Tag: Taner Akcam

METHODOLOGY OF TANER AKÇAM

The expanded English edition of German sociologist Taner Akçam’s last book, The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity. The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire, was published in 2012 April. To analyze all the distortions, falsifications and other flaws of this book would mean writing a whole volume. However, some significant examples can be provided here.

Mr. Akçam alleges (p. 203) that “the clearest statement that the aim of the government’s policies toward the Armenians was annihilation is found in a cable of 29 August 1915 from Interior minister Talat Pasha to the province of Ankara.”

In fact, this telegram is mostly a list of interdictions of any violence against the displaced Armenians. Especially, the telegram says:

“The transfer of Armenians, which is desired to be carried out in an orderly and prudent manner, should henceforth never be left to the individuals having fanatical feelings of enmity and that the Armenians, whether or not subject to relocation, will be definitely protected against any assault and attack.”

The “military courts” were promised for the recalcitrant people (Hikmet Özdemir and Yusuf Sarınay, Turkish- Armenian Conflict Documents, Ankara, 2007, p. 235). Similarly, Mr. Akçam claims that the note of Minister of Interior Talat to Grand Vizier Sait Halim sent on May 26, 1915 “has never been completely translated into modern Turkish,” which is false (Özdemir & Sarınay, pp. 55-56; pp. 58-59 for the English translation). More seriously, Mr. Akçam alleges (pp. 136-137) that this document is “the clearest possible refutation of the official Turkish version of the events of 1915, which insists that the policies toward the Armenians were the result of the wartime exigencies. On the contrary, Unionist policy was aimed at resolving the issue of Armenian reforms in a definitive manner.”

To come to such a conclusion, Mr. Akçam cuts out several paragraphs of the document, which unequivocally present the relocation as measure decided chiefly because of “armed attacks on security forces and armed uprisings.”

For instance (my emphasis):

“Unfortunately, while the means to bring about a final solution to this problem [by reforms] is being worked out, some of the Armenians living in places close to the battlefields have recently become involved in activities aimed at creating difficulties for our army in its fight against the enemy to protect the Ottoman borders. Those Armenians are trying to impede the operations of the army, and the transfer of supply and ammunition. They are combining their aspirations and activities with those of the enemy’s and are fighting against us in the ranks of the enemy. Within the country, they dare to carry out armed attacks against the military forces and the innocent civilians, to become involved in acts of murder, looting and plundering in the Ottoman cities and towns, to provide supplies to the enemy’s navy and to inform them of the places with fortified posts.

The conduct of such rebel elements has rendered it necessary to remove them from the area of military operations and to evacuate the villages serving as operational bases and shelters for the rebels.”

The allusion to the reforms proposed in 1914 is only incidental and not the reason given by Talat for the relocation decision. Taner Akçam also removes the reference to the protection of relocated Armenians, especially this sentence:

“A decision has been taken to ensure the comfort of those subjects on their way to places allocated for their resettling. To ensure the subjects arrival at the resettlement places, and facilitate their rest, and protect of their live and properties on their journey.”

A third striking example of deliberate and serious distortion is the willing mistranslation (p. 208) of a telegram sent by the minister of Interior Talat to the governor Mehmet Reşit on July 12, 1915 (my emphasis):

“In Mardin the Armenian bishop and some 700 persons from among Armenian and other Christian population were taken outside the city and slaughtered like sheep by some persons arrived from Diyarbekır.”

Actually, the document says: “Particularly, from individuals sent from Diyarbakır recently, it has been learnt that in Mardin, a total of seven hundred people consisting of Armenians and other Christians, also including the bishop, had been taken from their houses at nights and killed by beheading like sheep.”

(Özdemir & Sarınay, p. 161). This document was published as early as 1995, with a transliteration. In 2007, a translation into modern Turkish and into English was published. In 2008, Yusuf Halaçoğlu

Taner Akçam’s mistranslation in the Turkish edition of the book. Regardless, it is maintained in the edition in English. Mr. Akçam does not refrain from relying on completely discredited material, like the “Andonian documents”

(pp. 268 and 272) and the so-called “Ten Commands” attributed to the CUP (p. 197). It has been proven since 1983 that the “Andonian documents” are fakes, and I devoted a 59-pages article to demonstrating it again (Maxime Gauin, “Aram Andonian’s Memoirs of Naim Bey and the Contemporary Attempts to Defend their‘Authenticity’”, Review of Armenian Studies, 23, 2011, pp. 233-292). It has been proven by Canadian historian Gwynne Dyer since 1973 that the “Ten Commands” are apocryphal, and were not taken seriously by the British authorities (Gwynne Dyer, “Correspondence,” Middle Eastern Studies, IX-3, 1973, pp. 378-379). Dr. Dyer replied to the pro- Armenian author Christopher Walker, who, having read the response, did never use the “Ten Commands” anymore.

Even worse, Mr. Akçam relies on the translation of this “document” by Vahakn Dadrian, who adds words (“commit massacres”) which are not actually in the “original” (on this point: Ferudun Ata, “An Evaluation of the Approach of the Researchers Who Advocate Armenian Genocide to the Trials Relocation,” in The New Approaches to Turkish-Armenian Relations, Istanbul: Istanbul University Publications, 2008, p. 560). Mr. Akçam also distorts material that is already questionable in itself, i.e., the partial accounts of trials which took place in İstanbul from 1919-1920. Mr. Akçam fails to explain how credible these tribunals were, and how they banned the right of cross-examination, the right to be assisted by a lawyer during the investigation and, from April to October 1920, the simple right to hire a lawyer. He fails to explain how the reliability of the newspapers of İstanbul in 1919-1920 (the original material is completely lost); they were submitted to censorship, and the French military in İstanbul complained several times about unsubstantiated rumors and selective information published by at least some of these newspapers. Worse, Mr. Akçam invents (pp. 414-415) a confession by Officer Yusuf Rıza.

He purely and simply inverts the sense of the published account (see Erman Şahin, “Review Essay: The Armenian Question,” Middle East Policy, XVII-1, Spring 2010, p. 153; this article is a devastating, 20-pages long, analysis of the first version, in Turkish, of The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity). Certainly, a better knowledge of Turko-Armenian history is needed, but for that, we need historians.

Maxime GAUIN* – Contributing Analyst, Strategic Outlook

*He is a Ph.D. candidate at Middle East Technical University History Department.

Review of Armenian Studies, 23, 2011, pp. 233-292). It has been proven by Canadian historian Gwynne Dyer since 1973 that the “Ten Commands” are apocryphal, and were not taken seriously by the British authorities (Gwynne Dyer, “Correspondence,” Middle Eastern Studies, IX-3, 1973, pp. 378-379). Dr. Dyer replied to the pro- Armenian author Christopher Walker, who, having read the response, did never use the “Ten Commands” anymore. Even worse, Mr. Akçam relies on the translation of this “document” by Vahakn Dadrian, who adds words (“commit massacres”) which are not actually in the “original”

(on this point: Ferudun Ata, “An Evaluation of the Approach of the Researchers Who Advocate Armenian Genocide to the Trials Relocation,” in The New Approaches to Turkish-Armenian Relations, Istanbul: Istanbul University Publications, 2008, p. 560). Mr. Akçam also distorts material that is already questionable in itself, i.e., the partial accounts of trials which took place in İstanbul from 1919-1920. Mr. Akçam fails to explain how credible these tribunals were, and how they banned the right of cross-examination, the right to be assisted by a lawyer during the investigation and, from April to October 1920, the simple right to hire a lawyer. He fails to explain how the reliability of the newspapers of İstanbul in 1919-1920 (the original material is completely lost); they were submitted to censorship, and the French military in İstanbul complained several times about unsubstantiated rumors and selective information published by at least some of these newspapers. Worse, Mr. Akçam invents (pp. 414-415) a confession by Officer Yusuf Rıza.

He purely and simply inverts the sense of the published account (see Erman Şahin, “Review Essay: The Armenian Question,” Middle East Policy, XVII-1, Spring 2010, p. 153; this article is a devastating, 20-pages long, analysis of the first version, in Turkish, of The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity). Certainly, a better knowledge of Turko-Armenian history is needed, but for that, we need historians.

Maxime GAUIN* – Contributing Analyst, Strategic Outlook

*He is a Ph.D. candidate at Middle East Technical University History Department.

November 30, 2022
Forging the past: OUP and the ‘Armenian question’

Jeremy Salt, January, 2010, Eurasia Critic – In 2005 Oxford University Press published Donald Bloxham’s The Great Game of Genocide. Imperialism, Nationalism and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians. The first hardback edition was followed by a paperback version in 2007. The book is more of a prosecutor’s brief than a balanced study of the fate of the Ottoman Armenians during the First World War, but forgery and not balance is the point of this article.

The forged photograph that is being spread on the net with the caption: “Turkish official teases starving Armenian children by showing them a piece of bread during the Armenian Genocide in 1915.”

The book includes nine photographs printed on glossy paper. Eight of the photographs are credited. One is not. It shows a man in an unbuttoned jacket and tie standing in front of a circle of ragged children and one apparent adult with something in his hand. The caption reads: ‘A Turkish official taunting starving Armenians with bread’.

Even a cursory glance is enough to show there is something wrong with this photo. One side of the man’s jacket is darker than the other. A ragged line clearly runs between the two halves. The wall in the background abruptly disappearsn ito a blank white space behind the standing man. A child lying on the groud ins lraising an emaciated arm. If stretched out to its full length it would fall beow mhis knees. His scarcely visible other hand and wrist seem quite plump by coparison. The little boy sitting to the right of the standing man seems to be clutching something in his hand but it is impossible to tell what it might be.

Suspicions aroused, the photograph is taken to a photographic analyst in Ankara. He is not told what the subject matter of the photograph is supposed to be. He subjects the photo to a 2400-fold pixel magnification. The pixels come up like little crosses. It takes him ten minutes to conclude that this is not a ‘photograph’ at all but a photographic soup, composed of bits and pieces taken from other photographs.

The technical giveaway is the pixels. Were the photograph genuine they would have to be homogeneous but they are not. They are leaning in various different directions. Otherwise the analyst concludes that the man’s right arm does not belong to the body. It has come from somewhere else. His right leg seems to have disappeared altogether. The boy sitting on the ground on the man’s right is not clutching anything at all. The forger simply did not take enough care when cutting the paper around the fingers in the photograph from which his figure was taken.

The man in the caption obviously cannot be a ‘Turkish official’ as there was no Turkey at the time the photo was apparently taken (i.e. during or shortly after the First World War). A similar reference to ‘Turkish soldiers’ appears in the caption of one of the other photographs.

Having finally been told what the photograph of the standing man is supposed to be, the analyst points out the obvious, that no Ottoman memur or civil servant would be dressed in an unbuttoned jacket over a shirt with a collar and tie. He would be wearing a collarless shirt buttoned up to the neck. Almost certainly (definitely for a photograph) he would have a fez on his head, and it is hardly likely that an Ottoman memur would pose for such a photograph anyway.

Furthermore, given the cumbersome equipment photographers had to carry around with them early in the 20th century, even if the photographer arrived on the scene just as this ‘Turkish official’ was tormenting starving children with a piece of bread he could not have taken the photograph unless the standing man and the starving children agreed to hold their poses or to reenact the tableau when he was ready.

Oxford University Press had already been informed (by the writer of this article) that the ‘photograph’ was a forgery when Servet Hassan, the General Coordinator of the Federation of Turkish Associations in the UK followed up with a complaint in October. Responding to her protest, in an e-mail sent on October 19, Christopher Wheeler, OUP’s history publisher, conceded that that the ‘photograph’ was a forgery. ‘Existing stock’ of the book had been destroyed but the ‘photograph’ had been retained in a new printing with the following caption:

‘This photograph purports to be an Ottoman [sic.] official taunting starving Armenians with bread. It is a fake, combining elements of two (or more) separate photographs: a demonstration were one needed of the propaganda stakes on both sides of the genocide issue with evidence of all sorts manipulated for latterday political purposes. The photograph was also included when the book was first published but then was believed to be genuine. It had previously been used in Gérard Chaliand and Yves Ternon’s Le Genocide des Arméniens (1980), which shows that prior use is no substitute for rigorous investigation of a picture’s provenance – and in the absence of clear provenance, for a minutely detailed examination of the picture itself. It is a cautionary tale for historians, many of whom are better trained in testing and using written sources than in evaluating photographic evidence. The publishers and author are grateful to have had the forgery drawn to their attention’.

In a follow-up letter written on November Mr Wheeler, describing the forgery as a ‘composite photograph’, said OUP regarded republication of the ‘photograph’ with a fresh caption as ‘a more effective rejoinder to the forger than silently dropping his or her photograph from the book’. Although the unknown provenance of the ‘photograph’ could have created suspicions, ‘it is by no means uncommon for photographs from this period to lack one. And while the forgery is no masterpiece, without magnification it does not deceive the naked eye. These are not excuses for having been ‘taken in’ but they are mitigation’. The letter ends with a reference to forgeries going back to the Donation of Constantine and the need for historians and publishers to be vigilant. There is no mention of what could and should be done about copies of the book already sold, particularly those on the shelves of libraries around the world.

The caption in the new printing slides over all the important issues. Of course, there is propaganda on ‘both sides’, but there is nothing on the Turkish ‘side’ (as far as this writer is aware) to compare with the textual and photographic forgeries manufactured on the Armenian ‘side’. It is very difficult to take at face value the statement that when the book was first published the photograph ‘was believed to be genuine’. Nine photographs were published. Eight were properly sourced and one was not sourced at all, not even to the Chaliand and Ternon book. This suggests that someone must have had doubts about the authenticity of this photograph (which until 2008 at least was displayed prominently in the Museum of the Armenian Genocide in Yerevan. It can also be found online in the US Library of Congress – again without a source). Over and above all of this, it does not take a ‘minutely detailed examination’ or magnification to see that this ‘photograph’ is most probably and almost certainly a fake. OUP is usually meticulous in its sourcing. In his message to Servet Hassan on October 19 Mr Wheeler admits that there was no ‘clear provenance’ for the photograph. This implies that someone must have had misgivings. So why did the book’s editors allow this fake to go to press?

Forgeries have been part of the ‘Armenian question’ since the 1920s, produced with the intention of proving what could not otherwise be proved. The most notorious of them is the Andonian papers, a collection of ‘telegrams’ and other ‘documents’ purporting to show that the CUP government (and especially Talat Paşa) deliberately set out to exterminate the Armenians. These were shown to be forgeries more than 20 years ago but still surface from time to time, most notably in the writings of the journalist Robert Fisk.

Another ‘document’, appearing during the British occupation of Istanbul, is the ‘ten point plan’, supposedly drawn up by the CUP government sometime late in 1914 or early in 1915, according to which all male Armenians under 50 were to be exterminated, with girls and women converted to Islam.
The ‘plan’ was handed to the British by an Ottoman functionary. Then looking for evidence against the prisoners they were holding in Malta, the British did not make use of it. Taner Akcam, a Turk who has adopted the Armenian version of history in all its essential details, utilises the plan in the text of his own tendentious book ?1, observing only in a footnote that the British were ‘skeptical’ of its authenticity. Bloxham himself has described the ‘plan’ as ‘dubious at best and probably a fake’.?2 In fact, the ‘plan’ certainly is a fake.

In short, no serious historian could possibly take this plan as gospel truth, but this is exactly what Ben Kiernan, an Australian who is now Professor of Genocide Studies at Yale University, does in his recent publication Blood and Soil. A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (Yale University Press, 2007). The ‘plan’ is the platform for his brief examination of the fate of the Ottoman Armenians and the accusations he makes that the Ottoman government drew up a plan to exterminate them.

What is extraordinary here is that it would have taken no more than a cursory check to establish that this ‘plan’ is suspect at least, is almost certainly a fake and is worthy of a footnote at most. Did no one at Yale University Press think of asking Ben Kiernan to come up with a better source than his only source for this accusation, Vahakn Dadrian, a committed Armenian national historian and propagandist for the Armenian cause?

It is often said that there are none so blind as those who will not see. Everyone knows what happened to the Armenians, everyone has the right to say whatever they want except the Turks. They are kept out of this debate altogether. Barack Obama, members of the US Congress, members of European parliaments and parliaments elsewhere, even of the South Australian parliament, which recently passed a genocide resolution, apparently know more of Turkish and Ottoman history than the Turks do. There could hardly be a clearer example of neo-Orientalism. It would be far too much to say that the members of these parliaments know little of late Ottoman history. It would only be accurate to say that they know next to nothing of Ottoman history apart from what they have been spoon-fed by lobbyists or have read in books such as those written by Ben Kiernan, Taner Akçam or Donald Bloxham. Very few books or articles are allowed into the western cultural mainstream as a counter-narrative. The Armenian question as it has been written into the western narrative has long since passed from history into theology. It has been sacralized and history, in this instance the need to deconstruct this issue on the basis of all the known ‘facts’ and not just some of them, suffers as a result. This, it seems, is how forgeries such as those described in this article get into print.

1 Taner Akcam A Shameful Act. The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (London: Constable and Robinson, 2007).2 History Today, July 2005, issue 7, p. 68, Bloxham’s reply to a letter to the editor following the publication of his article ‘Rethinking the Armenian Genocide’ in the June, 2005, issue. I wish to thank Erman Şahin for drawing this letter to my attention.

*Prof Jeremy Salt teaches in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University Ankara. He is the author of Imperialism, Evangelism and the Ottoman Armenians 1878-1896 (London: Frank Cass, 1993) and The Unmaking of the Middle East. A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008).

eurasiacritic.co.uk

April 29, 2014
Akcam: Turkey and the Armenian Ghost

The Armenian Weekly publishes the full text of a talk delivered by Dr. Taner Akcam (Clark University) during a panel on ‘Overcoming Genocide Denial’ organized by Fordham Law School’s Leitner Center for International Law and Justice on Dec. 4. Speakers included Akcam, Gregory Stanton (George Mason University), and Sheri Rosenberg (Cardozo Law School).

“Why do we Turks continue to deny the genocide?”

Or, stated another way, Why do we Turks feel like lightening has struck our bones whenever the topic is brought up?

I’ve been dedicated to researching the subject of the Armenian Genocide since 1990, more than 20 years. This question keeps getting asked over and over again with unerring consistency. The question is a simple one, but as the years have passed my response to it has changed. At first, I tried to explain the denial through the concept of “continuity,” namely, governmental continuity from the Ottoman Empire through the Turkish Republic. Another way of formulating this thesis might be by titling it, “The Dilemma of Making Heroes into Villains.” The argument is very simple: The Turkish Republic was actually established by the Union and Progress Party (Ittihat ve Terakki), the architects of the Armenian Genocide of 1915. The founding cadres of Turkey were essentially Union and Progress members. And so, a significant number of the founding cadres of Turkey were either directly involved in the Armenian Genocide or they enriched themselves by looting Armenian properties. But these individuals were also our national heroes—they are the founding fathers of our nation. If Turkey acknowledges the genocide, we would have to accept that a number of our national heroes and founding fathers were either murderers, thieves, or both. This is the real dilemma.

Those individuals, as we were taught in school, were men who “created our nation and the state out of nothing.” They define who we are. This is true not only for the early generation of the Turkish nation, but also for the opposition movements of the country, including the largest wave of a democratic-progressive movement Turkey had ever seen: the 1968 student protest movement. The representatives of this wave and its political organizations strongly identified themselves with the founding cadres of the republic. They called themselves, in analogy with the founding fathers, the second “Kuvayi–Milliyeciler” or “national front,” a specific term that we use only to define our founding cadres. This strong identification with the founding fathers was not particular to the progressive ‘68 generation. It has been true for any of the groups active in Turkey: nationalist, Islamicist, or other right wing circles.

In other words, in order to accept the genocide, in our present state, we would have to deny our own national identity, as it exists today. That is a very difficult task, an almost impossible one, and very destructive. Instead of dealing with the identity crisis and the emotional and political fallout that will result from accepting the genocide, think about it: Wouldn’t it be so much simpler to just deny it?

I started to modify my response to the question “Why do Turks deny the genocide?” over time. I added one more reason for Turkish denial. It is also a very simple argument. If Turkey accepts that the genocide took place, it will be obligated to pay reparations. The argument has some wider consequences than whether the events of 1915 should be termed “genocide.” Let’s assume that 1915 was not genocide, and imagine that the Union and Progress Party had deported the Armenians from a cold, mountainous, and infertile area to a sunny warm and fertile region; pretend, in other words, that the Armenians had been dispatched to Florida. However, everything that these people owned was confiscated in the process and not a single penny was paid back to them. Even if you refuse to accept the events of 1915 as genocide, you have to accept the fact that the country of Turkey today was formed on the seizure of Armenian assets, and now sits on top of that wealth. As a result, if you accept and acknowledge that something unjust happened in 1915 in Turkey, you have to pay back compensation. Therefore, in order to avoid doing that, denying genocide outright makes a whole lot of sense.

I have continued to add some additional factors to explain Turkish denials, such as the phenomenon that occurs when you repeat a lie. Even in ordinary daily life, how easy is it to reverse yourself once you’ve told a lie? The lie about genocide has a history of decades and has become calcified. A state that’s been lying for 90 years can’t simply reverse course. Even when you know you’re telling untruths, they acquire the veneer of reality after so many years.

But these points are only useful for explaining why the state has continued to deny the genocide. As the years passed, I started to write that the term “Turkish denial” was inadequate for fully explaining the situation. I questioned the validity of the use of the term “Turks” to reflect a homogeneous entity that defines not only the people of Turkey but the state of Turkey, as well. I suggested making a distinction between state policy and the attitude of the people of Turkey towards genocide. I argued that the term “denial” was adequate in explaining state policy, but not that of society. The attitude of society should more accurately be portrayed as one of ignorance, apathy, fatalism, reticence, and silence, rather than denial.

Turkish society is not a monolithic block, and can be considered analogous to a train. It’s made up of lots of different cars, and each car represents a different sub-cultural ethnicity with a different attitude towards what happened in 1915. I’ve stated many times that a large portion of Kurds, Dersimians, and Alewites have accepted the reality of what happened in 1915, and that the real problem is that these different groups have not been able to express their thoughts on it in a way that was forceful, firm, and especially written. I used the terms silence and avoidance not only in the sense of a single attitude that is jointly held by all segments of society, but also to mean not openly taking a stance toward the official state narrative. One has to accept that all of these distinctions are important, and perhaps vital, to understanding the development of civil society in Turkey today, but that they are still not enough to explain why denialism is such a dominant part of the cultural landscape in Turkey.

So, my thinking has begun to change, yet again, recently. I don’t mean to say that my previous explanations were necessarily incorrect. Just the opposite: I still believe that these factors play a major role in the denial of the Armenian Genocide. However, I have now started to think that the matter seems to have roots in something much deeper and almost existentialist, which covers the state as much as the society. The answer to the question seems to lie in a duality between existence and non-existence—or, as Hamlet would say, “to be or not to be.” I believe our existence as a state and a society translates into their—Christians in Anatolia—non-existence, or not-being. To accept what happened in 1915 means you have to accept the existence of them—Christians—on Turkish territory, which is practically like announcing our non-existence, because we owe our being to their non-existence. Let me explain.

In order to provide more clarity, I would like to introduce Habermas to the topic. Habermas points out that within the social tissue and institutions of societies resides a “secret violence,” and this “secret violence” creates a structure of communication that the entire society identifies with.[1] Through this way of “collective communication,” the restrictions and exclusion of certain topics from public discourse are effectively institutionalized and legitimized. What is meaningful to note here is that this structure is not imposed on the society by the rulers, but is accepted and internalized by those who are ruled. There is a silent consensus in the society.

I would like to borrow another term from author Elias Siberski to shed some light on this condition–“communicative reality” (die kommunikative Wirklichkeit). Siberski uses this term to describe a very important characteristic of secretive organizations.² According to Siberski, secretive organizations create an internal reality through a method of communication that is totally different from the real world. The situation in Turkey today resembles this very closely. As a society, we are like a secret organization. Since the establishment of our republic we have created a “communicative reality,” which sets out our way of thinking and existence over “state and nation.” It gives shape to our emotions and defining belief systems, or, in other words, our entire social-cultural net of relations. In sum, the things that make us who we are or at a minimum who we think we are. What is important to note is the gap between this “communicative reality” and actual reality.

In the end, this “communicative reality” has given us speakable and unspeakable worlds, and has created a collective secret that covers our entire society like a glove. It has created one big gigantic black hole. We are, today, a reality that possesses a “black hole.” This existence of a huge “black hole,” or the possession of a “collective secret,” or creation of a “coalition of silence”—these are the terms that define who we are… We simply eradicated everything Christian from this reality. This is how we teach Ottoman history in our schools, this is how we produce intellectual-cultural works about our society.

My opinion is that the secret behind the denial of the Armenian Genocide, or the unspeakableness of it, lies somewhere in here. What happened in 1915 is Turkish society’s collective secret, and genocide has been relegated to the “black hole” of our societal memory. Since the founding of the Republic of Turkey, all of us, rightists and leftists, Muslim, Alewite, Kurds, and Turks, have created a collective “coalition of silence” around this subject, and we don’t like being reminded of this hidden secret that wraps around us like a warm, fuzzy blanket. The reminders have an annoying irritating quality and we feel confronted by a situation that leaves us unsure of what to do or say.

Because, if we are forced to confront our history, everything—our social institutions, mentalities, belief systems, culture, and even the language we use—will be open to question. The way a society perceives itself is going to be questioned from top to bottom. As a result, we don’t appreciate the “reminders.” We view reminders as “force,” and react quite negatively to them. All of us, rightist and leftist, search for excuses, but we together seem to be crying out, as if in chorus, “Here we are minding our own business, not bothering anyone, when you appeared out of nowhere. Where did you come from?” It is as if we, as a nation, are making this collective statement: “If you think we are going to destroy the social-cultural reality we created with such great care over 95 years, with one swipe of a pen, think again!”

The Armenian Genocide is a part of a more general framework that is directly related to our existence. The republic and the society of Turkey today have been constructed upon the removal of Christians—the destruction of an existence on a territory that we call our homeland. Since we have established our existence upon the non-existence of another, every mention of that existence imparts fear and anxiety in us. The difficulty we have in our country with speaking about the Armenian issue lies within this existence-non-existence duality. If you’re looking for an example that comes close to this, you don’t need to look far: The history of the Native Americans in the U.S. bears similarities.

So, I think we have to reverse the question: The central question is not why Turkey denies the genocide, but whether we the people of Turkey are ready, as a state and as a society, to deny our present state of existence. It seems that the only way we can do that is by repudiating how we came to be and by creating a new history of how we came to exist. Are we capable of doing that? That’s the true question.

Notes

[1] Jurgen Habermas, “Die Ütopie des guten Herrschers,” in: Habermas, Kultur and Kritik (Frankfurt a.M., 1973), p. 386-7.

2 Elias Siberski, Untergrund und Offene Geselschaft, Zur Fragen der strukturellen Deutung des sozialen Phaenomens (Stutgart, 1967), p. 51.

December 16, 2012
Obama Urged to Encourage Turkey to Acknowledge Armenian Genocide

WASHINGTON and ZURICH, June 12, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Taner Akcam Speaks at Christian Solidarity International (CSI) Event on the Future of Religious Minorities in the Middle East

Taner Akcam, Professor of History at Clark University, has urged President Obama and his European allies to encourage “Turkey to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, and to follow the post-Holocaust example of Germany by making appropriate compensation for lives and property.”

Dr. Akcam made this plea last week while contributing to CSI’s spring 2012 conference series on The Future of Religious Minorities in the Middle East. (See www.formime.ch for videos of Akcam’s lectures in English and Turkish.)

Akcam said Turkey’s willingness to recognize the Genocide, in which approximately 1.5 million Christians – mainly Armenians and Assyrians – perished, and to provide compensation, is a litmus test of its fitness to fulfill its aspiration for Great Power status and leadership in shaping the destiny of the Middle East. Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu calls for the “reintegration” of territories in Syria, Greece, Bulgaria, and Georgia with Turkey – a policy often referred to by political commentators as New Ottomanism. (Davutoglu, “Vision 2023: Turkey’s Foreign Policy Objectives,” London, November 22, 2011.)

Launching his new book, The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire, (Princeton, 2012), Akcam noted that “under the Islamic law of the Ottoman Empire, Christians were not allowed to become fully equal,” and that “it was, in fact, impossible for equality to be realized under the Islamic law of the Empire.” The Turkish Republic, Akcam maintains, has to break decisively from the tradition of Turkish and Islamic supremacism if it is going to gain the confidence of non-Muslim minorities and non-Turkish communities and become a source of regional democratic stability, rather than repression.

Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister, Recep Tayyib Erdogan, persists in denying the Genocide process, which has reduced the country’s Christian population from approximately 30% in 1914 to less than 1% today. He has furthermore sought to use religion as a last line of defense with the claim that “it is not possible for a Muslim to commit genocide.”

Taner Akcam is the first scholar of Turkish origin to publicly acknowledge the massacres, forced deportations and assimilation of Turkey’s Christians during World War I as Genocide. His latest book, based on the Ottoman Archives in Istanbul, demonstrates that the Genocide was premeditated, planned and executed on orders from the Turkish Government, and aimed at creating “ethno-religious homogenization.”

Dr. John Eibner, the CEO of CSI-USA, observed that Prof. Akcam’s research was “a chilling reminder of the consequences of ethnic and religious supremacism.” Eibner called on Christians to “join others of good will to stand in solidarity with all endangered religious minorities of the Middle East that face violence from Islamic supremacist governments and movements today.”

CSI has issued a Genocide Warning for endangered religious minorities in the Islamic Middle East, and has called on President Barack Obama to make their survival a priority as the United States responds to the Middle East’s ongoing political turmoil.

Contact:Joel [email protected]

SOURCE Christian Solidarity International (CSI)

via Obama Urged to Encourage Turkey to Acknowledge Armenian Genocide – MarketWatch.

June 13, 2012
If US recognizes Genocide, Turkey will have to apologize to Armenians – Turkish historian

If the US, Israel, and England recognize the Armenian Genocide, Turkey will have to make an apology to the Armenians, renowned Turkish historian Taner Akcam stated in an interview with the Taraf daily of Turkey.

He also noted that the US presidential elections will be held at the end of this year, and, prior to the elections, there will not be any change in incumbent President Barack Obama’s stance in this regard. “Just like in the previous times, Turkey will exert pressure on the US. But I assume that in 2015 Obama will use the word ‘genocide.’

A lot will change if the US recognizes the [Armenian] Genocide. At present, the US, England, and Israel are allowing Turkey to maneuver in the international platform. But if this troika recognizes the Genocide, Turkey, with its denialist posture, will appear in the status of an isolated regime.

Turkey is not required to say the word ‘genocide,’ but it is obligated to apologize and accept that a crime against humanity took place in 1915,” Taner Akcam said.

via If US recognizes Genocide, Turkey will have to apologize to Armenians – Turkish historian | Armenia News – NEWS.am.

March 17, 2012
Akcam to Talk on Armenian Genocide Trials at NAASR

BELMONT, Mass.—On Thurs., Feb. 16, Dr. Taner Akcam, the Robert Aram and Marianne Kaloosdian and Stephen and Marian Mugar Professor of Modern Armenian History and Armenian Genocide Studies at Clark University, will give a lecture entitled “Judgment at Istanbul: The Armenian Genocide Trials,” at 8 p.m., at the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) Center, 395 Concord Ave., Belmont. The lecture is co-sponsored by the Zoryan Institute for Contemporary Armenian Research and Documentation, the Mashtots Chair in Armenian Studies at Harvard University, and NAASR.

Judgment at Istanbul cover 1 190×300 Akcam to Talk on Armenian Genocide Trials at NAASR

The cover of ‘Judgment at Istanbul’

The recently published volume Judgment at Istanbul (Berghahn Books) by Vahakn Dadrian and Taner Akcam is a new, authoritative translation of the Key Indictments and Verdicts and detailed analysis of the Turkish Military Tribunals concerning the crimes committed against the Armenians during World War I.

The authors have compiled the documentation of the trial proceedings for the first time in English and situated them within their historical and legal context. These documents show that Wartime Cabinet ministers, Young Turk Party leaders, and a number of others inculpated in these crimes were court-martialed by the Turkish Military Tribunals in the years immediately following World War I. Most were found guilty and received sentences ranging from prison with hard labor to death.

In this lecture, Akcam will discuss the authors’ new findings and the importance of these trials in the light of recent scholarship, and will address the critiques of and attacks against the validity of the trials and documents discovered through the proceedings.

Until recently our knowledge of the trials was limited to those trials whose indictments and verdicts were published by the Takvim-i Vekayi. Over the course of years of meticulous research, Dadrian and Akcam discovered that there were as many as 62 trials. In Judgment at Istanbul, they not only list these until-now-unknown cases, but also analyze the political conditions of the time and the history of these trials.

Judgment at Istanbul will be available for purchase and signing the night of the lecture.

Taner Akcam is the author of From Empire To Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide and A Shameful Act: the Armenian Genocide and Turkish Responsibility, as well as numerous articles in Turkish, German, and English. His forthcoming book The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire, will be issued by Princeton University Press in April 2012.

Admission to the event is free (donations appreciated). The NAASR Center is located opposite the First Armenian Church and next to the U.S. Post Office. Ample parking is available around the building and in adjacent areas.

For more information, call (617) 489-1610 or e-mail [email protected].

via Akcam to Talk on Armenian Genocide Trials at NAASR | Armenian Weekly.

January 25, 2012