Robert Fisk
Soghomon Tehlirian Junior doesn’t have much time for those who want
the Armenian genocide recognized by the world. “The Armenians keep
trying to tip things out of the grave,” he says. “It’s three generations
ago. It’s history. Everyone killed a lot of people. You can’t go back
to the Spanish inquisition and the Roman Empire and bring it back.
That’s not me. I never remember my father saying one bad word about the
Turks. He just wanted to live his life in peace.”
I
listen to the brisk, youthful voice of this 86-year-old Armenian
talking to me down the phone from America and I have to shake my head to
remember that his father, Soghomon Tehlirian, was the assassin who shot
dead Mehmet Talaat Pasha, the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire and
organizer of the 1915 genocide of one and a half million Christian
Armenians.
