Haig Tiriakian

Haig (Hratsch) Tiriakian ( Armenian Հայկ (Հրաչ) Թիրեաքեան ; * 1871 in Trabzon , † 1915 in Ankara ) was an Armenian politician and publisher. Tiriakian, as a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, played an important role in the occupation of the Ottoman Bank in 1896. He led an active life in Armenian political affairs and was killed during the Armenian Genocide from 1915 onwards.

Life

In 1893 , Haig (Hratsch) Tiriakian from Trabzon went to Nancy , France , where he studied agriculture until 1896. While in Europe , Tiriakian joined the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) where his first assignment was planning the raid on the Ottoman Bank .

The occupation was planned to draw the attention of the major European powers to the massacres of the Armenians in 1894–1896 ; the bank had mostly Western European staff from Great Britain and France . Given Western Europe's inaction over the massacres, ARF members saw a holdup as the best way to get full attention. Tiriakian visited various countries to plan the bank robbery. Tiriakian joined Armen Garo and Papken Süni and personally participated in the bank occupation. Tiriakian describes the event as follows:

“6 people were enough to start the process. We set out with sacks of bombs and pistols in our hands. The bombs produced incredible results; they did not kill instantly, but tore their flesh apart, leaving them writhing in pain and agony. We went to the president's office with Garo and wrote down our terms. We demanded that the great powers grant our wishes so that those who took part in this dispute might be set free; if not, we'd blow the bank with ourselves. 3 died and 6 of our friends were wounded. The losses of our enemies were also severe. "

After the attack, Tiriakian was one of those who was allowed to go into exile and was shipped to Marseille . While in exile, Tiriakian took part in the Second General Congress of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation in Tbilisi , Georgia , in 1898 . There he was appointed in charge of the Cilicia region . After a short trip to Alexandria , Egypt , he secretly returned to the Ottoman Empire to raise money from wealthy Armenians and use it to finance the Armenian liberation movement. As the Ottoman authorities issued an arrest warrant against him, he was captured and sentenced to life imprisonment in Bodrum . After the Young Turkish Revolution in 1908, Tiriakian received an amnesty and returned to Istanbul . There he became the publisher and manager of the Armenian newspaper Azadamard .

death

Haig Tiriakian was a victim of the Armenian genocide in the course of the mass arrest of Armenian intellectuals on April 24, 1915 . He was arrested and deported to Çankırı or Ayaş , a town in the inner provinces of the Ottoman Empire. After learning that another Haig Tiriakian was being held in Ayaş, he demanded the release of his namesake and his own deportation from Çankırı to Ayaş. He was later killed in a suburb of Ankara .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Teotoros Lapçinciyan : Houshartsun nahadoug medavoraganouti . 1919, p. 35 (Armenian, here in the google book search).
2. ^ Peter Balakian : The Burning Tigris . HarperCollins, [sO] 2009, ISBN 0-06-186017-4 , pp. 103 ( here in the Google book search).
3. ^ What happened to the Ottoman Armenians? Hürriyet , accessed February 9, 2014 .