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AKCAM: ARMENIAN GENOCIDE WAS CULMINATION OF ETHNIC CLEANSING PERPETRATED BY TURKS
PanARMENIAN.Net
11.04.2007 12:42 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ On March 29, over 300 students, faculty, and
community members gathered at Ramapo College to hear Taner Akcam speak
out on the first genocide of the twentieth century. For over an hour,
Akcam linked the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1917 to Ottoman Turkey's
population policy implemented on the eve of World War I to maintain
Turkish hegemony over a diminished and endangered empire. The event was
sponsored by Ramapo College's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
and the Armenian National Committee of New Jersey, the ANCA reports.
One of the first Turkish academics to acknowledge and discuss openly
the Armenian Genocide, Akcam based his talk was on his book A Shameful
Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility.
Acclaimed by Nobel Laureate in Literature Orhan Pamuk as "...the
definitive account of the organized destruction of the Ottoman
Armenians written by a brave Turkish scholar who has devoted his life
to chronicling the events," it was published by Metropolitan Books last
November. Making extensive use of Ottoman and other sources previously
unused by historians of any nationality, Akcam placed the genocide
within the context of Turkish nationalism. He showed an empire in a
state of collapse that is plagued by dissension and contradiction. In
its dying breath, as Akcam's research bears out, it lashed out against
and attempted to constrain its ethnic and religious minorities.
The Turkish government adopted a policy of "ethnic cleansing" Greeks
and Albanians were deported from southwestern Turkey, while Moslem
Kurds, Central Asians and Arabs were moved from their domiciles in
the eastern Turkey and subject to Turkification. The culmination of
this process was the first of the 20th Century's genocides in which
over a million Armenian men, women and children lost their lives and
livelihoods through organized killing, rape, and deportation.
Taner Akcam was born in the province of Ardahan, Turkey, in 1953. He
became interested in Turkish politics at an early age. As the editor
in chief of a student political journal, he was arrested in 1976 and
sentenced to ten years imprisonment. Amnesty International adopted
him as one of their first prisoners of conscience, and a year
later he escaped by digging a tunnel with a stove leg and fled to
Germany, where he received political asylum. In 1988, Akcam began
work as a research scientist at the Hamburg Institute for Social
Research. While researching the late Ottoman Empire and early Republic,
especially the history of political violence and torture in Turkey,
he became interested in the Armenian genocide. In 1996 he received
his doctorate from the University of Hanover with a dissertation
entitled "The Turkish National Movement and the Armenian Genocide
Against the Background of the Military Tribunals in Istanbul Between
1919 and 1922."
Since 2002 he has been a visiting associate professor of history at
the University of Minnesota.
PanARMENIAN.Net
11.04.2007 12:42 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ On March 29, over 300 students, faculty, and
community members gathered at Ramapo College to hear Taner Akcam speak
out on the first genocide of the twentieth century. For over an hour,
Akcam linked the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1917 to Ottoman Turkey's
population policy implemented on the eve of World War I to maintain
Turkish hegemony over a diminished and endangered empire. The event was
sponsored by Ramapo College's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
and the Armenian National Committee of New Jersey, the ANCA reports.
One of the first Turkish academics to acknowledge and discuss openly
the Armenian Genocide, Akcam based his talk was on his book A Shameful
Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility.
Acclaimed by Nobel Laureate in Literature Orhan Pamuk as "...the
definitive account of the organized destruction of the Ottoman
Armenians written by a brave Turkish scholar who has devoted his life
to chronicling the events," it was published by Metropolitan Books last
November. Making extensive use of Ottoman and other sources previously
unused by historians of any nationality, Akcam placed the genocide
within the context of Turkish nationalism. He showed an empire in a
state of collapse that is plagued by dissension and contradiction. In
its dying breath, as Akcam's research bears out, it lashed out against
and attempted to constrain its ethnic and religious minorities.
The Turkish government adopted a policy of "ethnic cleansing" Greeks
and Albanians were deported from southwestern Turkey, while Moslem
Kurds, Central Asians and Arabs were moved from their domiciles in
the eastern Turkey and subject to Turkification. The culmination of
this process was the first of the 20th Century's genocides in which
over a million Armenian men, women and children lost their lives and
livelihoods through organized killing, rape, and deportation.
Taner Akcam was born in the province of Ardahan, Turkey, in 1953. He
became interested in Turkish politics at an early age. As the editor
in chief of a student political journal, he was arrested in 1976 and
sentenced to ten years imprisonment. Amnesty International adopted
him as one of their first prisoners of conscience, and a year
later he escaped by digging a tunnel with a stove leg and fled to
Germany, where he received political asylum. In 1988, Akcam began
work as a research scientist at the Hamburg Institute for Social
Research. While researching the late Ottoman Empire and early Republic,
especially the history of political violence and torture in Turkey,
he became interested in the Armenian genocide. In 1996 he received
his doctorate from the University of Hanover with a dissertation
entitled "The Turkish National Movement and the Armenian Genocide
Against the Background of the Military Tribunals in Istanbul Between
1919 and 1922."
Since 2002 he has been a visiting associate professor of history at
the University of Minnesota.