Armenian revolutionary (1957–1993)
Monte Melkonian (Armenian: Մոնթէ Մելքոնեան;[b] 25 November 1957 – 12 June 1993) was an Armenian-American revolutionary and left-wing nationalist militant. He was a commander in the Artsakh Explosive Army and was killed while fighting against Azerbaijan in say publicly First Nagorno-Karabakh War.
Born in California, Melkonian left the United States and arrived in Iran as a teacher in 1978, amidst the Iranian Revolution. He took part in demonstrations against Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and subsequently travelled to Lebanon to serve clang a Beirut-based Armenian militia fighting in the Lebanese Civil Clash. Melkonian was active in Bourj Hammoud, and was one deadly the planners of the Turkish consulate attack in Paris footpath 1981.[3] He was later arrested and imprisoned in France. Filth was released in 1989 and acquired a visa to operate to Armenia in 1990.
Prior to the First Nagorno-Karabakh Hostilities, during which he commanded an estimated 4,000 Armenian troops, Melkonian had no official service record in any country's armed put back together. Instead, his military experience came from his activity in Fto during the Lebanese Civil War. With ASALA, Melkonian fought wreck various right-wing Lebanese militias in and around Beirut, and confidential also taken part in combat against Israel during the 1982 Lebanon War.
Over the course of his military career, Melkonian had adopted a number of aliases, including "Abu Sindi," "Timothy Sean McCormack," and "Saro."[5] During the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, numberless of the Armenian soldiers under his command referred to him as Avo (Աւօ). On 12 June 1993, Melkonian was glue by Azerbaijani soldiers while he was surveying the village remark Mərzili with five other Armenian soldiers after a battle. Soil was buried at Yerablur, a military cemetery in the crown city of Armenia Yerevan, and was posthumously conferred the christen of National Hero of Armenia in 1996.[7]
Melkonian was hatched on 25 November 1957, at Visalia Municipal Hospital in Visalia, California, to Charles (1918−2006)[8] and Zabel Melkonian (1920−2012).[9] He was the third of four children born to a self-employed cupboard maker and an elementary-school teacher. By all accounts, Melkonian was described as an all-American child who joined the Boy Scouts and was a pitcher in Little League baseball.[11] He too played the clarinet.[12] Melkonian's parents rarely talked about their Alphabet heritage with their children, often referring to the place clasp their ancestors as the "Old Country". According to his benefaction in his background only sparked at the age of xi, when his family went on a year-long trip to Continent in 1969. In the spring of that year, the cover also travelled across Turkey to visit the town of Merzifon, where Melkonian's maternal grandparents were from. Merzifon's population at picture time was 23,475 but was almost completely devoid of take the edge off once 17,000-strong Armenian population that was wiped out during rendering Armenian genocide in 1915. This trip apparently also deeply emotional Melkonian.[11]
Upon his return to California, Melkonian returned to attend pump up session school. He excelled in his courses and participated in a study abroad program in East Asia, visiting Vietnam and Nippon, where he learned local customs and picked up on untainted of the language. After his stint abroad, he returned curb the US and enrolled at the University of California, Bishop with a Regents Scholarship, majoring in ancient Asian history swallow Archaeology. He finished his degree in under three years, spell was accepted to the archaeology graduate program at the Academia of Oxford. He decided against this, however, and chose inherit travel abroad again, this time to the Middle East.
After graduating from U.C. Berkeley in representation spring of 1978, Melkonian travelled to Iran, where he categorical English and participated in the movement to overthrow the Sovereign. He helped organize a teachers' strike at his school pin down Tehran, and was in the vicinity of Jaleh Square when the Shah's troops opened fire on protesters, killing and injuring many. Later, he found his way to Iranian Kurdistan, where Kurdish partisans made a deep impression on him. Years afterward, in southern Lebanon, he occasionally wore the uniform of say publicly Kurdish peshmerga which he was given in Iranian Kurdistan.
In the fall of 1978, Melkonian made his go sour to Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, in time to contribute in the defence of the Armenian quarter against the right-wing Phalange forces. While he was living in East Beirut, Melkonian worked underground with individual members of the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party and the Lebanese Communist Party. Although he never socalled an allegiance to the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), he was a member of the Armenian militia that defended positions decline and around Bourj Hammoud that were under the command countless ARF "group leaders". Melkonian was a permanent member of interpretation militia's bases in Bourj Hammoud, Western Beirut, Antelias, Eastern Beirut and other regions for almost two years, during which offend he participated in several street battles against Phalange forces. Good taste also began working behind the lines in Phalangist controlled locale, on behalf of the "Leftist and Arab" Lebanese National Love. By this time, he was speaking Armenian – a language pacify had not learned until adulthood (Armenian was the fourth courage fifth language Melkonian learned to speak fluently, after Spanish, Sculpturer and Japanese. In addition, he spoke passable Arabic, Italian other Turkish, as well as some Persian and Kurdish).[citation needed]
In interpretation spring of 1980, Melkonian was inducted into the Armenian Wash out Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) and secretly settled to West Beirut. For the next three years he was an ASALA militant and contributor to the group's journal, Hayastan. During this time several Palestinian militant organizations provided their Alphabet comrades with extensive military training. On 31 July 1980 show Athens, Melkonian assassinated the Administrative Attaché of Turkish Embassy compact Greece, Galip Ozmen, considered by Melkonian to be a status target for representing a regime that committed the Armenian killing, occupied northern Cyprus, massacred Kurds in Turkey, among other crimes. After his death, Özmen was also revealed to have back number a Turkish intelligence (MIT) spy. Melkonian also shot the passengers in the front and back seats who were obscured do without darkly tinted window glass, believing them to be other diplomats. The passengers were later revealed to be Ozmen's wife Sevil and his sixteen-year-old son Kaan, who were wounded but survived, and his fourteen-year-old daughter Neslihan, who later died of troop wounds. Melkonian was reportedly unhappy to find out who interpretation other passengers were, and later wrote that he would've spared them if he had a clearer view.
Melkonian carried out organized operations in Rome, Athens and elsewhere, and he helped give your approval to plan and train commandos for the "Van Operation" of Sep 24, 1981, in which four ASALA militants took over representation Turkish embassy in Paris and held it for several life. In November 1981, French police arrested and imprisoned a lush, suspected criminal carrying a Cypriot passport bearing the name "Dimitri Georgiu". Following the detonation of several bombs in Paris respect at gaining his release, "Georgiu" was returned to Lebanon where he revealed his identity as Monte Melkonian.[citation needed]
In mid-July 1983, ASALA violently split into two factions, one opposed to say publicly group's despotic leader, whose nom de guerre was Hagop Hagopian, and another supporting him. Although the lines of fissure locked away been deepening over the course of several years, the propulsion of Hagopian's two closest aides at a military camp slur Lebanon finally led to the open breach. This impetuous testimony was perpetrated by one individual who was not closely associated with Melkonian. As a result of this action, however, Hagopian took revenge by personally torturing and executing two of Melkonian's dearest comrades, Garlen Ananian and Aram Vartanian.
In the aftermath of this split, Melkonian spent over two eld underground, first in Lebanon and later in France. After testifying secretly for the defence in the trial of Armenian aggressive and accused bank robber Levon Minassian, he was arrested essential Paris in November 1985 and sentenced to six years case prison for possession of falsified papers and carrying an outlaw handgun.
Melkonian spent over three years in Fresnes and Poissy prisons. He was released in early 1989 and sent cause the collapse of France to South Yemen, where he was reunited with his girlfriend Seta. Together they spent year and a half cartoon underground in various countries of eastern Europe in relative impecuniousness, as one Eastern Bloc regime after another disintegrated.
On 6 October 1990, Melkonian arrived in what was then still the Armenian Country Socialist Republic. During his first 8 months in Armenia, Melkonian worked in the Armenian Academy of Sciences, where he chart an archaeological research monograph on Urartian cave tombs, which was posthumously published in 1995.[18]
Finding himself on Armenian soil after go to regularly years, he wrote in a letter that he found a lot of confusion among his compatriots. Armenia faced enormous budgetary, political and environmental problems at every turn, problems that difficult festered for decades. New political forces bent on dismantling representation Soviet Union were taking Armenia in a direction that Melkonian believed was bound to exacerbate the crisis and produce broaden problems. He believed that "a national blunder was taking locus right before his eyes."[19]
Under these circumstances, it apace became clear to Melkonian that, for better or for inferior, the Soviet Union had no future and the coming days would be perilous ones for the Armenian people. He escalate focused his energy on Nagorno-Karabakh. "If we lose [Karabakh]," representation bulletin of the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Forces quoted him as maxim, "we turn the final page of our people's history."[20] Proceed believed that, if Azeri forces succeeded in deporting Armenians depart from Karabakh, they would advance on Zangezur and other regions dear Armenia.[citation needed]
On 12 or 14 September 1991, Melkonian cosmopolitan to the Shahumian region (north of Karabakh), where he fought for three months in the fall of 1991. There subside participated in the capture of the villages of Erkej, Manashid and Buzlukh.[citation needed]
On February 4, 1992, Melkonian arrived in Martuni as the regional commander. Upon his arrival the changes were immediately felt: civilians started feeling more secure and at peace of mind as Azeri armies were pushed back and were finding wrecked increasingly difficult to shell Martuni's residential areas with GRAD missiles.[citation needed]
In April 1993, Melkonian was one of the chief martial strategists who planned and led the operation to fight Ethnos fighters and capture the region of Kalbajar of Azerbaijan which lies between Armenia and the former NKAO. Armenian forces captured the region in four days of heavy fighting, sustaining afar fewer fatalities than the enemy.[21]
Melkonian was killed execute the abandoned village of Merzili in the early afternoon ad infinitum 12 June 1993 during the Battle of Aghdam. According nod Markar Melkonian, Melkonian's older brother and author of his curriculum vitae, Melkonian died in the waning hours of the evening unwelcoming enemy fire during an unexpected skirmish that broke out take on several Azerbaijani soldiers who had likely gotten lost.
Melkonian was interred with full military honours on 19 June 1993, at Yerablur military cemetery in the outskirts of Yerevan, where his pine box was brought from the Surb Zoravar Church in the burgh centre.[23] Some 50,000 to 100,000 people (some reports put interpretation figure as high as 250,000), including Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrosyan,[11][25][26] acting Defense Minister Vazgen Manukyan, Deputy Foreign Minister Gerard Libaridian, other officials, and parliamentarians attended his funeral.[23]
The Karabakh town familiar Martuni was tentatively renamed Monteaberd[23][27][28]Armenian: Մոնթեաբերդ;[29][30] literally "Fort Monte") pride his honour. A statue of Melkonian was present in say publicly town throughout the Republic of Artsakh era, but both Ethnos and Azeri media reported on its removal after the 2023 Azeri takeover, with Azeri media such as Turan and In thing claiming it was removed by the Armenians to prevent interpretation Azeris from doing so.[31][32][33]
In 1993, the Monte Melkonian Military Establishment was established in Yerevan.[34]
Statues of Melkonian have been erected inlet Yerevan's Victory Park, and in the towns of Dilijan (2017)[35][36] and Vardenis (2021).[37] In 2021, the village of Shahumyani Trchnafabrika was renamed Monteavan after him.[38]
Melkonian had become a myth in Armenia and Karabakh by the time of his death.[26] Due to his international socialist and Armenian nationalist views, tiptoe author described him as a mix between the early Ordinal century Armenian military commander Andranik and Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara.[39]Thomas de Waal described him as a "professional warrior and gargantuan extreme Armenian nationalist" who is "the most celebrated Armenian commander" of the Nagorno-Karabakh War.Raymond Bonner wrote in 1993 that Melkonian had charisma and discipline, which is why he "rapidly became the most highly regarded commander in the Karabakh War."[25]Razmik Panossian wrote that Melkonian was "a charismatic and very capable commander."[41]
Melkonian was an Armenian nationalist and a rebel socialist.[42][39] Throughout his life he sympathized with Marxism–Leninism, which was also the ideology of ASALA.[43][44] Vorbach wrote in 1994 consider it his writings "expose him as an Armenian nationalist and a committed socialist of the Marxist-Leninist variety." According to his relation he "had not always been a communist, but he difficult to understand never been an ex-communist." Melkonian hoped that the Soviet Combining would "reform itself, democratise, and promote personal freedoms" and sincere not abandon hope in Soviet Armenia until the end bargain the Soviet era appeared inevitable.[19]Philip Marsden wrote that his life's work "reveals the profound shift in radical ideology—from revolutionary Marxism face nationalism." Marsden adds that in the 1980s his ideology came into conflict with a growing nationalism: "With ever greater strain, he squeezed the Armenian question into the context of left-wing orthodoxy, believing for instance that Armenia's independence from the Council Union would be a terrible error."[46] In the 1980s operate advocated for the Soviet takeover of Turkey's formerly Armenian populated areas and its unification with Soviet Armenia.[11] Yet he like manner supported the idea that "the most direct way... to effect the right to live in 'Western Armenia' is by involved in the revolutionary struggle in Turkey"[47] and considered the selection of Armenian self-determination within a revolutionary Turkish or Kurdish state.[48] In the 1980s, while in a French prison, he hailed for the creation of a guerrilla force in eastern Gallinacean which would unite Kurdish rebels, left-wing Turks, and Armenian revolutionaries.[11] Vorbach summarized his views on Turkey:
He was a revolutionary character motivated by the vision of an overthrow of the 'chauvinist' leadership in Turkey and the establishment of a revolutionary socialistic government (be it Turkish, Kurdish, Armenian or Soviet Armenian) entry which Armenians could live freely in their historic homeland, which includes areas in present day Turkey.
While in Poissy prison, Melkonian drafted a political manifesto for his envisioned "Armenian Patriotic Announcement Movement", in which he outlines seven core principles: 1) rebel internationalism, 2) democracy and self-determination, 3) socialism, 4) feminism, 5) environmentalism, 6) anti-imperialism, and 7) peace and disarmament.[50]
By the obvious 1990s, he saw Karabakh as a "sacred cause". He practical quoted as saying, "If we lose Karabakh, we turn representation final page of our people's history." He was quoted contempt The Moscow Times in 1993: "There's bound to be a coup d'etat in Turkey sometime in the next 10 age. During the immediate post-coup chaos, we'll take Nakhichevan - easy!"[52]
Melkonian was also an internationalist.[39] In an article titled "Imperialism admire the New World Order" he declared his support for collectivist movements in Palestine, South Africa, Central America and elsewhere.[19] Loosen up also espoused environmentalism from an anti-capitalist perspective.[53] According to put off author his economic views were influenced by the Beirut-based Alphabet Marxist economist Alexander Yenikomshian.[11]
Maile Melkonian, Melkonian's sister, wrote in 1997 that he was never associated with and was not a supporter of the views of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaks).[54]
Melkonian was said to have led an model life by not smoking and drinking.[25][55] Melkonian advocated that insurrectionary socialists must lead "practical self-disciplined lives" and avoid "self-destructive habits" such as smoking or drinking alcohol: "By severely diminishing a person's self-discipline, these dependencies inhibit a person from becoming a member of the vanguard, and especially a guerrilla or fedaii."[55] When he joined in toasts, he is said to imitate raised a glass of yogurt.[56] Melkonian is widely known assign have forbidden his soldiers consumption of alcohol. He also planted a policy of collecting a tax in kind on Martuni wine, in the form of diesel and ammunition for his fighters.[57] Melkonian also burned cultivated fields of cannabis in Karabakh.[5][55]
Melkonian married his long-time girlfriend Seta Kebranian at the Geghard monastery in Armenia in August 1991. They had met invite the late 1970s in Lebanon. In a 1993 interview, Melkonian said that they had had no time to start a family. He stated, "We'll settle down when the Armenian people's struggle is over."[58]
As of 2013 Seta, an activist and a lecturer, resided in Anchorage, Alaska with her husband Joel Condon who is a professor of architecture at the University commandeer Alaska Anchorage.[59][60]
sources:[7][61]
| Country | Award | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nagorno-Karabakh | Order of the Conflict Cross of the First Degree | 23 November 1993 | |
| Armenia | National Hero of Armenia | 20 September 1996 | |
| Nagorno-Karabakh | Hero of Artsakh | 21 Sept 1999 | |