Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia

Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA), terrorist group formed in 1975 to force Turkey to admit its guilt for the Armenian Genocide of 1915–16. At its founding, the group’s stated goals were to force the Turkish government to acknowledge the genocide, pay reparations, and support the creation of an Armenian state.

The Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) was founded in 1975 by Hagop Hagopian, a Lebanese-born Armenian who had become involved with Palestinian resistance groups in the early 1970s. Some sources claim that Hagopian was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and that the PFLP helped fund the Armenian group. Like the PFLP, ASALA was Marxist in ideology.

ASALA started with 6 or 7 members, and at the height of its support, in the early 1980s, it may have had about 100 active members and sympathizers. ASALA’s first attack was the bombing of the World Council of Churches office in Beirut, Lebanon, in January 1975; no one was hurt in the attack. The group’s next attack—the assassination of Oktay Cirit, the first secretary of the Turkish embassy in Beirut, in 1976—established assassination as a primary tactic. Throughout the late 1970s and early ’80s, ASALA perpetrated a series of attacks on Turkish diplomats around the world; more than 30 diplomats and members of their families were assassinated between 1975 and 1984. (Another Armenian terrorist group, the Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide [JCAG], which later became the Armenian Revolutionary Army [ARA], also carried out assassinations during that period.)

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The assassination campaign attracted international attention, and by 1980 ASALA had begun to receive considerable clandestine support from the Armenian community in the United States and Europe. Unlike JCAG/ARA, ASALA carried out dozens of bombings. Between 1980 and 1982, ASALA initiated several bombing campaigns in Switzerland and France with the aim of freeing comrades imprisoned in those countries; the bombings injured dozens of people, and several terrorists were released from prison in response.

More often, however, ASALA targeted Turkish institutions. Its most-devastating attacks were made at the Ankara Esenboga Airport in Ankara, Turkey, on August 7, 1982, and at the Turkish Airlines counter at France’s Orly Airport on July 15, 1983. Eighteen people were killed and more than 120 injured in those two attacks.

When Israel invaded Lebanon in June 1982, ASALA was forced to flee its Beirut headquarters. That shake-up exacerbated tensions within the group, and following the Orly attack, ASALA split in two. One faction, which felt that the group’s attacks on civilians were hurting its cause, labeled itself the ASALA Revolutionary Movement (ASALA-RM) and vowed to pursue a more openly political path. The second faction, led by Hagopian, remained committed to terrorist tactics and associated itself with the Abu Nidal Organization. The split weakened both groups considerably, and the number of their attacks declined drastically. In 1988 Hagopian was killed in Athens, Greece. He is believed to have been assassinated by Turkish agents. ASALA’s steady decline only accelerated after his death, and, despite 1991 and 1994 attacks claimed by the group, most observers believed that by the early 21st century the group no longer posed a threat.