After the takeover concluded, Tiriakian was one of many participants who were exiled then shipped to Marseille, France. While in exile, Tiriakian attended the Second General Congress of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation held in 1898 in Tbilisi, Georgia which had him appointed the Responsible Body for the Cilicia region. After making a brief visit to Alexandria, Egypt, Tiriakian returned to the Ottoman Empire in secret. One of the main goals of his return was to gather money from wealthy Armenians in order to help fund the Armenian revolutionary movement. However, since the Ottoman authorities had an arrest warrant for him, he was caught and sent to life imprisonment in Bodrum. After the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, Tiriakian was set free and returned to Constantinople. In Constantinople, he became a publicist and manager of the "Azadamard" Armenian newspaper.