There's a lot of Armenians who don't understand the sheer impact of ASALA... Their actions were so influential that former Turkish President Turgut Özal stated in 1991 "What if we recognize the genocide and faced our past?" also proposed that parts of Western Armenia be returned.

Obviously his statement shocked and infuriated the Turkish establishment. Throughout his political career, specifically in the 1980s when ASALA was operating at it's highest level, he worked on multiple projects to reconcile with Armenians and return parts of Western Armenia.

Özal's main goal was to stop the operations of ASALA. During his time as PM and President, he increased funding as well as the personnel capacity of MIT (Turkish Intelligence) and convinced the US and other NATO members to officially list ASALA as a terrorist organization.

In the 80s and early 90s, he secretly met with leaders of the Armenian government and diaspora in order to devise a plan for reconciliation, his main request was that Armenian leaders attempt to dissolve ASALA. This information was revealed by Feyzi İşbaşaran, his former advisor.

In 1988, he survived an assassination attempt carried out by Kontrgerilla, an organization within the Turkish Army trained and funded by the CIA/NATO as part of Operation Gladio. The organization was almost exclusively made up of Turkish Ultranationalists.

In 1993, he was assassinated and with him also died any plan/project for reconciliation. There was no real investigation into his death, it was simply deemed a heart attack despite poisonous levels of insecticides, pesticides and radioactive elements being discovered in his body.