Taner Akçam: A shameful Act

[Joseph]

New site:

http://akcam.info/

[Joseph]

AZG Armenian Daily #137, 21/07/2007


Genocide Denial

THE INTIMIDATION CAMPAIGN AGAINST TANER AKCAM

University of Minnesota sociologist-historian Taner Akcam, an
international authority on the 1915 Armenian Genocide, is the target
of an ongoing intimidation campaign to portray him as a convicted
terrorist and a traitor to his native Turkey.

A noted writer and lecturer on Turkish nationalism, the Armenian
Genocide, and Armenian-Turkish dialogue, Prof. Akcam relocated to the
United States in 2001, the year that his writings began to appear in
English and the campaign against him was launched in response.

In a sensational commentary published by the Washington, DC-based
Assembly of Turkish American Associations, Akcam was denounced as
a mastermind of terrorist violence, including the assassinations
of American and NATO military personnel. Disseminated online by the
19,000-member Turkish Forum and posted since 2004 at the influential
Genocide-denialist site Tall Armenian Tale, these allegations were soon
copied to well over 10,000 Web pages, including Akcam's book reviews
at Amazon and his persistently vandalized biography at Wikipedia. He
began receiving death threats after Turkish Forum posted his contact
information so that readers could "send greetings to this traitor."

Following the November 2006 publication of Akcam's critically acclaimed
study, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of
Turkish Responsibility, the campaign intensified. Akcam's lectures
and book tour were violently disrupted, and poison-pen letters were
emailed to the hosting universities. Tellingly, a planned disruption at
Yeshiva University was called off after conference organizers appealed
to the Turkish Consulate in New York. In February 2007, en route to
lecture at McGill University Law School, Akcam was detained in the
Montreal airport for nearly four hours on suspicion of terrorism. He
was shown, as evidence, his vandalized Wikipedia biography.

Just one month before the Montreal incident, the assassination of
Akcam's friend and colleague, Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink,
had put Turkey's intellectuals on high alert. They knew that in the
months before his murder, Dink had been targeted as a traitor by an
increasingly vicious media campaign. Leading the pack was Hurriyet,
one of the most widely read newspapers in Turkey.

In May 2007, citing the heightened danger to his own life,
Akcam unmasked the secretive Webmaster of Tall Armenian Tale as
Turkish-American illustrator Murad "Holdwater" Gumen of New York
City. Death threats and denunciations followed. Hurriyet portrayed
Akcam as a cowardly traitor who "vomits hate towards our country." No
attempt was made to interview him, and his letter to the editor
was ignored.

"Once again, intellectuals and activists who dare to question the
government's 'official history' are being put on notice," said Akcam
on July 16. "This shameful campaign not only endangers my life and
the lives of my colleagues, my family and friends; ironically enough,
the very notion of free expression is being undermined by the very
institution that depends on it most: the public press.

"And what is the point, after all?" he continued. "I published a
scholarly study that deviated from the official position of the
Turkish State. One should ask the Turkish authorities whether they
truly believe that shooting the messenger will prove that their
position on 1915 is the correct one."

[Gavur]

Taner Akçam: Letter of the CCAF with Nicolas Sarkozy

Translated version

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.armenews.com/&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=9&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3DTurquie%2Barm%25C3%25A9nien%2B%26hl%3Den%26rlz%3D1T4ADBR_enUS212%26sa%3DG

Mr. President of the Republic,

Knowing your determination to be made respect everywhere in the world the universal values to which our Republic is attached, I would like to draw your attention to the risks of assassination which currently runs the eminent historian and Turkish sociologist Taner Akçam of the University of Minnesota.

Professor Akçam, one of the first researchers Turkish to have devoted itself to the study of Turkish nationalism and the genocide of 1915, has, seems it, “made the fault” of publishing a book based on his research task, acclaimed by criticism, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, and to reveal the identity of the mysterious webmaster of a site extremely virulent Turkish negationnist based in the United States (Tall Armenian Bruises).

It has been for several months the object of a campaign calls to the lynching which intensified these last weeks, carried out at the same time by the daily newspaper influence Hürriyet (also sold in France, and in other countries), which describes it as “traitor who vomits his hatred of the fatherland”, and by Internet sites which diffuse its address by inviting the readers “to send greetings to this traitor”. It receives death threats, was physically attacked and cannot carry out any more lecture tours without protection. It has even due to give up taking part in a conference in Berlin.

What is particularly alarming is that an identical campaign, in same Hürriyet, and on behalf of same Internet sites, had preceded the assassination by the journalist arméno-Turkish Hrant Dink. All lets fear a similar exit, including on the American territory. It is what says Taner Akçam itself in an interview published by Yeni-Aktüel, where it specifies that Internet site in question, received information relating to its arrests of the years 1970 (for joining of posters and militant activities) that only the prefectures of police force in Turkey could hold, which according to him proves the active participation of certain elements of the State. http://www.yeniaktuel.com.tr/tur110,[email protected]

Such calls to lynching, with similar means, are inadmissible whatever the target but it is here moreover about an attack to the scientific freedom of research. One can of the remainder think that this type of intimidation could be also exerted in France.

Professor Akçam launched a call (herewith) relayed by a Committee of support which has just been born and within this framework, a true mobilization citizen starts to organize himself, in particular and especially in France.

Also, would it be possible that the French Republic, by the way of its Ambassador in Ankara and also that of its partners within the European Union, can announce to the Turkish government the legitimate concerns caused by such a situation? It becomes indeed extremely urgent that all measurements can be taken to put an end to the smear campaign, aggressions, harassing and call to lynching carried out against Mr. Akçam and that its safety like that of its close relations, as well as other threatened intellectuals, is assured.

With my thanks anticipated for all the attention that you will want to carry well to present I remain sincerely yours

On July 25, 2007.

Alexis GOVCIYAN President of the CCAF (the Council of coordination of the Armenian organizations of France).

[Joseph]

TURKISH SCHOLAR SUES TO OVERTURN LAW ON 'DENIGRATING TURKISHNESS'

Chronicle of Higher Education

http://chronicle.com/news/article/2774/turkish-scholar-sues-to-overturn-law-on-denigrating-turkishness

July 31 2007

A scholar at the University of Minnesota's Center for Holocaust &
Genocide Studies has filed a case with the European Court of Human
Rights that he says is the first attempt to overturn through that
legal channel a controversial provision of Turkey's penal code that
criminalizes "denigrating Turkishness."

Taner Akcam, a Turkish sociologist and historian, has faced retribution
in his home country for his academic work about the killing of as
many as 1.5 million Armenians during the waning days of the Ottoman
Empire, which modern Turkish governments have refused to characterize
as genocide. Mr. Akcam has been outspoken in his willingness to do
so, in for example his most recent book, A Shameful Act, which was
published last year, and he has come under attack as a result.

He was charged under Article 301 of Turkey's penal code, which has
been used frequently against journalists, academics, and writers,
and which Amnesty International says "poses a direct threat to the
fundamental right to freedom of expression."

Hrant Dink, a journalist of Armenian origin who was also charged
under Article 301, was killed earlier this year. Elif Shafak, an
assistant professor of Turkish and women's studies at the University
of Arizona, was acquitted last year of Article 301 charges stemming
from her latest novel.

Mr. Akcam was charged with Article 301 violations when he wrote
an article in support of Mr. Dink, a friend, before his death, and
he says that he has also received many death threats and has been
subjected to online harassment, for example through false entries in
his online Wikipedia biography.

[Alexandros]

Akcam: I Have Never Been So Scared


Historian Taner Akcam, of Minnesota University, is receiving death threats because he terms the events of 1915 a "genocide". He has described the threats as a threat to the freedom of expression.


BIA News Center
09/08/2007


BİA (Minnesota) - Prof. Dr. Taner Akcam of the history department at Minnesota University has declared that he fears for his life since receiving death threats per email.

In his academic work, he has consistently described the events of 1915 a "genocide".


Persecution by newspaper

Researching the source of the threats, Akcam has found a person with the assumed name "Holdwater".

The "Hürriyet" newspaper reported on this, saying that Akcam was "targeting a person who was opposing his Armenian theses". The newspaper has published a string of news items on Akcam.

Akcam told bianet over the Internet that "Hürriyet" did not give him the opportunity to have a say. The same reporters who claim that he is "making himself scarce" had no problems contacting him when a bridge collapsed in Minnesota recently.


"Very frightened"

What frightens Akcam is the connection between the email threats and the "Hürriyet"'s campaign and the fact that the newspaper was able to claim in its headlines that he was "making himself scarce". "I have overcome much danger, but I don't remember being this scared", he said.

"When they created that headline, they did not call anywhere. They did not attempt to find me. This is a very frightening situation for me", he continued.

He added that he could not but find mysterious similarities with the lynch campaign against journalist Hrant Dink before his murder.

On 11 June, Akcam received an anonymous email, saying, "Today we have started the struggle against you and those creatures you call friends. If we do not get results, we will use alternative measures. For the peace and truth in the world it is better if sewer germs like you are eradicated...Tomorrow will be much more difficult for you...Pray that the devil takes you at once, or you will experience hell on earth...

The message continued, "You think you know who 'Holdwater' is. From now on, the world will be full of millions of Holdwaters. One day you and your Armenian blood brothers will drown in a sea of Holdwaters..."


"You will find out who I am"

The message ended, "Who am I? That you will find out, Taner, you will find out."

Akcam has drawn attention to frightening similarities between the language of the email threat and the newspaper publications. The publications started ten days after he received the message.

Akcam argues that the "Hürriyet" newspaper has ignored the most basic principles of journalism in its publications.

In a statement on 16 July, he had said: "Again, intellectuals and activists brave enough to question the state's official history are being warned. This shameful campaign does not only threaten me, my family and my colleagues. It makes light of the freedom of expression." (EÖ/AG)

source

[Joseph]

Akcam: I Have Never Been So Scared


Historian Taner Akcam, of Minnesota University, is receiving death threats because he terms the events of 1915 a "genocide". He has described the threats as a threat to the freedom of expression.


BIA News Center
09/08/2007


B?A (Minnesota) - Prof. Dr. Taner Akcam of the history department at Minnesota University has declared that he fears for his life since receiving death threats per email.

In his academic work, he has consistently described the events of 1915 a "genocide".


Persecution by newspaper

Researching the source of the threats, Akcam has found a person with the assumed name "Holdwater".

The "Hürriyet" newspaper reported on this, saying that Akcam was "targeting a person who was opposing his Armenian theses". The newspaper has published a string of news items on Akcam.

Akcam told bianet over the Internet that "Hürriyet" did not give him the opportunity to have a say. The same reporters who claim that he is "making himself scarce" had no problems contacting him when a bridge collapsed in Minnesota recently.


"Very frightened"

What frightens Akcam is the connection between the email threats and the "Hürriyet"'s campaign and the fact that the newspaper was able to claim in its headlines that he was "making himself scarce". "I have overcome much danger, but I don't remember being this scared", he said.

"When they created that headline, they did not call anywhere. They did not attempt to find me. This is a very frightening situation for me", he continued.

He added that he could not but find mysterious similarities with the lynch campaign against journalist Hrant Dink before his murder.

On 11 June, Akcam received an anonymous email, saying, "Today we have started the struggle against you and those creatures you call friends. If we do not get results, we will use alternative measures. For the peace and truth in the world it is better if sewer germs like you are eradicated...Tomorrow will be much more difficult for you...Pray that the devil takes you at once, or you will experience hell on earth...

The message continued, "You think you know who 'Holdwater' is. From now on, the world will be full of millions of Holdwaters. One day you and your Armenian blood brothers will drown in a sea of Holdwaters..."


"You will find out who I am"

The message ended, "Who am I? That you will find out, Taner, you will find out."

Akcam has drawn attention to frightening similarities between the language of the email threat and the newspaper publications. The publications started ten days after he received the message.

Akcam argues that the "Hürriyet" newspaper has ignored the most basic principles of journalism in its publications.

In a statement on 16 July, he had said: "Again, intellectuals and activists brave enough to question the state's official history are being warned. This shameful campaign does not only threaten me, my family and my colleagues. It makes light of the freedom of expression." (EÖ/AG)

source

Poor guy. I hold him in very high esteem and hope these are only idle threats but after Hrant Dink, the Christian missionaries and the Catholic priests, I would also probably take them seriously. Hopefully he stays in the US for now under guard. A curse on the houses of those that would try to murder Taner Akcam, a curse on them and their whole murderous and barbaric lot.

[Joseph]

For immediate release.

Distributed by Dennis R. Papazian
201-505-1591

The Intimidation Campaign Against Taner Akçam

University of Minnesota sociologist-historian Taner Akçam, an international authority on the 1915 Armenian Genocide, is the target of an ongoing intimidation campaign to portray him as a convicted terrorist and a traitor to his native Turkey.
A noted writer and lecturer on Turkish nationalism, the Armenian Genocide, and Armenian-Turkish dialogue, Prof. Akçam relocated to the United States in 2001, the year that his writings began to appear in English and the campaign against him was launched in response.
In a sensational commentary published by the Washington, DC–based Assembly of Turkish American Associations, Akçam was denounced as a mastermind of terrorist violence, including the assassinations of American and NATO military personnel. Disseminated online by the 19,000-member Turkish Forum and posted since 2004 at the influential Genocide-denialist site Tall Armenian Tale, these allegations were soon copied to well over 10,000 Web pages, including Akçam’s book reviews at Amazon and his persistently vandalized biography at Wikipedia. He began receiving death threats after Turkish Forum posted his contact information so that readers could “send greetings to this traitor.”
Following the November 2006 publication of Akçam’s critically acclaimed study, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, the campaign intensified. Akçam’s lectures and book tour were violently disrupted, and poison-pen letters were emailed to the hosting universities. Tellingly, a planned disruption at Yeshiva University was called off after conference organizers appealed to the Turkish Consulate in New York. In February 2007, en route to lecture at McGill University Law School, Akçam was detained in the Montreal airport for nearly four hours on suspicion of terrorism. He was shown, as evidence, his vandalized Wikipedia biography.
Just one month before the Montreal incident, the assassination of Akçam’s friend and colleague, Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, had put Turkey’s intellectuals on high alert. They knew that in the months before his murder, Dink had been targeted as a traitor by an increasingly vicious media campaign. Leading the pack was Hürriyet, one of the most widely read newspapers in Turkey.
In May 2007, citing the heightened danger to his own life, Akçam unmasked the secretive Webmaster of Tall Armenian Tale as Turkish-American illustrator Murad “Holdwater” Gümen of New York City. Death threats and denunciations followed. Hürriyet portrayed Akçam as a cowardly traitor who “vomits hate towards our country.” No attempt was made to interview him, and his letter to the editor was ignored.
“Once again, intellectuals and activists who dare to question the government’s ‘official history’ are being put on notice,” said Akçam on July 16. “This shameful campaign not only endangers my life and the lives of my colleagues, my family and friends; ironically enough, the very notion of free expression is being undermined by the very institution that depends on it most: the public press.
“And what is the point, after all?” he continued. “I published a scholarly study that deviated from the official position of the Turkish State. One should ask the Turkish authorities whether they truly believe that shooting the messenger will prove that their position on 1915 is the correct one.”

July 17, 2007 Contact: Prof. Taner Akçam, [email protected] , (612) 624-2988

[Joseph]

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a779083286~db=all?tab=references

History and the Nation: The Legacy of Taner Akçam's Work on Ottoman Armenians

Author: Nergis Canefe
DOI: 10.1080/13608740701306664
Publication Frequency: 4 issues per year
Published in: South European Society and Politics, Volume 12, Issue 2 June 2007 , pages 237 - 246
Subjects: European Politics; European Studies;
Formats available: HTML (English) : PDF (English)
Sign In
Online Sample

Order Reprints
References

This article has 5 references. You must have access to this article in order to view its references.

[Joseph]

The Chronicle of Higher Education
August 10, 2007 Friday
INTERNATIONAL; Pg. 26 Vol. 53 No. 49



Turkish Scholar Challenges Penal Code

AISHA LABI


A scholar at the University of Minnesota's Center for Holocaust &
Genocide Studies has filed a case with the European Court of Human
Rights that he says is the first attempt to overturn through that
legal channel a controversial provision of Turkey's penal code that
criminalizes "denigrating Turkishness."

Taner Akçam, a Turkish sociologist and historian, has faced
retribution in his home country for his academic work about the
killing of as many as 1.5 million Armenians during the waning days of
the Ottoman Empire, which modern Turkish governments have refused to
characterize as genocide.

Mr. Akçam has been outspoken in his willingness to do so, in, for
example, his most recent book, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide
and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, which was published last
year. He has come under attack as a result.

He was charged under Article 301 of Turkey's penal code, which has
been used frequently against journalists, academics, and writers, and
which Amnesty International says "poses a direct threat to the
fundamental right to freedom of expression."

Hrant Dink, a journalist of Armenian origin who was also charged
under Article 301, was killed by nationalist extremists this year.
Elif Shafak, an assistant professor of Turkish and women's studies at
the University of Arizona, was acquitted last year of Article 301
charges stemming from her latest novel.

[Joseph]

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/history/article2277131.ece

The Times
August 18, 2007
History that dares to speak its name
Giles Whittell talks to a writer whose view of the past has put his life at risk

IT’S 9.30AM IN MINNEAPOLIS. The bridge over the Mississippi that used to take Taner Akçam to work won’t be rebuilt for a year, but that’s not what’s vexing him. His problem is the Turkish Secret Service.

Professor Akçam is a Turk and an historian. In 1999, 84 years after the event, he completed a harrowing doorstop of a book on the Armenian genocide – densely factual and unsparing of the Turkish culprits – now published in English. As a result, he is being hounded from Istanbul to his Midwestern academic exile by ultranationalists from his home-land . . . and by spooks.

That’s his theory, anyway. How else to explain what happened in Montreal in February when he was detained by airport police who said that they had grounds to suspect he was a terrorist. Those grounds turned out to be hostile postings on amazon. com and his own Wikipedia page, doctored by people who had also, apparently, not only alerted precisely the airport personnel who would be handling Akçam’s flight, but also had information on the historian’s past, including a 1974 arrest for protesting at Turkey’s invasion of northern Cyprus, that had never had been in the media.

So who gave the tip-off? Akçam laughs wearily. He doesn’t know. “But my arrival was known of by the Turkish consul. He was even invited to my lecture.”

There might be something comical about this Wiki-assisted harassment – except that two weeks earlier, Akçam’s friend and fellow intellectual, the Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor Hrant Dink, was murdered in broad daylight on an Istanbul street. His crime, like Akçam, was to have used the “G-word” to refer to the state-sponsored murder of between 300,000 and 1.3 million Anatolian Armenians in 1915 with the term reserved by the 1948 UN convention on genocide.

Akçam foretold his friend’s death to his face a few days earlier. They were in Istanbul, chatting about a presidential campaign that was fuelling tensions between nationalists and liberals. “I told Hrant there would be political assassinations,” Akçam remembers. “And I told him, ‘Hrant, if I made a list of the people who will be assassinated I would put you No 1. Please leave Turkey, at least until the end of the election.’ He didn’t want to. He was, I think, expecting his death.”

For his own part, even in Minneapolis, even after 30 years of opposition to Turkey’s denial of responsibility for the genocide, Akçam says he has never been as scared as he is now.

Next week he travels to the Edinburgh Book Festival to talk about the the fight for freedom of expression. The prospect of travel is hardly soothing, “but I have to do it because it is what they want us not to do. They want us to shut up and sit down.”

He is not talking about Turkey’s elected government, but the unelected military and bureaucratic hierarchies he blames for a “culture of hatred and animosity” towards an honest reckoning with the past.

He says that he feels that hatred whenever he returns to Istanbul, which is about once a year. Once spotted by the nationalist press, the vilification starts swiftly. He is branded a traitor, a foreign agent and a liar, even though he is the only Turkish historian to have based his analysis of 1915 on official Ottoman documents.

“On the second or third day you get the feeling that you should not be showing yourself much in public.”

Small wonder that of his fellow historians inside Turkey, almost none are actively researching topics related to the Armenian question.

This is Turkey, a nation three years ago accepted as a candidate for EU accession and which could be a member by 2015. Shouldn’t it show that it can uphold the most basic democratic freedoms and then reapply?

Absolutely not, says Akçam. For the EU to go cold on Turkish membership now would be to set the country on “the path to authoritarianism”. Membership offers the only hope of cutting down the unelected hierarchies and ending official denials.

Seven years ago, Professor Akçam sued his critics for libel for calling him a German spy. In January, he lost on appeal. “So the ultimate decision from the judiciary is that it is the right of everybody to accuse me of being on the payroll of the German government because I am using the genocide term. This is outrageous. You cannot criminalise talking about history. It is unbelievable.” And, for a man whose only crime was to brave his country’s archives, very frightening.

A SHAMEFUL ACT: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility by Taner Akçam

Constable and Robinson, £9.99; 600pp

Buy the book here at the offer price of £8.99 (free p&p)

Taner Akçam is at the at Edinburgh International Book Festival on Monday August 27 at 11am. Call 0845 3735888 www.edbookfest.co.uk