Died 27 January 1973 | ||
Bahadır Demir (March 9, 1942 – January 27, 1973) was a Turkish diplomat who was assassinated by Armenian Genocide survivor Gourgen Yanikian in Santa Barbara, California in 1973.
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Early life
He was born on 9 March 1942 in Istanbul. After finishing Robert College and the Faculty of Political Science of Ankara University in 1967, he began serving in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His first foreign appointment was to Los Angeles, California as a vice consul.
Assassination
On January 27, 1973, the 77-year-old Gourgen Yanikian, under the alias of an Iranian man named Yaniki, met with consul general Mehmet Baydar and Demir at the Biltmore Hotel in Santa Barbara, promising to make a gift of a bank note and a painting stolen from the Ottoman palace more than a century earlier to Turkey. As the three men began to converse over lunch, Yanikian revealed to them that he was not Iranian, but Armenian and a survivor of the Armenian Genocide. Baydar dropped the bank note in anger and a heated exchange took place. Yanikian then pulled a Luger pistol from a hollowed-out book and emptied nine rounds at them, hitting them in the shoulders and chest, though none of the wounds were lethal. As Baydar and Demir lay on the ground Yanikian pulled out a Browning pistol from a drawer and fired two rounds into the head of each man, "what he considered mercy shots."
That neither man was alive during the genocide "mattered little to Yanikian," according to journalist Michael Bobelian: "Just as Ottoman dehumanization of the Armenians a half century earlier opened the door for so many ordinary citizens to participate in the Genocide, Yanikian came to view the men not as human beings, but as symbols of decades of injustice."
Legacy
One primary school in Istanbul, and a street in Ankara are named after Bahadır Demir.
Baydar was survived by his wife ( whom he had married 20 months ago).