Gourgen Yanikian

Background

Gourgen Mkrtich (Megerdich) Yanikian was an Armenian author, engineer, and an Armenian Genocide survivor.

He studied as an engineer at the University of Moscow and emigrated to the United States. In the United States, he wrote a number of novels, including The Triumph of Judas Iscariot (1950), Harem Cross (1953), and The Voice of an American (1960).

Yanikian was born on December 24, 1895, in Erzerum, Ottoman Armenia, and he died March 27, 1984, in the USA.

His stated purpose for the assassination was “to demand justice” for the Armenian Genocide.

After Yanikian’s death, one of his attorneys, Bill Paparian, said: “is now a piece of Armenian history.”

The offence

On January 27, 1973, in the Biltmore Hotel, 78-year old emigrant Yanikian lured a consul general and vice-consul of the Republic of Turkey, who expected to receive gifts of art treasures for their government.

Instead, Yanikian pulled a Luger pistol from a hollowed-out book and emptied it at them.

After the shootings, he called the reception desk and said he killed “two evils,” and then sat calmly on the patio awaiting arrest.

Finally, he said that he killed the Turkish diplomats as representatives of the “government that had massacred his people”.

Investigation

Armenians hoped Yanikian’s trial would provide a vehicle for proving the massacres in a court of law, while there were still surviving witnesses. The District Attorney did not agree.

Trial

Yanikian took the only Armenian Genocide witness stand, accompanied by his friend and interpreter, Santa Barbaran Aram Saroyan.

Yanikian told of his 26 family members killed in the massacres and how he watched in hiding as marauding Turks slit his brother’s throat.

He made a further statement that he killed the Turkish diplomats as representatives of the “government that had massacred his people”.

He was sentenced to life in prison in July 1973.

Sentencing

Yanikian was sentenced to life in prison in July 1973.

He was paroled in 1984, over the objection of the Turkish government.

Outcome

Two months later, Gourgen Yanikian was dead of natural causes. He was 88 years old.

After Yanikian’s death, District Attorney David D. Minner wrote: “Looking back, I regret that I did not allow the genocide to be proven. Not because Yanikian should have gone free, but because history’s darkest chapters - its genocides - should be exposed, so their horrors are less likely to be repeated”.

Yanikian was known to say, “Im not Gourgen M. Yanikian but unacknowledged history coming back for the 1,500,000 Armenians whose bones desecrate my invisible existence...”

In death, Yanikian became a symbol to many Armenians of their resentment toward the Turkish government for refusing to acknowledge the Armenian genocide.

Aftermath

Yanikian was later appropriated by the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia as an iconic figure. At the beginning, it bore the name of “The Prisoner Kurken Yanikian Group”.

Other details

There is a conversation between the Brano and Gavra from Olen Steinhauer’s Liberation Movements dedicated to Yanikian’s person:

“Who’s Gourgen Yanikian?” Gavra asked.
“American citizen, Armenian descent. Two years ago he invited the Turkish consul general and the consul to lunch at the Baltimore Hotel in Santa Barbara, California. He shot them both with a Luger. Killed them.”

Margaret Bedrosian in her The Magical Pine Ring calls Yanikian “the alter ego of all Armenians who have wanted to bare the lie”.