Akcam Article

[Joseph]

New Book by Taner Akcam

A SHAMEFUL ACT: THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE AND THE QUESTION OF TURKISH
RESPONSIBILITY

Publishers Weekly Reviews
September 4, 2006

REVIEWS; Nonfiction; Pg. 53

A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of
Turkish Responsibility Taner Akcam. Metropolitan, $30 (448p) ISBN
978-0-8050-7932-7

The story of the Ottoman Empire's slaughter of one million Armenians
in 1915-a genocide still officially denied by the 83-year-old modern
Turkish state-has been dominated by two historiographical traditions.

One pictures an embattled empire, increasingly truncated by
rapacious Western powers and internal nationalist movements. The
other details the attempted eradication of an entire people, amid
persecutions of other minorities. Part of historian Akcam's task
in this clear, well-researched work is to reconcile these mutually
exclusive narratives. He roots his history in an unsparing analysis of
Turkish responsibility for one of the most notorious atrocities of a
singularly violent century, in internal and international rivalries,
and an exclusionary system of religious (Muslim) and ethnic (Turkish)
superiority. With novel use of key Ottoman, European and American
sources, he reveals that the mass killing of Armenians was no byproduct
of WWI, as long claimed in Turkey, but a deliberate, centralized
program of state-sponsored extermination. As Turkey now petitions
to join the European Union, and ethnic cleansing and collective
punishment continues to threaten entire populations around the globe,
this groundbreaking and lucid account by a prominent Turkish scholar
speaks forcefully to all. (Oct.)

[Joseph]

Taner Akcam speaks

University professor talks about his book on Armenian Genocide
Publié le : 22-11-2006


More than one million Armenians died between 1915 and 1923 during a devastating genocide.

By Conrad Wilson

ore than one million Armenians died from 1915 to 1923 during a devastating genocide. Today, the demise of a people is debated throughout Turkey, the epicenter of the once-powerful Ottoman Empire.

University professor Taner Akcam's new book released this week, "A Shameful Act," examines the genocide and the degree of Turkish responsibility.

Akcam is a professor at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Where did the idea for the book come from?

The idea was to discuss the problems around the international criminal law and criminal court. The history of establishment of the international criminal court goes back to the Paris Peace Conferences. The Armenian genocide and the problem of trying the perpetrator on an international criminal court was one of the major problems in Paris. I suggested to research the problem of the Armenian genocide.

What does the book highlight about the Armenian genocide that is otherwise unknown?

The question of the implementation of the genocide: How different government organizations and the party in power cooperated and organized the genocide. Based on new Ottoman documents, I reconstruct the implementation of the genocide.

I explicitly showed in my book that the attitude of the founder of Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal, on the events of 1915 is just the opposite of the denialist attitudes of current Turkish politics. His viewpoint toward the Armenian genocide has now been deliberately forgotten and deleted from Turkish collective memory. This is what needs to be revised and renewed in our history.

What major elements from the genocide do you highlight in the book?

Between 1918 and 1923, the political decision-makers were grappling with two distinct, yet related issues; the answers to which determined their various relationships and alliances.

The first was the territorial integrity of the Ottoman state.

The second was the wartime atrocities committed by the ruling Union and Progress Party against its own Ottoman Armenian citizens.

Although everyone agreed that these war crimes could not be left unpunished, there was uncertainty about the scope of the penalty.

One group advocated for the trial and punishment of the first-hand criminals as well as some of the top Union and Progress leaders.

Another group advocated for the trials of individual suspects, casting the net as widely as possible, and for the punitive dismemberment of the Ottoman state into new states created on its territory.

The book is quite critical of the Turkish government in regards to their role in the genocide. What criticism, if any, have you received?

First there were attacks in Turkish press, especially because of the title of the book. This is a quotation from Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the (Turkish) Republic. I was attacked as a liar and falsifier of his words in main media. The next day, they all apologized.

The publication of the book was the main topic in Turkey between Oct. 30 and Nov. 2, not only because of Atatürk's words, but because of Orhan Pamuk's blurb (a Nobel Prize-winner author) at the back of the book.

What is the "Turkish responsibility" in the Armenian genocide?

There is a very strong moral responsibility because Turkey's establishment as an independent state has very strong links to what happened to the Armenians.

I showed in my book that there is continuity between the Armenian genocide and the foundation of Turkish Republic. The party - Union and Progress Party - which organized the genocide, was the party which organized the resistance movement in Anatolia against the British and French occupation. An important number of party members who committed crimes against the Armenians were also very active in the Turkish liberation movement.

Additionally, today's Turkey sits on the Armenian properties and lands left by Armenians.

As a general rule, would you agree that national and ethnic groups tend to focus on their pains, rather than the pains they have inflicted upon others? How does this fit into the framework of the book?

This is a very true statement. Every ethnic group has a selective memory and remembers only the pain that is inflicted to them by others.

My book is a call for a break with this tradition. There is a fundamental principle in genocide research that I would like to repeat: If societies do not want a repeat of these types of macro crimes, it is necessary for each group to think first and foremost about the things that they themselves have done and to discuss and debate them.

As long as this is not done, the probability of such events repeating themselves remains quite high, because every collective carries the potential for violence within its very structure, and when a situation appears in which the right conditions manifest themselves, this potential can easily become a reality, and on the slightest of pretexts. There are no exceptions to this rule.

Does this book tackle any issues as it relates to Turkey's application for membership within the European Union?

Of course. Without facing its history, without coming to terms with the past, Turkey cannot be a member of European Union.

The expectation from Turkey is that it faces the historic wrongdoings and acknowledges its moral responsibility.

There are at least six to seven different resolutions of European Parliament asking Turkey to acknowledge the genocide.

Is there a particular passage from the book that conveys your overall message?

The legacy of Haji Halil to whom I dedicated my book.

This book is dedicated to Haji Halil … Eight members of his mother's family were kept safely hidden for some six months in Haji Halil's home under very dangerous circumstances. Any Turk protecting an Armenian was threatened with being hanged in front of his house, which would then be burned.

I was deeply moved by the story, by the humanity that triumphed over evil … The memory of Haji Halil reminds us that both people, Turks and Armenians, have a different history on which they can build a future.

[Joseph]

y Carlin Romano

Philadelphia Inquirer

http://www.philly.com

Posted on Sun, Dec. 03, 2006

A Turkish historian has mined and synthesized the Ottoman Empire's
internal documents and memoirs for moral clarity.

A Shameful Act

The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility By
Taner Akcam. Translated by Paul Bessemer.

Metropolitan Books. 483 pp. $30

Pope Benedict XVI's just-ended magical military tour of Turkey - with
helicopters overhead and riot police bristling on every flank lest he
be plugged on his first visit to a Muslim land - revealed a profound
truth: Those who forget the past sometimes simply want to forget it.

The pope didn't utter a peep about arriving in a country whose
predecessor state, the Ottoman Empire, committed the largest
genocide in history against Christians. Of course, it may be that the
always-diplomatic Vatican Curia took possession of Benedict's mind
and body, having exorcised the former Cardinal Ratzinger's well-known
views about Turkey and Islam.

It may also be that the murder of more than one million non-Catholic
Christians in the Armenian genocide is a non-homefield matter in
the Vatican's current damage-control foreign policy toward Turkey
and Islam.

But the upshot - a spectacle of supposed reconciliation between the
Papacy and Islam last week that operated without moral memory or
judgment - proved embarrassing to anyone who thinks there is no God
but truth. Thankfully, we have Taner Akcam's magnificently researched
study, A Shameful Act, as rebuke and counterlesson.

Why, as the world press endlessly repeated this last week, is Turkey
"99 percent Muslim"? One reason is that Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid
II, who regarded Armenians as a "degenerate community," ordered the
massacre of 200,000 Turkish Armenian Christians in 1894-96.

Another is that a nucleus of future nationalist leaders of the Turkish
Republic - known as the "Young Turk" government - embarked in the dying
days of the Ottoman Empire (1915-16) on horrific acts of genocide and
"ethnic cleansing" to rid Turkey of Christians.

To put it bluntly: In those dying days, Ottoman leaders killed most of
Turkey's Christians, just as Nazi Germany would kill most of its Jews.

Hundreds of thousands of Turkey's Greek Christians had already been
expelled or killed in 1914. But in 1915, as World War I raged and
provided a smokescreen, the Young Turk leaders implemented a "final
solution," murdering an estimated one million to 1.3 million Turkish
Armenian Christians - two-thirds of the remaining Armenian population
of Turkey - through starvation, death marches and execution.

That the Armenian genocide remains little-known in the United States
amounts to amnesia about our own history. As powerfully recounted in
Peter Balakian's The Burning Tigris (2003), the campaign by prominent
Americans from 1892 to 1920 to prevent genocide in Armenia formed
the first international human-rights movement in our history, the
template for today's struggle over Darfur.

Feminist leader Julia Ward Howe railed against the sultan's
massacres. Clara Barton led an 1896 American Red Cross mission to
save Armenians. Congress passed a resolution condemning the sultan.

Americans donated more than $100 million to Armenian relief aid.

In light of how things ended, the force of American outrage
astonishes. Theodore Roosevelt called the Armenian massacres "the
greatest crime" of World War I. The American ambassador to Istanbul
labeled Turkey "a place of horror."

Despite that, by the early 1920s, the United States abandoned its
intent to establish an Armenian homeland and convict Turkish leaders.

The military success of Mustafa Kemal (later Ataturk) in establishing
the Turkish Republic in 1922 against the wishes of the Great Powers,
along with the U.S. decision to let oil politics trump human rights,
pushed the Armenian holocaust off center stage.

Ever since, the Turkish Republic has rejected charges of genocide. It
describes the Armenian deaths as collateral damage, World War
I-style. That's despite postwar Ottoman courts-martial in which
officials confessed to a genocidal policy. Turkey still mandates
criminal penalties for those who accuse the state of slaughter.

One wishes that all involved in this last week's stagecraft between
the Vatican and Turkey had been forced to read Akcam's A Shameful
Act and to comment on it. Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk calls
Akcam's work "the definitive account of the organized destruction of
the Ottoman Armenians" by "a brave Turkish scholar."

Some fine earlier books in English have delivered the grim tale. But
no scholar has mined and synthesized the Ottoman Empire's internal
documents and memoirs with Akcam's assiduous skill. Like Raul Hilberg's
The Destruction of the European Jews, A Shameful Act is destined to
become a touchstone for other studies.

Akcam, 56, a Turkish sociologist and historian, obtained political
asylum in Germany after receiving a 10-year prison sentence at home
for working on a student journal. He now teaches at the University of
Minnesota. Hardly anti-Turkish, he dedicates his book to Haji Halil,
a righteous Turk who, at the risk of being hanged, protected eight
members of an Armenian family in his home during the genocide.

As you might expect from an author of such courage, Akcam pulls no
punches. Ottoman Turkish leaders "did deliberately attempt to destroy
the Armenian population." Turkey continues to deny the genocide because
many of the leaders involved in it "later became central figures in
the Turkish government" and "admitted openly that the republic could
only have been established by eliminating the Armenians and removing
their demand for self-determination in Anatolia."

The most striking achievement of A Shameful Act is its depth of
detail. Akcam documents every twist of the story - from the political
and racist origins of Turkish nationalism to the insistence of
Muslims that they had to rule over inferior "infidel" Christians -
with multiple sources and shocking quotations.

How, though, to explain the disappearance of such crucial history
during the pope's visit? This honesty gap left his visit a moral mess,
a pageant of hypocrisies. Turkish newspapers, for instance, kept asking
whether the pope would offer yet another, fuller "apology" for remarks
on Islam during a recent lecture that had provoked Muslim outrage.

Moral clarity, on the contrary, would suggest that it is Turkey that
still owes the pope, Armenians, Christians, and the rest of the world
an apology for acts far more heinous than provocative citation.

Turkish nationalism, as Akcam shows, took its racist spine partly
from Germany and partly from Islamic jihadism. Turkey could do worse
than look to 21st-century Germany for instruction on decency, honesty
and redemption.

At the same time, the pope won himself no credit by honoring the
Vatican tradition of Pius XII - resisted by both John XXIII and John
Paul II - of failing to speak truth to power when in the latter's
presence. One couldn't help thinking of Hitler's famous question to
his generals eight days before invading Poland in 1939. "Who today,"
he asked, "speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?"

Not Pope Benedict XVI. Be grateful instead for Taner Akcam. He doesn't
wear pretty white vestments, but he speaks the holy truth.

[1.5 million]

Wow great article (post #13). I had been having very similar misgivings over the Popes visit but couldn't quite put it into words. And I agree - Akcams book is great too as i knew it would be - (I'm still reading it..basically I've been too busy of late to progress much...shame)

[Joseph]

About 1915 and Some Legends



On 29 April an article devoted to the "Armenian Question" was published, the title of which was "Are we ready to face our history?" The article spoke with a sincerity rarely shown in Turkey about the necessity of assessing history and turning the issue into an object of open discussion. Even this viewpoint alone deserves saluting the author of the article. But there were some glitches in the writing. In that article too many subjects, familiar as being the Turkish official thesis, were offered as information, which are such tall stories that they have no relation whatsoever with the truth. The reality is that a number of individuals, as well as bodies founded with the purpose of proving the Turkish viewpoint, continuously create tall stories and lies. Even people like Ayse Hur, who think very seriously about this issue, often accept those tall stories as reality, and by repeating them contribute to the fact that the tall story gets transformed, little by little, into "information reflecting the truth." About this subject, we need to clearly distinguish the tall stories and lies from the true information. I would now like to address two of those tall stories:

1) Ayse Hur writes "up to the Mondros Armistice, 1397 persons were given various sentences; more than half of them were sentenced to death for the crime of harming Armenians." This information, which is simply a tall story, appeared for the first time in the Kamuran Gürün's book "The Armenian File," as far as I know. Thereafter, it was continuously used by others, too, as credible information. Nobody thought about asking the following question: who were these 1397 persons who were put on trial and/or sentenced to death?

Gürün provides no name, nor any document, but mentions -- as a reference -- the files of the cypher room of the Ottoman period Interior Ministry. Those files were kept secret from researchers for a long time. Only civil servants like Gürün or S. Soy, who were given the responsibility of creating a "tall story," were able to read them, and when those files were opened, those who wanted to read them were either expelled from the archives, or permission to access them was not provided under the pretext that the files were still being worked on, or that their subject had no relation with those files. Today those files are open, and one can read them by overcoming certain difficulties.

And the information contained in those files is the exact opposite of what Gürün claims. There is no proof of the fact that a number of persons were put on trial or that they were executed for having mistreated Armenians. As for those sued, they were not people who committed crimes against Armenians, but rather those who appropriated the possession of Armenians. The Ittihadists launched an inquiry against certain civil servants who had plundered possessions, since they wanted to take advantage of those possessions for certain purposes.

THE PROGRAM OF ITTIHADISTS

A number of documents show that Ittihadists used Armenian possessions for the following purposes:

1) To cope with the costs of the war (certain buildings were assigned to the military; the output of factories were assigned to meet the needs of soldiers).
2) To create Turkish middle-classes.
3) To get Muslim immigrants to settle down (for this purpose to expropriate seized houses).
4) To sell Armenian possessions, so as to cope with the cost of the deportation of Armenians with the income resulting from the sales of the possessions.

In these files, there are tens of documents about this subject, but there isn't even a single document about those persons who were sued for the crime of mistreating Armenians. The documents show us that the Ittihadists used Armenian possessions in accordance with a very well prepared plan, for certain purposes, and for this reason they put the plunderers on trial.

Besides these trials there is also a second tall story: according to this tall story, compensations for their possessions were paid to the Armenians at the places where they had been sent. Various decisions were made at various times by the authorities about the abandoned possessions of Armenians. Among these, the most important ones were the circular dated 10 June 1915 and the temporary law adopted in September. According to these circulars, the possession of Armenians would be sold and the compensations would be paid to them in their new places. However, there is not a single document about this in the Ottoman Archives. Therefore, the allegation that those who mistreated Armenians were sued and sentenced to death is not correct, much like the allegation that compensations for the seized possessions of Armenians were paid to them is not correct. These are simply lies, intentionally created by a lie-machine, in order to confuse people.

2) Ayse Hur writes in her article that Protestants and Catholics living in Western provinces were not deported. In reality, there are two different tall stories about this issue. The first is that Armenians were not deported from Western provinces; whereas, the second is that Catholics and Protestants were not subjected to deportation. About this, there is no need for foreign sources, even the State Archives disprove the two above-mentioned tall stories in a book published in 1995. It is said in this book that Armenians were deported from Adana, Ankara, Aydin, Bolu, Bitlis, Bursa, Canik, Çanakkale, Diyarbakir, Edirne, Eskishehir, Erzurum, Izmit, Kastamonu, Kayseri, Karahisar, Konya, Kütahya, Elazig, Maras, Nigde, Samsun, Sivas, Trabzon, and Van. In reality, those are incomplete, too. But, even this shows the deportation was carried out on the whole territory of Anatolia. At the head of these tall stories is the one in which it is claimed that there was no deportation from Izmir and Istanbul; whereas, the records of the Interior Ministry indicate that there were deportations from Istanbul and Izmir, too. Let's hope that the existing documents will one day be published.

TALAAT PASHA'S TELEGRAM

Now as for that tall story, according to which Catholics and Protestants were not deported, it is true that there were a number of telegrams sent regarding this subject in order that the local responsible authorities could prevent such deportations. But the first message sent was already dated 4 August 1915. That is, it was sent 3 months after the deportations. The first document about Catholic Armenians was sent by Talaat Pasha. The telegram stated that the deportation of Catholic Armenians should not take place. A similar telegram was sent on 15 October about Protestant Armenians. There, too, the following was said: those Protestant Armenians who haven't been deported yet, shall not be deported anymore. As inferred from both telegrams, Armenian Catholic and Protestants had already been deported prior to that date. Now in telegrams sent on 18 September 1915 from Kayseri, Eskishehir, Diyarbakir, and Nigde, governors replied that all the Armenians in their respective regions had been deported and that none remained.

From many documents, we understand that those telegrams of Talaat Pasha were sent "merely for the sake of doing it". Later, verbal instructions were sent to the same governors so that they would not take those telegrams seriously. But even the above-mentioned documents alone are sufficient to show that the claim that Catholics and Protestants had not been deported is a tall story.

Let's hope that, this painful page of the history accepted in the international public opinion as the Armenian Genocide and that among us it is recalled only as the "Armenian Question", stop being for us a topic on the agenda only in the month of April, and that it shall be the object of a general serious discussion rid of legends, because he who doesn't face his own past, cannot build his future.


Taner Akcam


From:Radikal Date: Sun, 11 May 2003

Published in the Sunday supplement of the Turkish daily "Radikal".
Translated by Dikran D./Anna K. Piranian

[Joseph]

Turks And Armenians are Not Only Peoples, Which are Separated by Genocide Issue
19.12.2006 16:43 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Turkish professor of History Taner Akçam of Minnesota University delivered his lecture at University of Amsterdam December 18. It was devoted to his latest book ‘A shameful act’. Previous to the lecture the participants to this event, among who many members of Turkish and Armenian community, watched Dutch documentary by Dorothe Forma, called "A wall of silence" featuring the meeting of Taner Akcam with Armenian historian Vahakn Dadrian. The Lecture was very impressive, said Inge Drost, the Public Relations officer of the Federation of Armenian Organizations in Netherlands to PanARMENIAN.Net reporter. “The historian presented his work in Armenian scientific documents, Ottoman archives, Istanbul tribunals as well as research into the German archives. After Akcam’s speech many Turks stood up to protest rather then ask questions, but he peacefully and effectively managed to at the same time give clear response as to pacify by stressing by utterances like that "we have to learn to talk,” said Drost. She also stressed that Taner Akcam underlined that the Armenian and Turks are not the only two peoples in the world that have problems with each other and that there are ways to solve those and that those processes need time and efforts.