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THE HISTORIAN AT WAR WITH 'HISTORY'
Miles Johnson
http://living.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1 328472007
Wed 22 Aug 2007
Taner Akcam whose views have led to death threats
THE houses of history, it is said, are built on unstable foundations,
constantly riven by debates over what the study of the past actually
is and what it can hope ever to achieve. But for Taner Akcam,
those debates are nothing to do with academic self-indulgence,
and everything to do with whether what he writes will cost him his
freedom or his life.
As one of the first Turkish historians to acknowledge the existence of
the Armenian Genocide of 1915, his scholarship has been attacked with
the full weight of the Turkish state, which for the last 82 years waged
a full-scale war against the memory of more than a million Armenians
murdered by the Ottoman government during the First World War.
The Armenian Genocide, the subject to which Taner Akcam has devoted
his life's work, is widely seen as one of the "forgotten" genocides
of the 20th Century. In his book A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide
and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, Akcam explores the reasons
for the Turkish state's continued denial of the events of 1915. Born
in Ardahan Province in 1953, he was imprisoned for nine years as
a student for writing in a journal about the treatment of Turkey's
Kurdish minority, a sentence which led to his being recognised by
Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience.
After managing to escape, claiming asylum in Germany, he subsequently
studied for his PhD on the Armenian Genocide at the University of
Hamburg and, after writing numerous articles and several books,
is now a visiting history professor at Minnesota University.
The past he writes of is a brutal one. During the First World War
the government of the Ottoman Empire, a crumbling multi-ethnic state
that had suffered heavy territorial losses after the Balkan wars of
1912/13, was responsible for the forcible deportation of its Armenian
community, resulting in the death of over a million people. Before
these desperate days, the final Sultans of the "Sick Man of Europe"
adopted different strategies to contain the growing nationalism in
the Empire's disparate ethnic communities. Five years after the Young
Turk cabal of officers seized power in 1908, the shock of losing
the majority of their most valuable land in the Balkans saw these
strategies replaced by an exclusive pan-Turkism.
This was a worldview that had no place for the Armenian Christians who
had resided in Anatolia for a thousand years, and after the Empire's
entry into the First World War a decision was taken to annihilate
its Armenian population. Today there are little more than 50,000
Armenians left in Turkey.
Hitler, as it is often quoted, uttered these words before his invasion
of Poland: "Who remembers the Armenians?" And indeed the Turkish
state has continued to strive to ensure that the disappearance of its
Armenian population remains a secret. For Akcam, the recognition of
Turkey's historical wrongdoing would pave the way for the further
democratisation of a Republic that has long been subject to the
whims of the military since its establishment in 1923. But, in his
view, the driving force behind his government's continued refusal
to acknowledge its past is the threat this would present to its own
foundational mythology.
"There is a strong connection between the foundation of the Turkish
Republic and the Armenian Genocide", he says. "Important founding
members of the Republic were either participating in the genocide
directly or became rich as a result of it. For us, like any other
nation, it is not so easy to call the generation of our founding
fathers thieves and murderers. It is like Jefferson owning slaves. You
cannot write a national history based on this accusation, and this
is the basic problem." Akcam hopes that the acknowledgement of the
genocide by the Turkish government would pave the way to further
democratisation and its entry into the European Union, a process that
has been disrupted in recent years by extreme nationalists and the
powerful influence of the military.
It is in this difficult relationship that he also sees the potential
for a self-reflection that is so far yet to happen. "Turkey has a
chance in this regard too," he says. "The founding father of Turkey,
Mustapha Kemal Ataturk, openly condemned the genocide as 'a shameful
act', hence the title of my book. This could, and should, encourage
Turkey to have the same position as their founding father and start
from there."
Yet it is Akcam's intimacy with his homeland that has resulted in
the wrath of Turkish nationalist groups. Unlike other writers
he cannot simply be discounted as an Armenian propagandist
or "imperialist". Today is a tumultuous time for Turkish
intellectuals. After the assassination of the Turkish-Armenian
journalist Hrant Dink in January, targeted for his discussion of the
genocide, they have been on high alert, granted police protection by
the state that for the first time appears to take seriously the death
threats from the ultra-nationalist Right. Since the publication of
his book last year Akcam, though a resident of the United States,
has been the subject of a co-ordinated campaign eerily reminiscent
of the build-up to the murder of his friend Dink.
Much of this intimidation takes place on the internet where Akcam has
received death threats via e-mail and, as a result of his Wikipedia
biography being vandalised, was detained by immigration en route to a
lecture in Canada for being a "terrorist". "I take these threats very
seriously because we are all, the Turkish intellectuals, paralysed
after Hrant's assassination. We see everything within that context. In
January when I was in Ankara, in Hrant Dink's office, he was showing
me the threatening e-mails he was getting and saying that he was
apprehensive and that he was scared. He was also saying that through
the campaign in the press they made him an open target. I am worried
this will happen to me."
His temporary detention in Canada occurred after unfounded allegations
that he was a "terrorist" were spread throughout Internet forums by the
anonymous Turkish American "webmaster" of a denialist website. As the
lies spread a number of individuals began to vandalise his Wikipedia
page, which eventually ended up in the hands of the Canadian
authorities. It was after this incident, and attempted physical
assaults at several of his lectures, that he took the decision to
unmask the shady webmaster co-ordinating the campaign. The result,
a full-blown personal attack by the largest Turkish daily newspaper
Hurriyet, was a consequence he could not have expected.
"To be honest I never suspected this figure was getting such big
support from Turkey," he says. "It means I maybe hit important members
of the Turkish Secret Service in America, or somebody else who has
very strong connections in Turkey. After I revealed his identity I
got a death threat via e-mail where the person said they are going
after me and my friends in Turkey, that they will get them first and
then come for me. One week after this e-mail, as if there is no other
important news in Turkey, the biggest newspaper in the country wrote
this article with my picture on the first page."
The Hurriyet article was a vicious personal attack stating, among
other allegations, that he was a traitor "vomiting hatred towards
his country".
"When I saw this I thought this is unbelievable, unimaginable. That
the biggest Turkish newspaper writes that I am working against Turkey
and a betrayer of the nation, it is a really incriminating campaign
designed to criminalise me and my scholarly work. It makes me a target,
as they did with Hrant Dink."
It has been said quite dryly that the Turkish intelligentsia are in
a strange position in the modern world, where non-intellectuals pay
close attention to what they write, none more so than the state's
lawyers. Such scrutiny falls upon anyone who dares to attach the 'G
word' to the events of 1915. Article 301 of the Turkish penal code,
the law that prohibits "insulting Turkishness" became famous outside
of the country last year when an attempted prosecution was brought
against the Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk for mentioning the "Armenian
Question" in a magazine interview.
In spite of such laws and the death threats he has received, Taner
Akcam continues to teach and lecture on the events of 1915. It is
through an acknowledgement by the Turkish government of the crimes
of the past that he hopes his country will build a better future
and further the process of an open society. "Just a few days before
the recent election the Turkish Prime Minister sent a decree to all
governmental agencies inside and outside of Turkey banning the usage
of the term 'so-called genocide'," he says. "This is the official
language Turkey used when describing 1915, a hugely insulting term
to Armenians, and now they will stop. It is these things, the small
but important steps, that mean I will always have hope."
Miles Johnson
http://living.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1 328472007
Wed 22 Aug 2007
Taner Akcam whose views have led to death threats
THE houses of history, it is said, are built on unstable foundations,
constantly riven by debates over what the study of the past actually
is and what it can hope ever to achieve. But for Taner Akcam,
those debates are nothing to do with academic self-indulgence,
and everything to do with whether what he writes will cost him his
freedom or his life.
As one of the first Turkish historians to acknowledge the existence of
the Armenian Genocide of 1915, his scholarship has been attacked with
the full weight of the Turkish state, which for the last 82 years waged
a full-scale war against the memory of more than a million Armenians
murdered by the Ottoman government during the First World War.
The Armenian Genocide, the subject to which Taner Akcam has devoted
his life's work, is widely seen as one of the "forgotten" genocides
of the 20th Century. In his book A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide
and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, Akcam explores the reasons
for the Turkish state's continued denial of the events of 1915. Born
in Ardahan Province in 1953, he was imprisoned for nine years as
a student for writing in a journal about the treatment of Turkey's
Kurdish minority, a sentence which led to his being recognised by
Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience.
After managing to escape, claiming asylum in Germany, he subsequently
studied for his PhD on the Armenian Genocide at the University of
Hamburg and, after writing numerous articles and several books,
is now a visiting history professor at Minnesota University.
The past he writes of is a brutal one. During the First World War
the government of the Ottoman Empire, a crumbling multi-ethnic state
that had suffered heavy territorial losses after the Balkan wars of
1912/13, was responsible for the forcible deportation of its Armenian
community, resulting in the death of over a million people. Before
these desperate days, the final Sultans of the "Sick Man of Europe"
adopted different strategies to contain the growing nationalism in
the Empire's disparate ethnic communities. Five years after the Young
Turk cabal of officers seized power in 1908, the shock of losing
the majority of their most valuable land in the Balkans saw these
strategies replaced by an exclusive pan-Turkism.
This was a worldview that had no place for the Armenian Christians who
had resided in Anatolia for a thousand years, and after the Empire's
entry into the First World War a decision was taken to annihilate
its Armenian population. Today there are little more than 50,000
Armenians left in Turkey.
Hitler, as it is often quoted, uttered these words before his invasion
of Poland: "Who remembers the Armenians?" And indeed the Turkish
state has continued to strive to ensure that the disappearance of its
Armenian population remains a secret. For Akcam, the recognition of
Turkey's historical wrongdoing would pave the way for the further
democratisation of a Republic that has long been subject to the
whims of the military since its establishment in 1923. But, in his
view, the driving force behind his government's continued refusal
to acknowledge its past is the threat this would present to its own
foundational mythology.
"There is a strong connection between the foundation of the Turkish
Republic and the Armenian Genocide", he says. "Important founding
members of the Republic were either participating in the genocide
directly or became rich as a result of it. For us, like any other
nation, it is not so easy to call the generation of our founding
fathers thieves and murderers. It is like Jefferson owning slaves. You
cannot write a national history based on this accusation, and this
is the basic problem." Akcam hopes that the acknowledgement of the
genocide by the Turkish government would pave the way to further
democratisation and its entry into the European Union, a process that
has been disrupted in recent years by extreme nationalists and the
powerful influence of the military.
It is in this difficult relationship that he also sees the potential
for a self-reflection that is so far yet to happen. "Turkey has a
chance in this regard too," he says. "The founding father of Turkey,
Mustapha Kemal Ataturk, openly condemned the genocide as 'a shameful
act', hence the title of my book. This could, and should, encourage
Turkey to have the same position as their founding father and start
from there."
Yet it is Akcam's intimacy with his homeland that has resulted in
the wrath of Turkish nationalist groups. Unlike other writers
he cannot simply be discounted as an Armenian propagandist
or "imperialist". Today is a tumultuous time for Turkish
intellectuals. After the assassination of the Turkish-Armenian
journalist Hrant Dink in January, targeted for his discussion of the
genocide, they have been on high alert, granted police protection by
the state that for the first time appears to take seriously the death
threats from the ultra-nationalist Right. Since the publication of
his book last year Akcam, though a resident of the United States,
has been the subject of a co-ordinated campaign eerily reminiscent
of the build-up to the murder of his friend Dink.
Much of this intimidation takes place on the internet where Akcam has
received death threats via e-mail and, as a result of his Wikipedia
biography being vandalised, was detained by immigration en route to a
lecture in Canada for being a "terrorist". "I take these threats very
seriously because we are all, the Turkish intellectuals, paralysed
after Hrant's assassination. We see everything within that context. In
January when I was in Ankara, in Hrant Dink's office, he was showing
me the threatening e-mails he was getting and saying that he was
apprehensive and that he was scared. He was also saying that through
the campaign in the press they made him an open target. I am worried
this will happen to me."
His temporary detention in Canada occurred after unfounded allegations
that he was a "terrorist" were spread throughout Internet forums by the
anonymous Turkish American "webmaster" of a denialist website. As the
lies spread a number of individuals began to vandalise his Wikipedia
page, which eventually ended up in the hands of the Canadian
authorities. It was after this incident, and attempted physical
assaults at several of his lectures, that he took the decision to
unmask the shady webmaster co-ordinating the campaign. The result,
a full-blown personal attack by the largest Turkish daily newspaper
Hurriyet, was a consequence he could not have expected.
"To be honest I never suspected this figure was getting such big
support from Turkey," he says. "It means I maybe hit important members
of the Turkish Secret Service in America, or somebody else who has
very strong connections in Turkey. After I revealed his identity I
got a death threat via e-mail where the person said they are going
after me and my friends in Turkey, that they will get them first and
then come for me. One week after this e-mail, as if there is no other
important news in Turkey, the biggest newspaper in the country wrote
this article with my picture on the first page."
The Hurriyet article was a vicious personal attack stating, among
other allegations, that he was a traitor "vomiting hatred towards
his country".
"When I saw this I thought this is unbelievable, unimaginable. That
the biggest Turkish newspaper writes that I am working against Turkey
and a betrayer of the nation, it is a really incriminating campaign
designed to criminalise me and my scholarly work. It makes me a target,
as they did with Hrant Dink."
It has been said quite dryly that the Turkish intelligentsia are in
a strange position in the modern world, where non-intellectuals pay
close attention to what they write, none more so than the state's
lawyers. Such scrutiny falls upon anyone who dares to attach the 'G
word' to the events of 1915. Article 301 of the Turkish penal code,
the law that prohibits "insulting Turkishness" became famous outside
of the country last year when an attempted prosecution was brought
against the Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk for mentioning the "Armenian
Question" in a magazine interview.
In spite of such laws and the death threats he has received, Taner
Akcam continues to teach and lecture on the events of 1915. It is
through an acknowledgement by the Turkish government of the crimes
of the past that he hopes his country will build a better future
and further the process of an open society. "Just a few days before
the recent election the Turkish Prime Minister sent a decree to all
governmental agencies inside and outside of Turkey banning the usage
of the term 'so-called genocide'," he says. "This is the official
language Turkey used when describing 1915, a hugely insulting term
to Armenians, and now they will stop. It is these things, the small
but important steps, that mean I will always have hope."