CUP was deeply fucking racist and hated that young Turk idea of equality. It actually hated the old Ottoman Empire idea of

allowing religious and cultural minorities to continue within the borders of the empire. They even hated that. The sultan was too conservative for Like, the sultan was too conservative for them. Right. The sultan was too, like, progressive for them. Like, that absolute monarch? Fucking pussy-ass leftist.

They wanted the Ottoman Empire to be Turkish. And if not Turkish, you better at least be Muslim. But they were mostly a Turk. At the least. They were a straight-up Turkish nationalist movement. And they made some concessions for Muslims. But it were mostly a Turk, at the least. They were a straight-up Turkish nationalist movement, and they made some concessions for Muslims, but it was mostly just to use them against the Christian minority. It wasn't that they liked the Circassians

or the Chechens. It's like, we could probably use them against the Armenians, and that's what they did. In the early 1900s, the Russian Empire was victimizing its Muslim population. What happened to the Circassians is largely considered a genocide uh and i agree with that

but they force them out of their land as an ethnic cleansing and the the ottoman empire is like well we're you know the protectors of muslims come on in but you have to settle in Armenian lands. Go ahead, take their land. There's nobody there. And that's like, it had been Armenian land for forever and ever and ever. And I'm not one, I'm not like a borders guy. I really don't care.

I'm not a nationalist, obviously. But there's a very specific reason why he put them there. And that's because you'd use these divisions to sow the seeds of the genocide. Now, these people who had just run from the Russian Empire were running for their lives. They could only carry what's on their backs.

They were desperately poor. So instead of helping them, the Ottoman Empire was like, you know, you guys would be a lot better off if it wasn't for all these fucking Armenians. Like, you just put them there! And that happened a lot. Like, they used... Because there's a lot of poverty in the Ottoman Empire.

And instead of fixing it, the CUP was pretty much like, we'd all be a lot better off if we get rid of these fucking Armenians. They're just hoarding all the wealth. It's their fault. Yeah. They control the banks.

They control the media. Like they're just fucking. Wonks everywhere. Yeah. Can't believe it. Just wonking all over the place. Now in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I. And it was a hilarious embarrassment for most of it, outside of Gallipoli.

Now, they entered on the side of the Central Powers with Germany as an ally. That will become important later. Now, in December of the same year, Enver Pasha, who was the Minister of War, a man that had no traditional military training, attempted to command an Ottoman Empire to surround the Imperial Russian Army outside of Sarikamish. Despite the fact it was December, the Ottomans did not bring any winter clothing whatsoever and did not prepare for this at all.

It's weird how that keeps happening. Our show is just a whole thing of prepare for winter. Like, now on to this next army that will freeze the dead. And we will cover the battle of sarah kamesh in detail for an episode eventually okay because it's bad like it is some of the most incompetent shit even for world war one status nice like luigi codorna would be like i respect that uh now the ottomans to shock to the shock of i'm assuming only the ottomans they were almost entirely destroyed in the effort.

The Russians annihilated them, and the ones that weren't killed in the fighting outright froze to death or starved to death. And Vir Pasha, instead of being like, hmm, I fucked up, is like, it was the goddamn Armenians! Those bastards! Because there was Armenians in the Imperial Russian Army. Absolutely.

Because remember, they controlled a large slice of what we consider Armenia. Also, since the massacres had begun in Armenia, even though the genocide has not quite begun yet, there was wide scale violence. So a lot of Armenians like, fuck this, I'm going to Russia. And they enlisted in Armenian volunteer units to fight the Ottoman Empire. Yes. Was he your grandpa? He left.

Great grandpa. But he left around the same time after like the cup took over and it's pretty obvious what their plan was and there have been some wide-scale violence he told his family like we need to get the fuck out of here something bad's gonna happen we need to run to russia because russia would just let you in if you're armenian because the czar consider himself the protector of christendom so if you're like hey i'm a christian let me in they're like yeah alright whatever and obviously they're going to use you to fight the ottomans too but like

whatever who cares but yeah my grandma's like we need to go to russia and his whole family said he was overreacting because remember i mean they've been there forever they're like this happens from time to time but we'll be fine it's like the same thing of like when a lot of jews in europe were like well this will

all blow over this can't be that serious and then it was too late so like my my great-grandfather's like fuck this i'm going on my own because he wasn't married yet or anything uh and he left and everybody in the family died 90 members of his family were killed he was the only kasabian to escape alive that we know of wow and that's the only reason why i did like his entire village is white from the earth and then he ended up fighting in the russian imperial army uh i don't think he was at sarah khamish uh but he did end up fighting the ottomans oh wow uh but uh now envir pasha wasn't talking about the russian now one of his plans was using the armenians to foment an uprising in russian

armenia and they weren't buying it. Armenians wanted their own country, but they're like, we're not going to fucking be on that guy's side. His czar might be a huge piece of shit, but he's our piece of shit. He's at least not going to genocide us. It's like civilization when you try to get the neighboring villages to uprise. Yeah, and then fucking Gandhi nukes you anyway yeah uh but yeah so he blamed the the armenians within the ottoman empire's army for his loss that they were pet they were spies he wasn't blaming the the armenians in the russian imperial army of

which there was a ton fighting at sarah khamish like a couple thousand uh because they were you know they're from that area, not necessarily kind of the same looking place. So the Imperial Russian armies that deploy them, they know how to fight in the mountains. And it worked, obviously. But he was like, no, the Armenians in the Ottoman army are

spies. And he said this publicly. It was in newspapers throughout the empire that the Armenians are the reason that we just got embarrassed. It's a red flag. Yeah, that's not good. That's when Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were disarmed and they were sent to labor battalions where they were used as slave labor

and also executed. Most of them didn't do much labor other than dig their own graves and then they were shot. A lot of Armenians took this time to desert though because we don't like where this is going nope and they ended up joining the arf and like the uh armenian independent army and other groups that ended up pretty much becoming guerrillas in the countryside or running over to russia and becoming partisans hitting them over the border like irregularly uh but yeah most of the labor battalions were all

liquidated okay uh and that's like the the new cup uh standard was pretty much like the russian or the armenians are spies all armenians are spies they're considered a fifth column of like they are controlled by the czar they're an an enemy within. Shit like that. We certainly don't hear that anymore, thankfully. None whatsoever. As someone that grew up with a weird last name on 9-11-2001, still happens, let me tell you.

Mine isn't a weird last name. But you're slightly brown, so like you! So that's when on April 24th, 1915, the Armenian genocide began. And that was April 24th is remembrance day today.

Um, now the genocide began with mass arrest, deportation, execution of Armenian intelligent, uh, intellectuals and community leaders within Constance and noble. What came after that was a state organized andized and lead genocide of the Armenian people. By the time it was over,

around 1.5 million Armenians were dead, as was the Ottoman Empire, because fuck you. It collapsed into a shitstorm of civil war as soon as World War I ended. Now, knowing that their time was up, the architects of this genocide, known as the Three Pashas,

Envir, Talat, and Jamal, fled the Ottoman Empire. Now, they all went to various different places uh but most of them went to germany uh these three were in effect the triumvirate of the empire in the last years they escaped to europe where they're welcomed as gentlemen for the most part uh now talat significantly less than the other ones now it's it's important to realize that even though most people have maybe have not heard of the Armenian Genocide, and obviously Turkey still denies it to this day, pretty much everybody thought Talat Pasha was a huge piece of shit.

A lot of people wanted him dead, and he knew that. And a lot of people wanted to arrest him. He wanted to go to the UK, and they were like, fuck you. Hell yeah, dude uh which is impressive imagine being such a piece of shit that the uk is like no thank you at that time yeah just like fuck that uh the word genocide had not been invented for what they had done but people absolutely knew what had happened during the uh to the armenians during the war it was actually there's a lot of news in amer about it. There's entire charity drives

trying to get food to Armenians. This is including during the rationing. Wow. And that had a lot to do with the work of U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau. He had pretty much watched the entire thing unfold firsthand and wrote cable after cable after cable about what was going on.

He didn't know what was happening, but he knew it was a fucking crime against humanity. Also, the Germans took a hefty amount of notes about what they were witnessing and probably could have stopped it. So when World War I started, the Ottoman Empire was largely a backwards shithole. They had not, I mean, they had continuously lost wars for about 100 years. They hadn't modernized with everybody else. They were not a parody with the armies of Western Europe. So Germany knew like,

fuck, if I have to have this piece of shit shackled to us in an alliance, we have to prop them up. So they pretty much rebuilt the Ottoman army. At least they tried. And a lot of it was under German leadership or at least, you know, they had advisors everywhere. And one German officer said that he,

you know, they, a lot of what happened with the Armenians, they're put on trains towards the Syrian desert and they would just be marched into the desert until he died. And one of the things that he did is like, if any of my men take part in this forced relocation i'll fucking shoot them armenian genocide didn't happen in that town but

most of the other times the german officers like well the turks are in control themselves whatever they just turned didn't see it well they're like well uh a lot of them were afraid that if they told them not to they'd get killed right but But they had the power to at least minimize it. But also they had the power to not smuggle Talat Pasha to Berlin in a submarine at the end of the war, which they did. Oh, wow. That's how we got there. What? Yeah.

I mean, there's a problem, though. There wasn't a structure. There was no international criminal courts. This is a generation before the fucking Nuremberg trials. Nobody was really sure what to do. Germany may have been their allies, but the Kaiser was gone, and there's the Weimar Republic now. But they still thought it was cool to keep these guys there. Now, they all lived under assumed identities,

so they probably knew that they probably shouldn't live openly, but Germany was fine with them being there. Good thing they never did that again. Yeah. The only country who wanted to hold them accountable was Turkey. Kind of. The problem was Turkey was going through a civil war and had two competing governments.

One was in the West, one was in the East. The trials were incredibly flawed. And the government in Constantinople wanted to hold these trials. because they're only attempting to prosecute a couple people that were involved in the CUP as like a scalpel to cut them out of their history rather than blaming the entire Turkish nationalist movement, which it should be noted, it was the entire Turkish nationalist movement

that should be held responsible. Now, that one government wanted to hold him responsible, the other one who would end up winning, led by a guy that is largely considered the father of modern turkey did not now he to his credit and i won't give this guy credit for much uh he did his name is kamal uh at he's known as kamal at a turk and the father of turks uh he did denounce uh the armen Armenian genocide until he didn't once he was in power he was like

you know what if you were in the CUP or the Young Turks and you work for me you're good and that's pretty much what started modern day genocide now so good job I mean think of this the trials that wanted to be held in Constantinople were like if we had the Nuremberg

trials after World War II, but they were ran by Nazis, and they only wanted to hang like three people. But they'd still be in control. So it doesn't really work, right? I mean, you could see the problem. But there's no extradition. Germany's not

going to extradite this motherfucker to Constantinople. Those things don't exist yet. And as you can imagine, this whole thing did not sit well with the men of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. While the ARF and its members had moved into the first Armenian Republic, they began to plan the revenge. At the ARF's ninth general Congress,

revenge against those who they saw responsible for the genocide was their top priority. This became known as Operation Nemesis. Now, this was not, and this might shock you, an overwhelmingly popular plan. Really? Many members of the Congress, mostly from the East who wrote out the genocide safe behind Russian lines, thought this was a bad idea because newly independent armenia would need relations with turkey they still don't have relations with turkey today in 2020 uh so eventually these assholes were told to shut the fuck up by the arf and then they went on to made their operational self-assassin anyway fucking bread hey you shut the fuck up and let us kill these people like Like, we'll turn these assassins on you, motherfucker.

Now, it would be led by a man named Shahan Natali. He survived the genocide because a Greek family took him in and said, Yep, he's our son. Otherwise, he would have died with the rest of his family. He'd end up leaving that house and burying his own father, whose body he found laying in the middle of the street. Now, the primary target of the cell would be Talat Pasha, dubbed Number One.

It wouldn't be fair to compare Talat to Hitler. And I say that because, in theory, he was not a dictator, but also, and I know there's that joke that it turns out you do not have to hand it to somebody, but Talat really fucking sucked at his job and made Hitlerler look good in comparison and like being ahead of state because he wasn't in control of shit for long hitler at least managed to hold it together for a couple years uh now he he was the grand vizier like i said he was the prime minister it would be i mean the three pashas you could kind of compare to adolf eichmann reinhardt

heidrich herman goring or heinrich himmler if i was to compare them to nazis but i think i try not to compare hitler to people because like he's just on a podium of awfulness all on its own right but like i guess you could consider talat pasha the turkish somewhere up there yeah he he's hitler adjacent i'll definitely say that he wasn't i mean hitler killed up north of six million people in a genocide plot pasha didn't do half that um not that we're going for high scores right we're not but like he was terrible running his military he was terrible doing you don't have to hand it to hitler but he wasn't as competent as an evil fucker as hitler was is it it's it's a different uh if we're if we're gonna do a seeding of terrible awful people

he's in the top three but hitler's still number one for sure almost every primary source that exists of to the armenian genocide uh pertaining to like orders to carry it out came from talat pasha in his handwriting or telegrammed directly from his house. Oh, wow. This included the mass deportation law, known as the Takir Law, orders for death marches into the Syrian desert,

and telegrams to military officers saying, quote, burn, destroy, and kill the Armenians. He was not even trying to hide it. Oh, this dude's a dick. Yeah. He even personally went to Henry Morgenthau, the U.S. ambassador to the empire, and demanded a full list of American insurance policies held by Armenians that he had killed so that the empire could take possession of their life insurance. What? Morgenthau, who I need to remind you, witnessed a genocide, said that of this request,

quote, it was one of the most astonishing things I'd ever heard and I was rendered speechless. That's fucking crazy. I mean, and this plan is not a secret. Like,

Talat had hated Armenians for years and nobody's really sure why. Like, you know, since we're comparing him to Hitler, like, a lot of people trigger Hitler's intense anti-Semitism because he blamed Jewish people that were on the art school board for rejecting him.

And it kind of spiraled. I mean, that's one of many things. Talat doesn't have that. He wasn't a failed art student that could blame Armenians for that. He just fucking hated Armenians for reasons that nobody could ever pinpoint. I mean, rationalizing people's racism is kind of pointless, but I can't find anything.

I mean, he had been planning a genocide since at least 1910, and he had openly talked about his genocidal plans with European thinkers and statesmen who all, I assume, just totally forgot about it and didn't maybe, I don't know, send a warning to the Armenians,

like, get the fuck out. He once literally stated in 1911, quote, if I come to power this country, I'll use all of my might to exterminate the Armenians. And people were just like, eh, this guy's just talking again. He said this to a guy named Johan Ostrup, who even included the line in his biography

from when he visited Talat, before Talat came to power and nobody was like that's weird I don't know man so it really shouldn't become too much of a surprise to anybody that the ARF's like this guy needs to fucking die in doing so they would

have to give their most valuable target their most respected gunman that was a guy named Sogomon Tetlerian. Sogomon had not witnessed the genocide firsthand. He had moved to Serbia the exact same day Gavrilo Princeps killed Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Oh, wow. So he's bad luck, I guess.

Yeah, I guess. He started hearing about things that were going on in Ottoman Empire. He ran across the Russian border and joined the insurgent Armenian army and fought the Turks. So he was a combat veteran, but he did not, quote unquote, survive the genocide. That'll become important later because he will say that he did. And it's going to be important why he did that. He served in the Caucasus fronts against the Turks. And when he got home, he discovered that 86 members of his family had He served in the caucus fronts against the Turks and when he got home he discovered that 86 members of

his family had been killed in the genocide. The lone survivor was his 12 year old niece that he found lost in the woods. Oh wow. He first witnessed the genocide because the Russians took a city that had like tens of thousands of Armenians

in it and when they showed up there was only 22 left when he was still in the army. Oh, fuck. Now, besides the fact that they had, he had an obvious boiling hatred for Talat, ARF also happened to use him a few other times to make people disappear. This included killing members of the Turkish Secret Service.

And according to Tetlerian's son, he even killed several Armenian collaborators. Just walking up and shot him in the street. Jesus Christ. Dude was good at what he did. Now he also had a problem with seizures. Like he had epilepsy and nobody was really sure. Now at the time epilepsy

was kind of, I thought it was a mental illness. Right. But his son's like yeah he'd randomly just faint. Like no he's having a fucking seizure. You idiot. That would be really inconvenient once he killed somebody. Oh fuck. Yeah.

Like you feel like a guy with uncontrolled epilepsy would not be the greatest assassin, but he made it work. I guess he'd get out of there now. And all of his other hits, obviously he shot the person and then he got away or faint. He was just faint. Like, well,

that guy can't be the assassin. He's on the ground with a gun. What is he going to do? No, so it was very obvious he was good at what he did. But this time would be different. Tet Lirion would not be dropping Talat in the middle of the night and escaping. He would shoot him in broad daylight from everyone

and then let himself be captured. I know we kind of make jokes about 4D chests or whatever, but this is like some legit 4D chest. He's like, no, no, no. I want to be captured. I know we kind of make jokes about 4D chests or whatever, but this is like some legit 4D chest. He's like, no, no, no. I want to be arrested. Natali took Tertlarian aside and said, quote,

you blow up the skull of the number one nation murderer and you don't try to flee. You just stand there. You're foot on the corpse and surrender to the police who will come and handcuff you. And demand to get arrested.

I demand satisfaction. Their plan was to get their trigger man arrested plead not guilty and then use his time on the stand to tell the horrors of the armenian genocide as a defense they did not expect this to work they just wanted it to germany to know because i mean germany was kind of complicit in it. Right. Also they're shielding to La Pasha. The German public would be fed stories at front page news and people would have no choice but to take notice. So with this fucking insane plan in mind,

Tetlerian traveled to Berlin. He got a visa as a college student and moved into an apartment with several other students. None of which had any idea what his plans were. What do you study? His land ladies, the way of the gun. What are you studying? His landlady... The way of the gun. What are you studying?

Pink mist? His landlady said he was a kind man and spoke very little German and badly. So, yeah. Perfect. Now, Tertlerian began to learn the layout of Berlin and learn to better his German language skills, but also he'd attract on Talat Pasha.

Talat was in fear for his life, not because he thought of a band of militant Armenians was going to come gun them down, though that was a possibility, but rather he was worried about the death sentence that he had gotten in absentee in Turkey during a courts marshal. So he thought that the Turks were going to send an assassin after him,

not the Armenians. Little did he know. Though he did make jokes like, let the Armenians come for me. The Armenian guy in the back? You wait. With a bigger faker nose over his other big nose. Someone asked him if he ever feared that Armenians would come and shoot him. And he considered them lower than shit. He's like, they probably couldn't pull it off if they tried.

Oh! Suck on that motherfucker taste those ball butter fucking tent leering hitting with the uno reverse card now uh the talat would routinely change houses and he had several bodyguards like he had safe houses he moved around uh and he changed his appearance. He normally had a mustache, which was probably, I guess, the most stereotypical Ottoman Empire dictator mustache you've ever witnessed. And he grew it onto a giant beard, making him hard to recognize. I mean, this is the 1900s. You're not going to fucking Google him.

To make matters worse, Tetler had no fucking idea where this guy was. Nobody had any intelligence on him, except that he's in Berlin. Sweet. Which is a big fucking city. I mean... This needs to be a movie. Actually, so the main source I use for this

is a book called Operation Nemesis, written by Eric Boghossian. And he's a screenwriter. He's not a historian. So he originally wanted to research this as a screenplay, because it was such a crazy story. And then as he did it, he realized, he originally wanted to research this as a screenplay because it was such a crazy story and then as he did he realized like holy fuck this needs to be a book and it's really good really yeah it's i mean still should be a movie but yeah it'd be a sweet

movie yeah i'd watch it and i'm gonna completely unbiased source on this uh no tellerian had to find a place to start and he had no leads at all. He wasn't a master spy. He was a fucking assassin. He shot people then vanished in the middle of the night. This is a little bit outside of his skill set. Yeah, it's weird when you question people and then shoot them. I mean, the good news was that Talat Pasha would fuck all this up for himself.

You see, British intelligence was also looking for Talat Pasha. The international community didn't much care about the Turkish war crimes trials that he had been found guilty of. Also, the other Pashas all sentenced to death as well in absentee. They were looking for him for a different reason.

Now, they supported the other Turkish government that had passed the death sentence. Not for any good reasons, for British reasons. They thought they could leverage them to get better trade deals they weren't like yes we we really support your form of government like no we feel like we could use you for oil rights you stupid fuck right uh but they thought that if they like delivered them delivered to lat pasha maybe they'd win them some points um yeah i mean

that they were just wanting to leverage it Meanwhile, the opposing government that did not like the trials and didn't agree with them, led by Mustafa Kemal's nationalist, was decidingly anti-British and knew that the Brits knew if they win, we're actually going to have to treat them as a country. So they didn't like that. Now, British intelligence almost immediately found Talat because they're actual spies and stuff. Now, British intelligence almost immediately found Talat because they're actual spies and stuff. He was living in a small apartment in the Charlottenburg district on Hardenburgstrasse. I just thought he made it super easy. Yeah, this giant Turkish flag outside of his house.

Yeah. A British agent found him and then invited him to a meeting. The agent's name was, prepare for peak British names, okay? This is his full name. Aubrey Nigel Henry Monaloo Herbert. He also has a DL title, which is like a ceremonial queen thing.

I guess. I like the Nigel. Now, Aubrey and Talat had met years before, and they had built up some kind of relationship, so Talat saw no reason to not have a meeting with him during the meeting. Romantic? No. Now, Aubrey was a spy and he wanted to kind of gauge Talat Pasha.

Now, if they could use Talat Pasha in the government in Constantinople to further British means means they absolutely would have been like yeah we'll get you back to Turkey but during the meeting and Aubrey did ask him about the Armenians but he shifted blame about the Armenian genocide to literally anyone else he blamed other members of the government he did blame the Armenians

he did blame the Armenians it was one of those like they had it coming and he also blamed the British. What? Like his whole thing was like, well, and like also at the same time he admitted that he did it because like they fucking didn't fuck him. They deserved it. It's like

the weirdest thing. And this meeting is only like 20 minutes long. So like the whole time he's like flying from one end of the spectrum to the other. Like, I didn't fucking commit a genocide. And if I did, fuck him. And Aubrey's like, from one end of the specter to the other like I didn't fucking commit a genocide and if I did fuck him and Aubrey's like uh huh okay now at the same time he didn't really care about the genocide all that much

Aubrey was trying to figure out what Talat's plans were and Talat was open that he wanted to get back involved in Turkish politics but he was rooting for Kemal to win he also planned on inciting pan-Islamist movements throughout the Middle East. Now, if you're unaware, pan-Islamist thing

is like, we should all form a caliphate and get rid of all these fucking Brits that are coming in. This is our land. It should be ours. That directly affected British interests that they had just won in World War I. They're like, this is a problem. We can't let this guy get out of here.

The problem is, if the Brits took him can't let this guy get out of here. Now, the problem is, like, if the Brits took him out, the Germans would be pretty pissed off. Like, and the British support, they kind of supported the Weimar Republic while crushing them with reparations anyway, but they didn't want to just, like, gun him down and have it be very easily linked back to the

British government. Yeah, because they leave stuff behind like tea. There's a whole trail of monocles living to the corpse. And they didn't really have any means. They didn't have any like don't worry, I got a guy. They didn't have a guy with plausible deniability between them and them.

Yeah, they didn't have 007 at the time. So they reached out to the Soviet Union who's also worried about Talat's activities because a pan-Islamic movement would really fuck up their large Muslim minority they had within the USSR. So they're like, we got to get rid of him, too. And everybody wants this guy dead. And the Soviets are like, wait a minute.

We got a guy. Call the ARF. We'll call the ARF. So the Soviet Union had taken over Armenia and the ARF had kind of like fucked off and left because they realized they probably weren't going to be doing so great there but I mean they were kind of sort of allies of the Soviet Union when it helped them

not great but it worked but they definitely had a connection like if the Soviet Union would leak them some information say where Talat Pasha lived they knew they'd figure out the rest. And that's what he did. They're like, the Soviet Union leaked it to ARF,

and the ARF told Sogaman Tattlerian, like, this is where he lives. At least it wasn't like a blanket, like, he's in Berlin. Yeah, and there's not a lot of evidence to suggest that Sogaman Tattlerian knew he was kind of being used as a proxy by the British in the USSR? But yeah, he kind of was. Fuck it. Fuck that guy. Hey, the enemy of my enemy of my enemy of my enemy is the guy

I shoot. Problem solved. I thought he was like, is the guy I kiss? Fuck! I got lost somewhere in the middle. Some weird shit happened. So Tertlerian moved across the street from Talat P tetlerian moved across uh the street from uh talat pasha into an apartment directly across the street uh and started observing him to like figure out his plans which ended up being really fucking easy um talat had a pretty normal daily

routine he would go on an early morning walk every single day and circle the same blocks in the neighborhood because apparently he's just a poor rich guy and TV hasn't been invented yet. You couldn't just, I don't know, binge watch Tiger King or something on Netflix. Or get on Twitter. Yeah. I have to walk around the goddamn block.

So he decided it would have to be then. Like he's like, well, every single day goes out around 11 or 10 or 11 and I can just like meet him on the street corner and be like hey talat and if he looks at me i shoot him in the face because like he he was practicing in the mirror like a taxi driver coming up with like coming up with a fucking one-liner uh yeah i mean he probably definitely and like at the same time uh the

landlady is like yeah he got really anxious and kept passing out. Just by the mirror? Yeah. So he decided to have to be then and there. So he set off on 10 a.m. March 15th, 1921. You think you would assassinate somebody, faint, and then wake back up like, oh, start shooting him again? Now, as Talat went on his walk, Tertullian headed him off,

jogging to the corner of the street and walking towards him. He had to be sure it was him, so he got close to double-check his identity, looked real close. He still wasn't quite sure. Did he do the old... Talat... No, he did.

He looked away and then... He spun around and said, Talat Pasha! And when he looked over his shoulder, Tertullian shot him in the base of the neck. Nice. Dropping him. He fell on his face dead instantly.

Now, as people around him began to scream, because, you know, he just fired a gun off the middle of Berlin at 10am. And most people haven't seen a guy get murdered in front of them. People began to scream and panic. And then Tet Lirian began to panic and quickly forgot about the plan to stay on when he'd get arrested.

So he took off running down the street. You think he's like, oh, fuck, wait. He's like, I'm out of here. Fuck this. Unfortunately, the crowd took off after him and he quickly got surrounded and grabbed. More people joined in the crowd that began beating the shit out of him. One person hit him with a giant heavy key ring and like gashed open his face. Other people hit him with his keys back then were like 10 pounds yeah other people like hit him with bricks where'd

you get that brick i've been carrying this for so long i have questions for this crowd uh he was actually a lobbyist uh for the uh the union brick guy the national brick society the only person that stops a bad person with a brick is a good person with a brick uh and that soon tent leering realized like i'm not gonna get arrested i'm gonna get fucking lynched then he yelled out in really bad german i'm armenian he's turkish why do you care and then they were like ah okay no they just can't hit okay finally though the police showed up probably saving his life, and he got chucked in the back of a paddy wagon.

I'm just imagining a shit ton of things that the crowd probably had, like random shit. Which I can tell you from firsthand experience is the first time anyone was happy that the fucking German police showed up. Because those guys are dicks. Why do you have a toilet brush? Several months later, he was brought on trial for murder now like the arf had long planned tell erin would make a stand

he'd plead not guilty and tell the whole story of the armenian genocide as his defense now forget no okay now uh because his german, so his German was not great, but he didn't actually need a translator, but he said that he needed one. And they, uh, looked around like, Hmm,

we don't have any people that speak Armenian and German fluently here. So they just happened to pick a translator who worked directly for the ARF and an operation nemesis. Nice. Real smooth. Uh, so, uh, he could, he was a real smart dude.

He was able to... If Tet Liren fucked up a question, he would just translate the answer he knew the ARF wanted him to say. I think the ARF had a handshake. Oh, definitely. At the end, you definitely go and you explode your hand outwards. Touch noses. Real slow.

It's weird because a lot of them have mustaches oh yeah tickling uh now on the stand tetlerian told long stories about the horrors that he witnessed during the armenian genocide about how watching the ottoman troops kill his mother and father and literally bury him under a pile of corpses and leave him for dead uh none of it was true right He didn't go through any of that. I remember this. Like I said, he wasn't even in Armenia. But it didn't matter because his plan was working. The jury was openly

weeping. It was insane. His lawyer argued that Tetlerian was clearly mentally unwell due to the result of what he went through in the genocide. And what he witnessed caused him to act out and he could not be responsible for his actions. He told the court that Tetlerian had horrible seizures

and uncontrollable fits ever since the genocide, which is partially true, but also he'd had that his whole life. And Tetlerian had never been diagnosed with epilepsy until doctors sent by the court to determine if he was crazy or not went over and uh found out they had epilepsy uh how did they how did they do that uh back then uh they probably looked at him until he had a seizure flashed lights at him probably um now like i said before uh in the day epilepsy was considered something of a mental illness like

it wasn't like people didn't like oh there's something you know you know something's wrong in his brain it doesn't like make him not unable to think like he's clearly weak of constitution he's having seizures so like a doctor that diagnosed him uh said that clearly his epilepsy uh made him responsible for killing Talat Pasha. Now, it was like one of five doctors who agreed on this. Everybody else was like, no, he knew what he did. But everybody promptly forgot. Now, the doctor

that did diagnose him was pretty convincing. And other doctors said, yes, he has epilepsy, but that won't make you kill people. Yes, but no. But they all agreed on epilepsy uh being something that he had and the popular idea of what that meant was like oh he's mentally unwell so even though they didn't agree with the fact he was mentally unwell they kind of

did right uh but yeah now the lawyers also did the lot had a few lawyers, and together, they were like legal magicians because they made the entire trial not about the fact that Tetlerian killed a guy. They made the entire trial about how Talat Pasha was a piece of shit. They made the

court... They kind of forced the court to legally decide Talat's role and responsibility in the genocide. Even though that is not what this trial is about. The old switcheroo. Armenian survivors took the stand. Real ones, not Talarian. Ed told their stories.

And one was so graphic. It was a woman who told a story of horrible things that happened to her. And the jury was crying. The gallery like crying. Uh, the, the, the, the gallery was, was crying. There's a couple of Turks present because like Talat Pasha was still popular in the national circle. Uh, one to see the trial,

the man who killed Talat Pasha began like openly screaming at her, calling her a liar and had to be escorted out. Uh, like, and in another point, uh, his attorney introduced telegrams that talat pasha had sent to order the genocide and it was and the judge actually accepted them as evidence what yeah i

have no idea how like that has nothing to do with this that would be like i mean hypothetically that means like you could go kill a war criminal i'm not gonna say which one you could go gun down a war criminal and then make the like but he killed all those people over there and the judge like ah yes you're good you're fine then like someone's gonna get if someone goes and hunts like william collie from vietnam and they're like well he is a huge piece of shit so like in this situation two wrongs do make a right consider yeah it's i don't understand the weimar republic's courts but i kind of like them uh the lawyer managed to turn the entire court into arguing the guilt of the dead man rather than rather than the guilt of the man who shot him and the prosecutors were like no no no this isn't

about any of this it did not work at all uhertullian also had another small hurdle to jump over. If he was found guilty of premeditated murder, which he absolutely did do, he would be sentenced to death. So they had to prove that he did not plan this. Now remember, during all this, they had no idea that Operation Nemesis was a thing. And he had, of course, he's not said shit about it.

How do you play this off? So he explained that it was a spur of the moment thing. He was walking down the street and he was like, holy shit, it's Talat Pasha. And he could not help himself but to shoot him. Anger took over. Now, the Germans brought, the German prosecution brought his landlord to the stand and said that he had recently traveled to Germany. He's, you know,

he's obviously a very depressed individual. And oh yeah, by the way, he just happened to live across the street from Talat Pasha very recently. Like he moved there from another place in Germany. Now with presented with all this, their defense is like, yeah,

crazy, right? Small world. Yeah. Fucking weird. Another small problem. When a Tutlerian openly told the cops

that arrested him that he specifically came to Germany to kill Talat Pasha. Now, this is largely accepted as fact, but Tetlerian's master defense was,

I never said that, even though there was a confession. I see nothing wrong with this. Now, it worked out for him kind of accidentally that when he was questioned by police,

they wrote everything down in German. Now, Tertullian's written German was terrible at the time, so he refused to sign his confession because he couldn't read it. So the judge pretty much looked at the document, looked at Tertullian and was like,

he's probably telling the truth. He probably didn't say that. And then the confession couldn't be used in court. But telegrams from the Armenian genocide could. His power plays work. I don't understand this court, but it's awesome. I mean, I'm not a lawyer and I understand very little about the criminal justice system. But this is a criminal justice system that could only exist in some weird version of

law and order. It's like law and order, War of Crimes Division. Why isn't that a show? It should be. This should be a movie. Yeah, it should. With great cinematography. Now, Tetlieren, for his part, never once dodged the fact that, yeah, I killed that guy in broad daylight.

His defense boiled down to yeah, I killed him, but fuck him, he deserved it. Also, I didn't plan it. Nice. And I'm not in control of my own facilities the defense made no sense Tertullian closed out his questioning by saying so the judge asked him

do you think you're guilty I do not consider myself guilty because my conscience is clear and the judge said how could you possibly have a clear conscience you killed a man he said quote I have killed a, but I'm not a murderer. All right. Sounds good.

In closing, Tertullian's lawyers talked about literally everything other than the fact that their client definitely shot that guy in the middle of Berlin. They talked about the guilt of Talat Pasha and the crimes of the genocide. And furthermore, they tried to point out that Germany was an ally of the Ottomans. So they bear responsibility for the crimes against the armenian people around we're turning all right and they should do everything in their power uh towards uh getting forgiveness or earning forgiveness from the armenian people and said quote the german people cannot be thought of to condone these atrocities a good place to start was argued it, was acquitting Tetlerian.

Good thing that the German people would never do something like this of their own. Never. The jury then excused themselves. Now, I should point out that the prosecution is like losing their mind at this point. They're like, what are they talking about? He killed a guy. That's what this is about. And then, so they're banging their head on the desk. yeah and meanwhile and like the whole time even though like remember part of

the defense is like you know he's obviously mentally unwell petlerian never showed a hint of fucking emotion he was chill as fuck the whole time like so like the prosecution is flying off the handle unable to control their own courtroom effectively and he's just sitting there with like the meme deal with the glasses coming over his head hey what are you gonna do now uh the jury eventually excused themselves tetlerian sat down thinking he was almost certainly going to be facing a firing squad at no point did he think he was actually going to be found not guilty or or even escape a death sentence everything you're telling me what it's all leading up to is this guy's fucking getting off with this so like tetlerian is like i'm definitely

like there's no way they're gonna fall for this dumb shit um now the trial lasted only two days and the jury took only an hour to return which is never it's never a good sign right like normally when you when you read things and they're like the jury only took 20 minutes like oh that guy got the death penalty yeah that guy's dead yeah They came back after an hour and the judge said, I avow clear and honor and consciousness in the verdict of the jury. Is the defendant, Sogaman Tetlerin,

guilty of intentionally killing a man, Talat Pasha, on March 15th, 1921 in Charlottenburg? To which the foreman of the jury, again,

Otto Wrenke, said, quote, in accordance with the decision of the jury, we find the defendant not guilty of the punishable act of which he has been charged.

What? Not guilty? This is awesome. The judge then said, like, okay. The judge said, therefore, the following sentence is issued. The defendant is to be acquitted at the expense of the state treasury, which means that he had to be paid for the time that he lost being in jail for the last couple months. Okay. In accordance with the decision of the jury, the defendant is not guilty of the punishable act which he has

been charged the order of imprisonment as regards the defendant is hereby annulled he walked away a free man that's awesome he walked away a free man after killing a head of state in broad daylight in front of literally dozens of witnesses that's's awesome. And then, like, the defense was so hilarious, like, this is Germany's fault. If you find him guilty, Germany killed the Armenians too! And the Germans were like, fuck. Now we have to do something. We're only down with killing Jews. We can't kill

this guy. Now, in the end, Operation Nemesis would kill most of their targets, shooting down eight senior Ottoman leaders, Including all three of the Pashas. The Arf is the shit! And another case, another guy got away with it via court

in Constantinople. In Turkey! He got away with it. Did he do the same thing? Yes! He's like, I did it because that motherfucker deserved it. And Turkey's like, yeah, right. That's a power move. And now it was awesome. All three of these guys had gotten death penalties in turkey so like they're like yeah i guess you just kind

of did it for us you can't find you guilty of that now the the third one uh another pasha had actually had been killed not by a member of operation nemes, but by an Armenian within the Soviet military. He was in Kazakhstan, I believe, and an Armenian lieutenant who was in charge of a cavalry detachment recognized him as one of the Pashas and just ordered his unit to kill him. How'd they do it? They just went over and fucking shot him.

Even though that Pasha was there, I think it was Jamal pasha on orders of the soviet union like he was working with them holy shit and he's like yo fuck lenin let's get that motherfucker now tetlerian went on to live a long life and eventually settled in san francisco now uh at one point he was in czechoslovakia and when the germans invaded he still had his luger that he shot talat pasha with because the germans had to return it it's like well it's not evidence you're not guilty here's your gun and he was so terrified that the germans would confuse him with a jewish person and with a luger so like maybe he'd kill a german to get it he had to chuck

it in a lake what yeah now uh he uh he became pretty disillusioned with everything especially after living through a nazi occupation and that's when he moved to san francisco he died in 1916 buried in fresno where a giant monument stands over his grave and a gold-plated eagle killing a snake between its talons the snake is meant to be to lot pasha nice so i drive through Fresno. I'm going to go through there once. Take a picture with it. I fucking will.

Now, he's been immortalized in revolutionary songs and pictures as long as being beloved by Armenians around the world. Countless statues, busts, and monuments have been built around him around the small country of the Republic of Armenia. And I think he would best like to be remembered the way I would like to be remembered. And then I see a revolutionary drinking song called Pour the Wine, which goes, quote, The Armenians' horror shook the world.

The Turkish throne fell to the ground. Let me tell you about the death of Talat. Pour the wine, dear friend. Pour the wine. Drink it nicely and drink it with delight. Nice. And that is the story of the fucking vengeful goddamn sword of Armenia Sogaman Tentlerian

this needs to be a movie this guy's awesome it should be a movie but I think I said once before that the last time I tried to make a movie about the Armenian genocide it was fucking terrible I still need to watch it

I know I need to I watched about 60% of it. And I was like, nope, no more. Especially since I enjoy Christian Bale. If he was just like Armenian Batman, I'd watch that. Armenian Batman? Do you have lavash? Oh, God.

The criminal's like, do you smell Dracar Noir? Time's up, motherfucker. Instead of having a bat cave, he just hangs out a cell phone. A cell phone stand in the mall? Yeah. This isn't a bat cave. I couldn't afford one. I spent it all

on deep v-neck shirts. Honestly, it really shitty cologne. I can honestly imagine he's talking business with the ARF and he's like, one second. The customer's asking about his cell phone. I have a good deal just for you, friend.

Christian Bale, is that you? Christian Bale-ian. And that is the story of Sogaman Tetlerian. And that is the most Armenian episode I'll probably ever do. This is one of the sweetest episodes this year, honestly. Yeah, I've been waiting.

Started off sad. I've been waiting so long to do this. Most people are aware I write scripts, like 8 to 15 page scripts most of the time for episodes. And I was writing a completely different script. And I realized, holy fuck, it's April.

I can do this now, and it's perfect. Because, like, could I do a series on the Armenian Genocide? Sure. Do I want to? No. Other people have done it. That is extremely sad. Yeah, I don't think I could do a fucking eight-part series

about my family dying. Like, I just don't think I could do it. So, like, what I can do, an hour-and-a-half-long episode about Sogaman Tentlier and shooting Talat Pasha in the fucking head. It's definitely our style. Yes. And it's been a while since we've talked about an individual.

Not a donkey. Yeah. So we are now the Eagles Killing Snakes podcast. Nice. But Nick, thank you for joining me on this wonderful story of revenge. And for everybody else, we will see you next week. Can we have stickers somehow?