We have just passed April 24, when Armenians of various walks of life commemorate the anniversary of the arrest of the Armenian intellectuals in Istanbul 97 years ago, alleged to have been the beginning of “Armenian genocide.” So the pundits chastise, woefully, Turkey for “denying” genocide, and demand that Turkey extend an apology and offer restitution (meaning money and land) to the Armenians.
This is no place to dwell on history to explain why such demands lack rational basis, e.g., if the Ottoman Turks had intent to exterminate the Armenian minority, why they gave Armenian citizens high positions in the government, why they waited for more than 6 centuries – when they were in much better position – to deliberately target Armenians.
Nor is this the proper place to elaborate why some critical pieces of “evidence” e.g., the Andonian files, that the proponents of genocide cite to support their thesis, were forgeries, or that the orders issued by the Ottoman central government to relocate Armenians proscribed that all measures were to be taken to ensure the safety of the deportees and meet their needs during and after relocation.
But there are two aspects the proponents of genocide conveniently ignore, that call for special attention: balance and due process.
Regarding balance, no one denies that Armenians suffered during relocation, and some lost their lives, in a time of war when chaos, lawlessness and depravation prevailed. Surely we must mourn the sufferings and loss of life. But do we ever hear about the sufferings and loss of lives of non-Armenians? During that tragic period more than half a million Muslims – and some Jews – perished at the hands of armed, marauding Armenian gangs that terrorized the countryside and helped invading enemy armies.
Do the lost lives of Muslims not matter?
If we are to recall history, do Armenians carry any sense of guilt and culpability for aiding the enemy and terrorizing the local civil population?
And why do we not hear, one must ask, any remorse on the part of Armenians for the killings by the ASALA organization of more than 40 Turkish diplomats in the 1970’s and ‘80’s?
As for due process, it must be emphasized that “genocide” is a special crime, and the term should not be used lightly. To quote the 1948 UN Resolution on the Prevention of Genocide, determination on genocide can only be made “by a competent tribunal of the State in the territory of which the act was committed, or by such international penal tribunal as may have jurisdiction.” In the case of the alleged Armenian genocide, there has been no such determination. No court verdict; none, period. The U.N. resolution also makes no attribution to “Armenian genocide.”
A parliamentary body, often beholden to special interests, and acting as both the prosecutor and judge, is no substitute for a duly authorized court of law.
So, one must ask, without a court verdict, how can the Turks be accused of the “g” crime? Where is the respect for due process?
In fact, the only judicial proceeding that comes close to being an international tribunal on the Armenian case is the Malta Tribunal, held by the victorious British after WWI. The proceedings, investigating charges against 144 high-ranking Ottoman officials accused of harming Armenians, failed to bring about a single conviction. Even searching through the U.S. State Department files in Washington D.C. failed to produce any incriminating evidence. Off went the dispatch from the British Embassy to Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon in London: “I regret to inform Your Lordship that there was nothing therein which could be used as evidence against the Turks who are being detained for trial at Malta.” All the detainees were set free and returned to Turkish soil.
Armenian genocide allegations, apart from being legally unsustainable, create discord and animosity in society. Nearly a century has passed, and it is time to move on toward greater inter-communal harmony.
We have just passed April 24, when Armenians of various walks of life commemorate the anniversary of the arrest of the Armenian intellectuals in Istanbul 97 years ago, alleged to have been the beginning of “Armenian genocide.” So the pundits chastise, woefully, Turkey for “denying” genocide, and demand that Turkey extend an apology and offer restitution (meaning money and land) to the Armenians.
This is no place to dwell on history to explain why such demands lack rational basis, e.g., if the Ottoman Turks had intent to exterminate the Armenian minority, why they gave Armenian citizens high positions in the government, why they waited for more than 6 centuries – when they were in much better position – to deliberately target Armenians.
Nor is this the proper place to elaborate why some critical pieces of “evidence” e.g., the Andonian files, that the proponents of genocide cite to support their thesis, were forgeries, or that the orders issued by the Ottoman central government to relocate Armenians proscribed that all measures were to be taken to ensure the safety of the deportees and meet their needs during and after relocation.
But there are two aspects the proponents of genocide conveniently ignore, that call for special attention: balance and due process.
Regarding balance, no one denies that Armenians suffered during relocation, and some lost their lives, in a time of war when chaos, lawlessness and depravation prevailed. Surely we must mourn the sufferings and loss of life. But do we ever hear about the sufferings and loss of lives of non-Armenians? During that tragic period more than half a million Muslims – and some Jews – perished at the hands of armed, marauding Armenian gangs that terrorized the countryside and helped invading enemy armies.
Do the lost lives of Muslims not matter?
If we are to recall history, do Armenians carry any sense of guilt and culpability for aiding the enemy and terrorizing the local civil population?
And why do we not hear, one must ask, any remorse on the part of Armenians for the killings by the ASALA organization of more than 40 Turkish diplomats in the 1970’s and ‘80’s?
As for due process, it must be emphasized that “genocide” is a special crime, and the term should not be used lightly. To quote the 1948 UN Resolution on the Prevention of Genocide, determination on genocide can only be made “by a competent tribunal of the State in the territory of which the act was committed, or by such international penal tribunal as may have jurisdiction.” In the case of the alleged Armenian genocide, there has been no such determination. No court verdict; none, period. The U.N. resolution also makes no attribution to “Armenian genocide.”
A parliamentary body, often beholden to special interests, and acting as both the prosecutor and judge, is no substitute for a duly authorized court of law.
So, one must ask, without a court verdict, how can the Turks be accused of the “g” crime? Where is the respect for due process?
In fact, the only judicial proceeding that comes close to being an international tribunal on the Armenian case is the Malta Tribunal, held by the victorious British after WWI. The proceedings, investigating charges against 144 high-ranking Ottoman officials accused of harming Armenians, failed to bring about a single conviction. Even searching through the U.S. State Department files in Washington D.C. failed to produce any incriminating evidence. Off went the dispatch from the British Embassy to Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon in London: “I regret to inform Your Lordship that there was nothing therein which could be used as evidence against the Turks who are being detained for trial at Malta.” All the detainees were set free and returned to Turkish soil.
Armenian genocide allegations, apart from being legally unsustainable, create discord and animosity in society. Nearly a century has passed, and it is time to move on toward greater inter-communal harmony.
Judging from the press reports, one would not know it, but Turkey, the presumed supporter of the Nabucco gas project, recently helped kill the project.
It was not to be so. After all, the Nabucco project was designed not only to supply natural gas to the EU from the Caspian region and the Middle East, but also help Turkey meet its domestic needs. The intergovernmental agreement signed in Ankara amid media publicity in July 2009, followed by parliamentary seal of approval in March 2010, gave all the indications that Turkey would stand by the project.
Turkey’s BOTAS was one of the 6 partners that developed the project. The Vienna-based NIC (Nabucco International Company) represented the consortium formed by the partners. The 3,900 km-long pipeline’s planned destination was Baumgarten in Austria.
Not that the project was ideal for Turkey (). But compared to its rivals ITGI (Italy-Greece Interconnector) and TAP (Trans-Adriatic Pipeline), not to mention a host of “exotic” Black Sea options flagged by Azerbaijan, it was the most mature and most comprehensive gas pipeline project to connect Turkey and the EU to the supply sources to the east. Strategically it deserved Turkey’s support. It was the only project among its rivals that aimed to transport Azeri as well as non-Azeri gas. Turkmen gas was a high-priority objective.
Surely, with its ambitious design capacity of 31 billion m3 (bcm)/year, Nabucco was under stress. What was holding the project from implementation was the lack of feed (throughput) gas. The feed gas problem caused delays in the project, and the capital costs soared (up to EUR 14-15 billion by most recent estimates). The Azeri Shah Deniz-II gas was identified as the initial start-up gas as from 2017-2018.
But Azerbaijan, that owned the gas, and the Shah Deniz consortium that would share and produce it, were non-committal about supplying gas. That meant major headache for Nabucco. Turkmen gas input required the cooperation of Azerbaijan, and would be added to the gas stream at a later date.
In the meantime, the rival projects ITGI and TAP emerged. Like Nabucco, these also counted on Shah Deniz-II gas for throughput. A winner-take-all pipeline contest was in the works.
Still, Nabucco had a good fighting chance. On October 1, 2011, NIC submitted its proposal to the Shah Deniz consortium tabling transport terms. The rival projects ITGI and TAP did the same. A high-stakes waiting game would then start, during which the Shah Deniz consortium would pick the winner.
The spoiler project
All that changed when BP (British Petroleum), at the last minute before the October 1 deadline, came up with a new, “in-house” project: SEEP (South-East Europe Pipeline). It was a shrewd move, and immediately caught the attention of the Shah Deniz consortium – where BP is the operator and a major (25.5%) stake holder. The Azeri partner SOCAR, in particular, quickly warmed up to BP’s proposal.
Instead of building a new pipeline across the Turkish territory, SEEP envisioned the use of BOTAS’ existing network (with upgrades) in Turkey and construction of new pipelines and their integration with existing interconnectors past Turkey. Azeri gas would be the feed gas. The destination would still be Austria, but the cost would be much less than that of Nabucco.
Nabucco had come under threat.
Behind the scenes
Events behind the scenes further undermined Nabucco. On October 25 Ankara and Baku signed an intergovernmental agreement in Izmir in western Turkey. Details released to the press were sketchy, but one of the accords reached was to use initially BOTAS’ existing network in Turkey, and later build a new pipeline when needed, to ship Shah Deniz II gas to Turkey and the EU. Starting in 2017 or 2018, of the total 16 bcm gas to be produced annually from the Shah Deniz-II phase, Turkey would receive 6 bcm, and the rest 10 bcm would be shipped to the EU.
Azerbaijan would be the direct seller of gas to the EU, with Turkey being a mere bridge or transit route.
No mention was made of Nabucco, ITGI, TAP, or SEEP in the press release, but the footprints of SEEP were unmistakable.
Demise of Nabucco
Still worse news followed. On November 17, during the Third Black Sea Energy and Economic Forum held in Istanbul, SOCAR chief Rovnag Abdullayev announced that a new gas pipeline, which he named “Trans-Anatolia,” would be built in Turkey from east to west under the leadership of SOCAR. The new pipeline would deliver Shah Deniz II gas to Turkey and Europe.
Azerbaijan and Turkey had already started working on the pipeline project, he said, and others could possibly join later. The planned capacity was at least 16 bcm/year –large enough to absorb all future Azeri exports after depletion of Shah Deniz II.
While not stated so, the announcement made Nabucco effectively redundant. The announcement was an offtake from the Izmir agreement, and signaled a surprising, 180-degree turn on the part of Turkey on Nabucco.
Turkey’s energy minister Yildiz Taner tried to put the best face in the press by claiming that Trans-Anatolian would “supplement” Nabucco, while the NIC chief Reinhard Mitschek expressed his “confidence” in Nabucco.
More recently SOCAR’s Abdullayev maintained that Nabucco was still “in the race,” and NIC started the pre-qualification process for procurement contractors.
For all these business-as-usual pronouncements, however, there was little doubt that Nabucco had received a fatal blow. If Trans-Anatolia, dedicated to Shah Deniz II gas, is built, Nabucco will lose its start-up gas, and with it the justification for a new infrastructure across Turkey.
Without synergy from the Azeri gas, a full-fledged Nabucco project dedicated solely to Turkmen gas will also have a virtually zero chance of implementation.
Nabucco, in its present form, was dead. (See also . A much-modified, “truncated” version of Nabucco, starting at the Turkey-Bulgaria border, may well emerge, however.
Conclusion
With Nabucco frozen in its tracks, the geopolitics of energy in Turkey and its neighborhood has changed dramatically ). What is surprising is that Turkey assisted in undermining a project that it had long supported. It was a project that encompassed both Azeri and Turkmen gas. To reduce its dependence on Russia for its gas exports, Turkmenistan has been eager to ship its gas to the West.
Azerbaijan, apparently viewing Turkmen gas exports to the West a threat to its own gas exports, has been reluctant to cooperate with Ashgabat on this issue.
Turkey acceded to the aspirations of the Azeri brethren, while ignoring those of the Turkmen brethren. Over the past year, as the EU delegates approached repeatedly Ashgabat for Turkmen gas (vis-à-vis a TCGP or Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline), Turkey chose to stay on the sidelines. This was a strategic mistake.
Both Baku and Ashgabat could benefit from a synergy between the Azeri and Turkmen gaz exports, and Turkey could use gas from both sources to enhance its energy security. Being pro-active on TGCP and nudging Azerbaijan in that direction would have been a wise move for Turkey. On balance, there is little doubt that on the gas issue Azerbaijan has played its cards well – perhaps too well!
It has been a fashion in Turkish media in recent years to question and attack the ideology and accomplishments of Kemal Atatürk – a hero figure for the vast majority of Turks. Columnist Mustafa Akyol, who writes in Turkish Daily News, and who for years has been trying to discredit Atatürk, is one such media personalty.
This disturbing trend gained acceptance in certain journalistic circles within the past decade, in particular after the AK Party’s second electoral victoy in 2007. The growing influence of the Gülen Movement has given impetus to the Atatürk-bashing trend.
The attack comes mostly from radical conservatives and idealogs – some outright religious bigots -that cannot make peace with Atatürk’s legacy. These critics typically yearn for a “Second Turkish Republic” that have the markings of a bygone Ottoman era. In a conference held 3 months ago at the Kadir Has University in Istanbul, for example, Mr. Akyol reportedly expressed preference for the “democracy” of the Ottoman era!
The putative reason for Atatürk’s failing, according to these circles, is that Atatürk was anti-Islam, depriving Turks of the freedom to practice their faith. There are even some critics who castigate Atatürk for abolishing Caliphate.
It would be unrealistic to expect these critics, being imbued by religious prejudice, to appreciate what Atatürk has accomplished. Many of these critics like Mr. Akyol are apologists if not the products of the Gülen Movement, and they advocate an Islamist Turkey instead of a secular one. Most of them have joined hands with quack Creationists that assault Darwin’s Evolution Theory. All because it doesn’t fit with their religious dogma.
To realize the hollowness of their arguments, and why Atatürk was not anti-Islam, these opponents should read the works of such researchers as Sinan Meydan (e.g., “Cumhuriyet Tarihi Yalanları”) and Professor Ethem Ruhi Fiğlalı (e.g., “Atatürk And The Religion of Islam”). They will learn, for example, that Atatürk tried to free Islam from the shackles of dogma and advanced the notion that religion is a matter between an individual and God. This is also what Islam teaches. Atatürk eschewed “false prophets” that stood between man and God. He held that Islam should be in conformity with reason and logic. He sponsored the construction of mosques in Tokyo and Paris.
These are not the hallmarks of a leader who was anti-religion or anti-Islam.
But Atatürk’s accomplishments go far beyond religion: He freed the Turkish nation from the shackles of imperialism and introduced reforms toward a civil society, science and modernity – from alphabet to secularism to women’s rights. Thanks to his reforms, the decadence and backwardness of the waning years of the Ottoman Empire was left behind.
It was a call for the Turkish nation to catch up with the West in science and modernity. Turks could still practice their religion, but the State did not adopt or sponsor a particular religion.
If the opponents of Atatürk like Mr. Akyol are breathing freedom in Turkey today, they owe it to the leadership of Atatürk.
If Turkey has any realistic hopes to join the EU, it is because a measure of westernization that Atatürk’s reforms have ushered in. (Reversals in recent years notwithstanding ).
The secular establishment Atatürk founded – through the Republic – was requisite for democratization in Turkey.
It was for good reason that Professor Arnold M. Ludwig of Kentucky University, after 18 years of study of the world leaders of the 20th century (“King of the Mountain”), picked Atatürk as the top winner among the contestants. That makes Atatürk a towering figure in world history. Opponents of Atatürk would do well to read that seminal book.
And it is also remarkable that the Greek Premier Eleftherios Venizelos, a former enemy of Turkey, nominated Atatürk for the 1934 Nobel Peace Prize.
The bigotry and ignorance of these opponents – pathetic as they are in their efforts – could be ignored if it were not for the fact that they regularly pontificate in printed and visual media. It is lamentable that these opponents do not show greater respect for the legacy of a visionary figure beloved by the vast majority of Turkish people. In no major newspaper in the U.S., for example, would one find derogatory remarks about George Washington.
Notwithstanding, there is little doubt that Atatürk will remain a towering historical figure among Turks. Reactionary forces that resist change and want to hold on to the past will not hold the Turkish nation hostage to their hatred and bigotry.
The West fought a hard and grueling battle for Enlightenment, and it eventually won. Turkey eventually will also win; for it must. This is what progress is about.
Taner Akçam, Associate Professor of History at Clark University (Worcester, MA) and the “prince charming” of the Armenian lobby, got himself trapped in contradictions on interpreting the results of Turkey’s recent (September 12) referendum on Constitutional changes. He inadvertently brought to surface some unsavory aspects of his past. Akçam’s younger brother, Cahit Akçam, used the occasion to mock the elder brother and charged him with betrayal.
taner akcam
Taner Akçam is an occasional contributor to Turkey’s Taraf, an off-base newspaper that is a staunch supporter of Turkey’s AKP (AK Party, Justice and Development Party). Rumored to be funded by the USA-based Gülen movement, and according to some also by the CIA, it is staffed largely by ex-liberal socialists that are now far to the right. Cahit Akçam is a columnist at Turkey’s left-leaning Birgün newspaper. The AKP is Turkey’s Islamic-rooted ruling party.
What got Taner Akçam into trouble was an op-ed he wrote in Taraf titled “Seeking Milosevic” that attacked Birgün. He took issue with Birgün’sheadline news that the referendum had confirmed the 60% right-wing and 40% left-wing split in the country, and that the nationalist conservative votes had consolidated at the AKP. In what was a victory for the AKP, the referendum passed by a margin of 58%.
By drawing an analogy between Birgün and Slobodan Milosevic of ex-Yugoslavia, Akçam implicitly accused the newspaper of supporting nationalistic, racist and genocidal sentiments.
Neighborhood concept
Taner Akçam couldn’t accept Birgün’s view that the 40% of the referendum voters, that had voted “no,” were really left-wing. Noting that mass-killer Slobodan Milosevic, while called a communist and a socialist, had done horrible things, he argued that likewise in Turkey those who voted “no” couldn’t be called true socialists. The naysayers were the main opposition party CHP (Republican People’s Party) and the military-bureaucracy faction. The latter had organized and defended military coups in Turkey, he argued.
According to Akçam, labeling these groups “socialists,” as Birgün did, stemmed from a hatred of the AKP. Akçam called the 40% the “bourgeois group.” He maintained that this hatred is best explained through the “neighborhood” metaphor.
In Akçam’s view, Turkey is founded on “our” and “other” neighborhoods. The first neighborhood is one of “city people” that includes bureaucrats, the military, and the like. The CHP and the Ottoman-era İttihat ve Terakki Partisi (Committee of Union and Progress, CUP) are included in this group.
The “other” neighborhood comprises artisans and peasants that have strong religious identities. This neighborhood is now expanding and encroaching on the “city people” neighborhood.
Akçam sees himself in the “city people” neighborhood, which he calls “ours.”
Contradiction and myopia
But by doing so, Akçam fell into a gasping contradiction, because this is also the group that he labeled “bourgeoisie.” How could someone, with a well-known Marxist background, and calling himself a socialist, be part of the bourgeois group? (Separate from his self-confessed connection to the terrorist PKK organization during 1981-84, Akçam escaped from Turkish prison in 1977 after having been convicted of left-wing terrorist activities aimed at, among others, NATO military and American personnel).
Surprisingly enough, Akçam supports the “other” neighborhood – the conservative, Islamic group solidly backed by Taraf. This is because he thinks this group has strong democratic credentials.
It doesn’t take a professor’s prescience to know that such an argument is plain vacuous.
With the AKP in control – political lords of the 60% group – Turkey today is far removed from democracy – the illegal wiretappings, indefinite detentions and imprisonment of the opponents (including 47 journalists) of the government, an atmosphere of fear permeating the country, mandatory religious education, widespread penetration of Gülenist elements in the state apparatus, in particular the police, appalling inequality between men and women, systematic efforts (re: the referendum) to bring the judiciary under the control of the government, parliamentary immunity, etc. None of these inequities seems to bother the professor.
In Turkey today the press is under siege, and by Prime Minister’s own admission, “Those that are impartial [to the AKP] should be eliminated.” There are more detainees in prison than those convicted. Many detained under the so-called “Ergenekon case” don’t even know the exact charges against them.
No scruples, and no loyalty
Akçam’s contradictions and distortions also caught the attention of his younger brother Cahit Akçam. Responding to the elder Akçam in Birgün, Cahit Akçam couldn’t hide his scorn. In a blistering, two-part rebuttal titled “Really, you are the child of which neighborhood?” he chastised his brother, and mockingly called on him to come to his senses. His article started with a quotation (and an admonition) from Anton Chekhov: “Others’ sins do not make you a saint.”
Cahit Akçam called the elder Akçam’s “our” vs. “other” neighborhood analysis, with “Marxist-smelling” questions, “light” and meaningless because it was not founded on class distinction. Neither neighborhood as described by Taner embraced the working class. Asking the rhetorical question as to how Taner could overlook the working class, the younger Akçam thought that his brother, in what appeared to be sheer hypocrisy, didn’t really care for the working class.
Continued the younger brother sarcastically: “Luckily, Taner at least didn’t ignore the bourgeois class in ‘our’ neighborhood.” He chaffed at his brother for not mentioning the bourgeois class in the “other” neighborhood, i.e., the Islamist businessmen that the Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan had braggingly called “The Anatolian Tigers.”
Wondering how his brother could not know that the bourgeois class cannot exist without a working class, Cahit mocked his brother: “He is a big professor. True, not a sociology professor, but a history professor nonetheless. He has licked and swallowed a thousand times more than we have. He knows that, to be so ignorant, one does not have to be a professor. For Taner, the working class has little value.”
The elder Akçam was tersely reminded of the struggles of Turkey’s working class since 1900.
Cahit continued his criticism by making reference to a Turkish metaphor – referring to lentil meal – that this is all that the Taner could muster as an argument. Referring to Taner’s claim that all the “infamous” events in Turkey’s history emanated from “our” class, he bristled at Taner’s suggestion that the socialists, through the CHP, were like relatives to the military-bureaucracy.
He mockingly called attention to the fact that the socialists had suffered immensely from the 1980 fascistic military coup.
Recalling how the elder Akçam had defended the causes of right-wing, fascist elements in Turkey’s recent history, how he had failed to come to the defense of socialists who had been falsely accused of coup attempts, his denialist past, and how he had let down even his own family, the younger Akçam weighed in angrily: “How can Taner accuse his old friends, and even his own brother, as potential perpetrators of genocide?”
Barely concealing his disdain, Cahit asked of his brother: “As you place the blame on your own neighborhood, can there be a more harrowing psychological ruin [for you]? … Where is your heart, and your conscience?”
The ultimate indignity came when the younger Akçam concluded that only someone who was politically and ideologically blind, and someone who had lost his scruples and his sense of loyalty, could do what his brother had done.
In the background of such emotional outburst was the fact that, while Taner Akçam jumped the prison in 1977 into the safety of Germany and escaped the tribulations of the 1980 military coup, in the coup’s aftermath his brother was put on trial for unauthorized activities, faced death by hanging, and was imprisoned for 8 years. Obviously, a lecture on fascism and the struggles of socialists was the last thing the younger Akçam wanted to hear from a sibling he considered unscruppled and untrustworthy.
A revisionist professor
There was more to Akçam’s false accusations. He twisted history and put finger on “our neighborhood’ as the perpetrator of the May 27 (1960), March 12 (1971) and – obliquely – September 12 (1980) military interventions in Turkey. Evidently to hide his own past, and the embarrassment therewith, in his accounting he glossed over the 1980 military coup and the events (including his role) that preceded it.
He dallied further into the past and noted that his “neighborhood” was also responsible for the so-called “Armenian genocide” and the Dersim events (1937).
But he was quick to disown any blame – a point that also drew ridicule from the younger Akçam. Instead, Taner Akçam conveniently placed the blame on “our administrators.” Socialists like him, while closely affiliated with the administrators, had deep disagreements with them. It was all the fault of the administrators, not the socialists like him, he argued.
Nice scapegoat, these administrators were! All that exonerated Akçam and made him squeaky clean!
As to why “we socialists” never faced up to the criminal acts in Turkish history, Akçam argued that animosity toward the “other” neighborhood was far more important than facing up to criminal acts. “Our culture was such that we [preferred to] blame the Armenians for cooperating with the imperialists while we were fighting our war of independence, and the Dersimians represented a backward and feudal system.”
Then Akçam made his grandstand by calling on “our” neighborhood to face up to its crimes.
In such argumentation Akçam conveniently dismissed the criminality of the Armenian gangs in the massacre of more than a half-million Moslems, the fatal blow that the Armenian rebellion had inflicted on the fighting ability of the Ottoman armies in wartime, and ignored the fact the Dersim episode was instigated by reactionary feudal lords that had conspired against the young Turkish republic.
Akçam also chose not to mention the bloody 1993 Madimak episode in the Anatolian city of Sivas. A crowd of fanatic Islamists (from the “other” neighborhood), amid chants of “Allah-ü Ekber,” set fire to a hotel where a group of left-leaning intellectuals had assembled. In the ensuing mayhem 37 artists and writers lost their lives.
Akçam’s analysis of past events is the hallmark of an academician who follows a one-track, necessarily biased, approach to historical events.
In his call to confront one’s criminal history, Akçam should turn the tables and first ask the Armenians and “other” neighborhood to confront their criminality. Why, for example, are the Armenian archives in Yerevan and Boston closed while all Turkish ones open? What are the Armenians hiding?
And when will the likes of the “Madimak crowd” see the light of Enlightenment?
Summing it up
The Taraf-Birgün episode raised the specter of a history professor who, by the reckoning of his own brother, was long in false accusations but short in scruples and trustworthiness. The episode also caught the professor in contradictions and brought to light his biased, one-track approach to traumatic events in Turkish history in the past 100 years.
Will all this make any difference as regards Akçam’s credibility as a scholar for the Armenian money masters who sponsor his academic career – like the Zoryan Institute and the Cafesjian Family Foundation when Akçam was at the University of Minnesota, and now the Arams, the Kaloosdians and the Mugars at Clark University? Considering that the professor’s criminal past has so far made no difference, the answer must be a firm “no.” Obviously, the professor is serving a useful – in fact very useful – purpose for the Armenian lobby.
It must be a wondrous world when the “golden” Armenian coffers can sustain an academic chair in history when, as in Akçam’s case, the holder of that chair happens to have his degree in sociology.
In fact, we should not be too surprised if the spinmasters of the Armenian lobby call on their “prince charming” to come to the aid of the Armenian mob charged last month with the largest Medicare fraud in U.S. history. Could the professor argue that the mob job was actually the “dirty work” of the Turks? Never say “no.”
To rephrase his brother’s question, in which “neighborhood” does Taner Akçam stand when it comes to truth?
Surely, the professor must be able to answer that question himself without help from his old-time mentor, Professor Vahakn Dadrian.
A deeper question is, why Akçam-the-professor would write in a newspaper such as Taraf which has a reputationof acting as a rogue agent of the government on unsubstantiated allegations relating to the opposition, and whose executive editor, Ahmet Altan, in his own words, would be willing to sell out his country “for a woman’s breast and the shade of a cherry tree.” …. But that would be a different story.
ferruh@demirmen.com
Addendum: The above article was first submitted (as an exception) to “Armenian Genocide Resource Center,” . Initially, the host welcomed the article and published it as an “exclusive” on its website. Half a day later the post was mysteriously removed from the website. Query as to why it was removed elicited no satisfactory response.
Taner Akçam, Associate Professor of History at Clark University (Worcester, MA) and the “prince charming” of the Armenian lobby, got himself trapped in contradictions on interpreting the results of Turkey’s recent (September 12) referendum on Constitutional changes. He inadvertently brought to surface some unsavory aspects of his past. Akçam’s younger brother, Cahit Akçam, used the occasion to mock the elder brother and charged him with betrayal.
taner akcam
Taner Akçam is an occasional contributor to Turkey’s Taraf, an off-base newspaper that is a staunch supporter of Turkey’s AKP (AK Party, Justice and Development Party). Rumored to be funded by the USA-based Gülen movement, and according to some also by the CIA, it is staffed largely by ex-liberal socialists that are now far to the right. Cahit Akçam is a columnist at Turkey’s left-leaning Birgün newspaper. The AKP is Turkey’s Islamic-rooted ruling party.
What got Taner Akçam into trouble was an op-ed he wrote in Taraf titled “Seeking Milosevic” that attacked Birgün. He took issue with Birgün’sheadline news that the referendum had confirmed the 60% right-wing and 40% left-wing split in the country, and that the nationalist conservative votes had consolidated at the AKP. In what was a victory for the AKP, the referendum passed by a margin of 58%.
By drawing an analogy between Birgün and Slobodan Milosevic of ex-Yugoslavia, Akçam implicitly accused the newspaper of supporting nationalistic, racist and genocidal sentiments.
Neighborhood concept
Taner Akçam couldn’t accept Birgün’s view that the 40% of the referendum voters, that had voted “no,” were really left-wing. Noting that mass-killer Slobodan Milosevic, while called a communist and a socialist, had done horrible things, he argued that likewise in Turkey those who voted “no” couldn’t be called true socialists. The naysayers were the main opposition party CHP (Republican People’s Party) and the military-bureaucracy faction. The latter had organized and defended military coups in Turkey, he argued.
According to Akçam, labeling these groups “socialists,” as Birgün did, stemmed from a hatred of the AKP. Akçam called the 40% the “bourgeois group.” He maintained that this hatred is best explained through the “neighborhood” metaphor.
In Akçam’s view, Turkey is founded on “our” and “other” neighborhoods. The first neighborhood is one of “city people” that includes bureaucrats, the military, and the like. The CHP and the Ottoman-era İttihat ve Terakki Partisi (Committee of Union and Progress, CUP) are included in this group.
The “other” neighborhood comprises artisans and peasants that have strong religious identities. This neighborhood is now expanding and encroaching on the “city people” neighborhood.
Akçam sees himself in the “city people” neighborhood, which he calls “ours.”
Contradiction and myopia
But by doing so, Akçam fell into a gasping contradiction, because this is also the group that he labeled “bourgeoisie.” How could someone, with a well-known Marxist background, and calling himself a socialist, be part of the bourgeois group? (Separate from his self-confessed connection to the terrorist PKK organization during 1981-84, Akçam escaped from Turkish prison in 1977 after having been convicted of left-wing terrorist activities aimed at, among others, NATO military and American personnel).
Surprisingly enough, Akçam supports the “other” neighborhood – the conservative, Islamic group solidly backed by Taraf. This is because he thinks this group has strong democratic credentials.
It doesn’t take a professor’s prescience to know that such an argument is plain vacuous.
With the AKP in control – political lords of the 60% group – Turkey today is far removed from democracy – the illegal wiretappings, indefinite detentions and imprisonment of the opponents (including 47 journalists) of the government, an atmosphere of fear permeating the country, mandatory religious education, widespread penetration of Gülenist elements in the state apparatus, in particular the police, appalling inequality between men and women, systematic efforts (re: the referendum) to bring the judiciary under the control of the government, parliamentary immunity, etc. None of these inequities seems to bother the professor.
In Turkey today the press is under siege, and by Prime Minister’s own admission, “Those that are impartial [to the AKP] should be eliminated.” There are more detainees in prison than those convicted. Many detained under the so-called “Ergenekon case” don’t even know the exact charges against them.
No scruples, and no loyalty
Akçam’s contradictions and distortions also caught the attention of his younger brother Cahit Akçam. Responding to the elder Akçam in Birgün, Cahit Akçam couldn’t hide his scorn. In a blistering, two-part rebuttal titled “Really, you are the child of which neighborhood?” he chastised his brother, and mockingly called on him to come to his senses. His article started with a quotation (and an admonition) from Anton Chekhov: “Others’ sins do not make you a saint.”
Cahit Akçam called the elder Akçam’s “our” vs. “other” neighborhood analysis, with “Marxist-smelling” questions, “light” and meaningless because it was not founded on class distinction. Neither neighborhood as described by Taner embraced the working class. Asking the rhetorical question as to how Taner could overlook the working class, the younger Akçam thought that his brother, in what appeared to be sheer hypocrisy, didn’t really care for the working class.
Continued the younger brother sarcastically: “Luckily, Taner at least didn’t ignore the bourgeois class in ‘our’ neighborhood.” He chaffed at his brother for not mentioning the bourgeois class in the “other” neighborhood, i.e., the Islamist businessmen that the Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan had braggingly called “The Anatolian Tigers.”
Wondering how his brother could not know that the bourgeois class cannot exist without a working class, Cahit mocked his brother: “He is a big professor. True, not a sociology professor, but a history professor nonetheless. He has licked and swallowed a thousand times more than we have. He knows that, to be so ignorant, one does not have to be a professor. For Taner, the working class has little value.”
The elder Akçam was tersely reminded of the struggles of Turkey’s working class since 1900.
Cahit continued his criticism by making reference to a Turkish metaphor – referring to lentil meal – that this is all that the Taner could muster as an argument. Referring to Taner’s claim that all the “infamous” events in Turkey’s history emanated from “our” class, he bristled at Taner’s suggestion that the socialists, through the CHP, were like relatives to the military-bureaucracy.
He mockingly called attention to the fact that the socialists had suffered immensely from the 1980 fascistic military coup.
Recalling how the elder Akçam had defended the causes of right-wing, fascist elements in Turkey’s recent history, how he had failed to come to the defense of socialists who had been falsely accused of coup attempts, his denialist past, and how he had let down even his own family, the younger Akçam weighed in angrily: “How can Taner accuse his old friends, and even his own brother, as potential perpetrators of genocide?”
Barely concealing his disdain, Cahit asked of his brother: “As you place the blame on your own neighborhood, can there be a more harrowing psychological ruin [for you]? … Where is your heart, and your conscience?”
The ultimate indignity came when the younger Akçam concluded that only someone who was politically and ideologically blind, and someone who had lost his scruples and his sense of loyalty, could do what his brother had done.
In the background of such emotional outburst was the fact that, while Taner Akçam jumped the prison in 1977 into the safety of Germany and escaped the tribulations of the 1980 military coup, in the coup’s aftermath his brother was put on trial for unauthorized activities, faced death by hanging, and was imprisoned for 8 years. Obviously, a lecture on fascism and the struggles of socialists was the last thing the younger Akçam wanted to hear from a sibling he considered unscruppled and untrustworthy.
A revisionist professor
There was more to Akçam’s false accusations. He twisted history and put finger on “our neighborhood’ as the perpetrator of the May 27 (1960), March 12 (1971) and – obliquely – September 12 (1980) military interventions in Turkey. Evidently to hide his own past, and the embarrassment therewith, in his accounting he glossed over the 1980 military coup and the events (including his role) that preceded it.
He dallied further into the past and noted that his “neighborhood” was also responsible for the so-called “Armenian genocide” and the Dersim events (1937).
But he was quick to disown any blame – a point that also drew ridicule from the younger Akçam. Instead, Taner Akçam conveniently placed the blame on “our administrators.” Socialists like him, while closely affiliated with the administrators, had deep disagreements with them. It was all the fault of the administrators, not the socialists like him, he argued.
Nice scapegoat, these administrators were! All that exonerated Akçam and made him squeaky clean!
As to why “we socialists” never faced up to the criminal acts in Turkish history, Akçam argued that animosity toward the “other” neighborhood was far more important than facing up to criminal acts. “Our culture was such that we [preferred to] blame the Armenians for cooperating with the imperialists while we were fighting our war of independence, and the Dersimians represented a backward and feudal system.”
Then Akçam made his grandstand by calling on “our” neighborhood to face up to its crimes.
In such argumentation Akçam conveniently dismissed the criminality of the Armenian gangs in the massacre of more than a half-million Moslems, the fatal blow that the Armenian rebellion had inflicted on the fighting ability of the Ottoman armies in wartime, and ignored the fact the Dersim episode was instigated by reactionary feudal lords that had conspired against the young Turkish republic.
Akçam also chose not to mention the bloody 1993 Madimak episode in the Anatolian city of Sivas. A crowd of fanatic Islamists (from the “other” neighborhood), amid chants of “Allah-ü Ekber,” set fire to a hotel where a group of left-leaning intellectuals had assembled. In the ensuing mayhem 37 artists and writers lost their lives.
Akçam’s analysis of past events is the hallmark of an academician who follows a one-track, necessarily biased, approach to historical events.
In his call to confront one’s criminal history, Akçam should turn the tables and first ask the Armenians and “other” neighborhood to confront their criminality. Why, for example, are the Armenian archives in Yerevan and Boston closed while all Turkish ones open? What are the Armenians hiding?
And when will the likes of the “Madimak crowd” see the light of Enlightenment?
Summing it up
The Taraf-Birgün episode raised the specter of a history professor who, by the reckoning of his own brother, was long in false accusations but short in scruples and trustworthiness. The episode also caught the professor in contradictions and brought to light his biased, one-track approach to traumatic events in Turkish history in the past 100 years.
Will all this make any difference as regards Akçam’s credibility as a scholar for the Armenian money masters who sponsor his academic career – like the Zoryan Institute and the Cafesjian Family Foundation when Akçam was at the University of Minnesota, and now the Arams, the Kaloosdians and the Mugars at Clark University? Considering that the professor’s criminal past has so far made no difference, the answer must be a firm “no.” Obviously, the professor is serving a useful – in fact very useful – purpose for the Armenian lobby.
It must be a wondrous world when the “golden” Armenian coffers can sustain an academic chair in history when, as in Akçam’s case, the holder of that chair happens to have his degree in sociology.
In fact, we should not be too surprised if the spinmasters of the Armenian lobby call on their “prince charming” to come to the aid of the Armenian mob charged last month with the largest Medicare fraud in U.S. history. Could the professor argue that the mob job was actually the “dirty work” of the Turks? Never say “no.”
To rephrase his brother’s question, in which “neighborhood” does Taner Akçam stand when it comes to truth?
Surely, the professor must be able to answer that question himself without help from his old-time mentor, Professor Vahakn Dadrian.
A deeper question is, why Akçam-the-professor would write in a newspaper such as Taraf which has a reputationof acting as a rogue agent of the government on unsubstantiated allegations relating to the opposition, and whose executive editor, Ahmet Altan, in his own words, would be willing to sell out his country “for a woman’s breast and the shade of a cherry tree.” …. But that would be a different story.
ferruh@demirmen.com
Addendum: The above article was first submitted (as an exception) to “Armenian Genocide Resource Center,” . Initially, the host welcomed the article and published it as an “exclusive” on its website. Half a day later the post was mysteriously removed from the website. Query as to why it was removed elicited no satisfactory response.
