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Topic:Tehlirian trial
Showing 2 of 2 matching publications (200 total) · catalogue updated 2026-07-22
Journal ArticlePaywalled

Hamlet after Genocide: The Haunting of Soghomon Tehlirian and Empirical Fabulation

Parla, Ayşe, 2023
Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 65, No. 2, pp. 446–470 (Cambridge University Press)

Revisits Tehlirian's 1921 Berlin acquittal in light of Tehlirian's own 1953 memoir, in which he acknowledged that elements of his courtroom account departed from fact. Parla focuses on the legal, moral and epistemological work performed by the ghost of Tehlirian's mother, who appeared in his testimony, and on the trial's place in the origins of genocide as a legal category. Building on Saidiya Hartman's 'critical fabulation,' she develops the concept of 'empirical fabulation' to think about the ethical potential of fabulation in recounting genocidal violence that resists straightforward representation, particularly where existing law fails to meet demands for justice.

Tehlirian trialOperation Nemesistestimony and truthgenocide and lawmemory
EnglishRead Hamlet after Genocide: The Haunting of Soghomon Tehlirian and Empirical Fabulation (opens in a new tab)
Journal ArticlePaywalled

The Talat-Tehlirian Complex: Contentious Narratives of Martyrdom and Revenge in Post-Conflict Societies

Yenen, Alp, 2022
Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 64, No. 2, pp. 394–421 (Cambridge University Press); DOI 10.1017/S0010417522000019

Examines the assassination of Talat Pasha by Soghomon Tehlirian in Berlin on 15 March 1921, and Tehlirian's trial and acquittal that June, as the origin of conflicting legacies of the Armenian Genocide. Yenen argues that although small in terms of violence and legal consequence, these events and their reimagination in contentious narratives have become a dominant prism for sense-making in Turkish-Armenian relations. In rival national imaginations, Talat and Tehlirian each compete for the same categories of hero and victim while being demonized as villains by the other side. The article follows the assassination, the funeral, the trial, the long silence, and the later commemorative cycles.

Operation NemesisTehlirian trialTalat Pashamartyrdom and revengeTurkish-Armenian relations
EnglishRead The Talat-Tehlirian Complex: Contentious Narratives of Martyrdom and Revenge in Post-Conflict Societies (opens in a new tab)

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