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**Hovik** · 06-17-2005, 05:06 AM

Originally posted by mustafa mert

Taner Akcam is an ex terrorist .He was one of the leaders of the DEV YOL marxist terror group.He hates his country and his nation.According to some he is ethnically armenian..yOU GUYS dont get excited, turks dont give a xxxx to marxist terrorists like akcam,berktay or belge..These ppl all had problems with the state and the public at the past.Armenian issue is a chance for them to have revenge....However independent socialist intellectuals like Nihat genc is strogly critising these feraks because of their revenge passion

I have never heard anyone call Taner Akcam a terrorist. Please give references to where you have obtained your information - we aren't interested in your personal opinion about him. Furthermore one thing that IS established is that he is a historian, and a very great historian at that unlike your NAZI McCarthy and others. He presents scholarly work in support of Genocide recognition. Naturally for this very reason you are against him. Your government will feed you anything they can to insight the society against ANYONE claiming Genocide. Look at yourselves, look at how you reacted to Orhan Pamuks statement of truth regarding the Armenian Genocide. Look at how Erdogan cancelled the very historical conference dealing with the Armenian Genocide in Istanbul which he had called for shortly before. Are you Turks ALL blind to what is going on? Do any of you stop and think "maybe we're being duped by our own people"? This is why so much of the world looks at you as arrogant, stubborn, ignorant, xxxxy people!

Yeah Yeah Yeah, its always about someone else. You never take responsibility. Now Taner is a terrorist, next will be Pamuk, and I am sure every country that has recognized the Genocide is either terroristic by nature, or misled by Armenian terrorists too right?

Listen to yourself... denialists Xenophobs...

**Hovik** · 06-17-2005, 06:18 AM

Mustafa,
When searching for your "marxist dev-yol terrorist organization" and any relationship that Taner Akcam has to it, there are only about 11 sites that pop up, most of them establish no relationship between Taner Akcam and your organization, and the 3 or 4 in the entire web that DO - guess who they belong to? Yep thats right - Turks. At least if one searches ASALA and Melkonian for example one can find 578 matches in Google many of which are non Armenian, non-Turkish, etc.

So, why don't you tell us all just where you got your information from (be sure to cite at least 50% NON-TURKISH sources) so that we can know what you and 4 other Turkish sites seem to know...

**mustafa mert** · 06-17-2005, 06:35 AM

hovik...akcams past is not a secret....another pro armenian scholar berktay was a member oy aydınlık�ılar .( another militant maoist terror group)

**Hovik** · 06-17-2005, 07:03 AM

Why are you not sharing your source with us if you have nothing to keep a secret?

**1.5 million** · 06-17-2005, 07:11 AM

hahahaha - Ackam a terrorist - that is rich. Just because he was jailed for speakign up concerning mistreatment of Kurds...but of course - to a Turk this is a "stabb in the back" - it is treason - and so on and so forth..

In any event - an honest person regading these issues would focus on the facts and the documentation and analysis that Ackam provides. But of course...

**Hovik** · 06-17-2005, 07:27 AM

Originally posted by 1.5 million

hahahaha - Ackam a terrorist - that is rich. Just because he was jailed for speakign up concerning mistreatment of Kurds...but of course - to a Turk this is a "stabb in the back" - it is treason - and so on and so forth..

In any event - an honest person regading these issues would focus on the facts and the documentation and analysis that Ackam provides. But of course...

You know... where do these people come from with their Cracker Jack statements and nonsense - i'm getting sick of it. Of course if you fart in the wrong direction in Turkey you'll be jailed and treated as a terrorist. We're not even talking about disagreeing with the government on an important issue. Their Islamic Extremist Nationalistic troops will reign a jihad against anyone who doesn't regurgitate everything the government babbles. Woops now he/she is a terrorist...

Anyway, until a source is given all one can do is laugh with disgust that people ignore the subject, ignore that Ackam has published historical work that documents the responsibility, and fail to address it TIME AFTER TIME. What can you do but weed through them...

**imported_Fadix** · 06-17-2005, 08:51 AM

Originally posted by mustafa mert

Taner akcam was one of the leaders of the marxist dev-yol terrorsit organisation which made many killings and bombings.After 1980 military intervention he escaped to Germany.Everybody in turkey knows about taner akcam and his past..so i m amazed that u never heard of it..The conference in bosphorus university is postponed because it was one-sided show of the marxists..They can do it anyplace freely but not under the name of a university..But surely any pro turkish conference can not take place in armenia..and because nihat genc critisised those who were making this conference his publisher refused to publish his books...despite of other countries turkish marxists are rarely patriots...

Calling you a moron would be to overestimate your intelligence.

All the lies against Akcam have been already exposed. I met the guy in person, he cares about Turkey a way that clowns like you would never care. But I guess it is always better to assassinate the character of people whom disagree with you is always easier than confronting what they have to say.

**1.5 million** · 06-17-2005, 11:34 AM

Taner Ak�am - THE GENOCIDE OF THE ARMENIANS AND THE SILENCE OF THE TURKS

(excerpts) - part 1 (my division) Ackam discusses reasons Turks turned to Genocide. My note - evidence of the plan for such exists since 1910 - however the circumstances to enact such - and the push to despiration to convince CUP to go along with the plan developed by the CUP inner core seems to have occured with the desperation of the war circumstances and the (mostly false and/or exaggerated) perception of Armenians as actual enemies - mostly provided by known racist anti-Armenian CUP members such as Shakir...

"The genocide of the Armenians has been a taboo topic for us Turks for eighty years.

I am aware that I am a member of that collectivity which produced "the perpetrators" (or that I belong to a group of perpetrators).

It is incumbent upon us to "remember" a reality that was treated in our history as a non-event, one which was simply denied, to "recover it in our consciousness," and to assign to it the proper significance...

A start can only be made by way of discovering the meaning of belonging to the perpetrator group and of bearing collective responsibility.

I am of the opinion that the formation of the Turkish national identity played a decisive role not only in the decision to commit genocide but also in the current denial and tabooing of it. It is therefore indispensable that I first delve into the peculiarities of the origin of national identity...These peculiarities reflect a common mentality, an ethos permeating the psyche of the entire nation and help to explain why in certain situations general patterns of behavior emerge.

...it is better not to create a common perspective while analysing a phenomenon such as genocide, but to rely instead on two different perspectives, the perspective of the "perpetrators" and that of the "victims."' These two distinct perspectives bring to the fore distinctly different material for the reconstruction of historical events. The works that have been produced up to today about the genocide of the Armenians have essentially emanated from the perspective of the "victim group." My attempt in this regard can be understood as an investigation of the subject from the viewpoint of the "perpetrator group"...

...genocide is afforded only by virtue of the existence of a set of very specific conditions that coincide in a special way with the dynamics of a compatible cultural/political background...

...past events have shaped Turkish national identity and do even determine our present behavioral patterns...

If...we examine the arguments that are being advanced with regard to the Kurds, we can recognize evidence of the surprising degree to which the state of mind, the model of thinking that dominated in the decade after 1910, persists today.

Turkish nationalism and Turkish national consciousness entered the historical stage very late. Because of its late development, Turkish nationalism was strongly influenced by Social Darwinism and racist ideologies. This intellectual background of Turkish nationalism, combined with the urgent need to catch up, made that nationalism aggressive.

Turkish nationalism arose as a reaction to the experience of constant humiliations. Turkish national sentiment constantly suffered from the effects of an inferiority complex.

Turkish national identity evolved in conditions in which the fear of annihilation and dissolution was omnipresent. The process of disintegration afflicting the Ottoman Empire was of such gravity that it produced a traumatic anxiety among Ottoman leaders.

Seen through the prism of Turkish national identity, the Christian minorities were viewed as one of the primary factors responsible for the decline and disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. The Christians were, therefore, stigmatized as enemies. This enmity was rendered all the more intense by the fact that some imperial powers used the Christians as a lever in order to realize the partition of the empire consistent with their own power interests.

Another factor which created an image of hostile Christians was the role Islam played in this connection. On the basis of Islamic culture and its system of laws, the Moslems have always considered the Christians as an inferior minority group and have never viewed them as being equal to themselves. Thus the Christians did not enjoy equality in the Ottoman Empire.

...the reforms and economic privileges led to a change in the position of the Christians. The Turks gradually lost their social status as a superior class. They could not reconcile themselves to the idea of equality with the Christians by way of reforms, or that a Christian minority should attain a better economic position than they. This loss of status led to the rise of hate-revenge sentiments against those who were seen as responsible. The Moslems did not "peacefully" accept their steadily weakening position. This awareness of loss of status played a significant role in the enactment of the massacre against Christians, and the history of the nineteenth century provides much evidence for this.

...the rebellious Christian minorities lived in the fringe areas of the empire. Continual losses of territory on the fringes of the empire had created among the Turks a siege mentality, that is, the feeling that the empire was encircled by enemies.

...this "crumbling" of the fringes was not the result of the military defeats of the Ottoman leadership. The insurrections of the minorities could almost always be crushed. It was pressure from abroad that forced the Ottomans to make political concessions to those they defeated militarily.

Another characteristic of Turkish national identity is the fact that the Turks consider themselves the actual, true victims of history.

...throughout the nineteenth century, the national wars of liberation of Christian groups in the Balkans (Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, etc.) were experienced as massacres of the Moslem population. Secondly, Europe paid no attention to the massacres of Moslems, although European nations were highly sensitive to the massacres of Christians and utilized every occasion to interfere.

...there was the deeply rooted belief in the superiority of the Turks over other peoples and the right of Turks to dominate them. There is still talk today of erecting a world empire and of dominating other nations as signposts of Turkish superiority and historical uniqueness...

The idea of the " ruling nation" (Millet-I Hakime) dominated the thinking of the Ottoman-Turkish ruling elite.

...the Turks were the heirs to a sublime and glorious past but were steadily growing weak and were suffering from the ills of the exaltation of their past. The demise was unavoidable in the event of a war. The decision for genocide arose within the purview of this assumption. (Ackam then compares the Turkish/Ottoman situation to Germany between the wars - quite interesting)

Accelerated disintegration and fragmentation of the national state give rise to feelings of fear of "annihilation"," siege by enemies," and "a war of naked survival fought with one's back to the wall" in the later stages of this process. When the situation is seen as increasingly hopeless, those in power who cannot prevent this decline become increasingly aggressive...When the national elite sees...and the process of decline is unstoppable, the countermeasures meant to stop this process acquire a more and more barbaric character. The resort to genocide stands at the apex of this process.

This was the history of the Turks before World War 1. PanTuranism and the ideal of a great Turkish empire became stronger as the disintegration and partition of the empire progressed and the situation grew more hopeless.

The Turks perceived the First World War as an historical opportunity. Those who had suffered defeat and lived through a painful process, including degradation and loss of honor, for years, now saw the looming on the horizon of an historical opportunity to stop the decline from which there was otherwise no escape.

The rapid succession of military debacles the Turks suffered during the first months of World War I had a very sobering effect however. Especially the defeat at Sarikamish, near Kars, in the Anatolian east, in December 1914 and January 1915, burst the Turanian-lslamic dream like a soap bubble. The Ottoman-Turkish rulers could, however, assign blame and identify those responsible for this defeat. The Turks had not really lost; they had been betrayed.

The sudden loss of an historical opportunity that had resulted from the constant military setbacks, humiliations, and losses of self-worth coincided with another historical event. Enemy forces stood at the entrance of the Dardanelles in March, 1915, and with that, the end of the empire was in sight. Without a doubt, this cast a special dark pallor over the mood of the Ottoman leaders. The land, (Anatolia), so quintessential for the survival of the Turks, would be handed over to the Armenians after the defeat. There had been a corresponding plan for reform even before the war. In order to avert such a possible outcome, the Turks had resort to the most ruthless and daring action.

Ottoman-Turkish ruling circles were gripped by the great fear that the end of the empire could become a reality. Their refusal to accept this led to the brutality of the measures they undertook for deliverance. It is probably no accident, however, that the genocide of the Armenians became a compelling issue after the defeat at Sarikamish and at a time when the war for the Dardanelles had become a struggle for life and death."

**1.5 million** · 06-17-2005, 11:54 AM

Taner Ak�am - THE GENOCIDE OF THE ARMENIANS AND THE SILENCE OF THE TURKS

Part 2

Why is discussion of the Arrnenian Genocide a taboo? Why do we Turks have the feeling that lightning has struck our bones whenever the theme is addressed? What are the reasons for this sensitivity and indisposition?

Turkey maintains that it is a completely new state. Official history propounds the thesis that the war of liberation was also directed against the Ottoman rulers. Moreover, a few members of the Ittihad party that organized the genocide were brought before the court in 1926, and some of them were executed. Even if an explanation along the lines of "it is indeed regrettable, but we did not do it, it was the Ottomans" would meet with strong objections, it could be seen as a normal, expected pattern of response.

Since the possibilities of a discussion free from portentous problems are not being pursued, there must be deeper underlying reasons for the extreme reactions, evasions, and denials.

The first and most important point concerns the lack of historical consciousness in Turkish society. I would characterize amnesia as a social disease in Turkey. The inability to remember refers not only to the period of World War I but also to incidents from the 1860s and 1870s that have long since been forgotten.

...the founders of the Turkish Republic have severed our connections and bonds to history.

...the rulers of the new republic had no possibility of linking their newly established nation state, which they fashioned on the principle of Turkish national identity, with the Ottomans. They had to find a new Turkish history for themselves.

Through a series of reforms, this time interval, intended or not, was stricken from memory. The Latin alphabet was introduced with the "revolution" of 1928. Thus future generations were barred access to the written testimony of the past. The Turkification of the language was carried out in such an extreme and rapid fashion that the younger generations can no longer understand the language of the 1930s. Consequently, the relationship to the past and to history became circumscribed by the manner in which a few officially approved history professors defined it. It is difficult to conceive of a society that has no access to what has occurred before 1928. Yet it is true that people cannot even read the diaries of their parents and forebears.

...the "wish to forget history" is directly related to the genocide of the Armenians.

...the genocide...constitutes a social trauma of major proportions.

The reason why the republic is described as a new birth, as a zero point, lies in the psychological crises generated by the legacy of the past and the desire to not remember it. The republic believes that the entire dismal image can be suddenly erased and that the Turks can thus be delivered from a nightmare, from an extremely dangerous, fatal illness. I believe that this frame of mind plays an important role in steering all discussion away from the genocide.

...the official line is that Turkey emerged from a period of upheaval in history from which "a new personality was created from nothing." I maintain here that we have not yet recovered, that we have not yet acquired the "new personality that has divested itself of the spell of the old crises," and that as long as we do not talk about the Armenian Genocide, our chances of creating a new "other" remains rather tenuous.

The desperate effort to avoid any discussion about the genocide is the most telling proof that the assertion regarding the rise of a "completely new and other element" is not a valid one.

The Turks were gripped by powerful impulses of wishful thinking during the years of World War 1. They wanted to free themselves from the shackles of their weak and powerless position, They wanted to establish a new strong hegemony and thereby cast off their feelings of humiliation and disgrace. We can speak of the fact that a strong collective narcissism was developed, primarily through the vehicles of Pan-Turanism and Pan-lslamicism. These needs remained unsatisfied as a result of the Ottoman defeat.

One of the most important reasons for the tabooing of the Armenian Genocide lies in the coupling of this event with the establishment of the republic. To a certain extent, the establishment of the republic depended heavily on the genocide. The founders of the republic knew that, and they were not averse to expressing it openly. For example, one of the leaders of the Ittihad ve Terakki stated: "If we had not cleaned up the eastern provinces of Armenian militia who were cooperating with the Russians, there would have been no possibility of founding our national state."

These "brave" words that the Turkish Republic was built on the genocide of the Armenians were reflections of the enthusiasm of the years during which the Turkish Republic was founded. In the course of time, however, we have sketched out an entirely contrary portrayal. Our nation state "had been created from nothing and in opposition against the imperial forces," an achievement of which we could be proud. The Turkish state was the symbolic proof of a national existence, that "we had dug ourselves" out of the national void "with our fingernails." Anti-imperialism was an indispensable component of our national identity.

One of the most important reasons we go out of our way not to discuss the Armenian Genocide is, therefore, the fear that our faith in ourselves would collapse. The model, the structures of thought that we use to explain the genocide to the world and in Turkey could collapse through such discussions. A discussion of the Armenian Genocide could reveal that this Turkish state was not a result of a war fought against the imperial powers, but, on the contrary, a product of the war against the Greek and Armenian minorities. It could show that a significant part of the National Forces consisted either of murderers who directly participated in the Armenian Genocide or of thieves who had become rich by plundering Armenian possessions.

First, the Turkish national movement was organized by the Ittihad ve Terakki party that had carried out the wartime genocide. It is known that the plans for this movement were already drafted during the First World War. In case of military defeat, preparations were made to organize a long lasting resistance. These plans were carried out in the Armistice of 1918 and thereafter.

An important point is that organizations, such as the "Society for the Defense of the Rights..." and "Rejection of Occupation," that were the mainstay of the forces supporting the national movement in Anatolia, were formed either directly on the order of Talaat Pasha or with the aid of the Karakol (Police Station) organization connected to Talaat and Enver. Of the first five resistance organizations that were founded after the Mudros Armistice agreement, from the 30th of October,1918 to the end of the year, three were directed against the Armenian and two against the Greek minorities.

The second important connection between the genocide and the national movement concerned the formation of a new class of wealthy men in Anatolia who had enriched themselves thanks to the genocide. Even Turks point to the fact that the economic motive played an important role in the Armenian Genocide. An important figure in the national movement, Halide Edip, said, "...there was a strong economic one ... this was to end the economic supremacy of the Armenians thereby clearing the markets for the Turks and the Germans." The prominent people who had enriched themselves through the genocide feared that the Armenians could return to avenge themselves and reclaim their goods.

Among those who had been enriched through the genocide were some who served directly at the side of Kemal himself.

The list can be expanded. It is not surprising, therefore, that on September 22, 1922, the national government repealed a January 8, 1920 law of the Istanbul government concerning the restitution of Armenian goods. This change served to reinstate the law of September, 1915 concerning the Abandoned Goods [of the Armenians]. The government in Ankara knew it had to take into account the interests of those who had a share in the founding of the republic.

The initial organizers of the national movement were people who had directly participated in the enactment of the genocide. Those who set up the first units of the National Forces in the Marmara, Aegean, and Black Sea regions and held important posts in these units were for the most part people sought by the occupation forces and the government in Istanbul for their participation in the genocide. When Kemal began to organize the resistance in Anatolia, he received the strongest support from the Ittihadists for whom there were arrest warrants on account of their role in the genocide.

(Ackam names and details the crimes and eventual Turkish Republic positions of many of these people over the course of several paragraphs)

This list could be extended by several pages. It can be stated conclusively that Mustafa Kemal led "the war of liberation ... with Ittihadists who were sought for Greek and Armenian incidents and ... was supported by and relied on prominent persons who carried the ghost of the Greeks and Armenians into the subculture of the resistance movement.

I think that the tabooing of the Armenian Genocide in a republic whose foundation was created in this way is "understandable." The devastation that would ensue if we had to now stigmatize those whom we regarded as "great saviors" and "people who created a nation from nothing," as "murderers and thieves" is palpable. It seems so much simpler to completely deny the genocide than to seize the initiative and face the obliteration of the ingrained notions about the Republic and our own national identity.

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