A LONG ARTICLE OF WESTERN ORIGIN, closer to the truth than any other similar article I read before.

Here is a link that I think approches the real story of the so called Armenian Genocide in fair historical terms. The writer is not Turkish and it is hard to say he is biased in Turkish favor.


http://poligazette.com/2007/12/17/justice/

"Closer to the truth"? And you KNOW the truth eh?

I love the comments at the end of the article "Disbarred lawyers from Arkansas do not the best historians make"

Published on openDemocracy (http://www.opendemocracy.net)
Turkey and history: shoot the messenger
By Taner Akçam
Created 2007-08-16 18:07
I am a historian of Turkey and the author of many books and articles on the subject of Turkish nationalism and the Armenian genocide of 1915, among them From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide [1] (Zed Books, 2004) and A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility [2] (Henry Holt, 2007)

Taner Akçam [3] is visiting associate professor in the department of history, University of Minnesota. He earned [4] a doctorate at Hanover University, and later worked at the Institut für Sozialforschung in Hamburg, the Armenian Research Center at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, and the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Among his many publications are the books Dialogue Across an International Divide: Essays Towards a Turkish-Armenian Dialogue [5] (Zoryan Institute, 2001), From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide [6] (Zed Books, 2004) and A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility [7] (Henry Holt, 2006)
In May 2007, I revealed the identity of Murad "Holdwater" Gümen, the secretive webmaster of "Tall Armenian Tale [8]", an extensive and influential site devoted to "the other side of the falsified Genocide" and the defamation of genocide scholars, myself included. Murad Gümen has been a leading voice in an ongoing campaign to denounce me as a traitor to Turkey and as a terrorist who ought to be of interest to American authorities.

For the last three years, disinformation about me from Tall Armenian Tale has been disseminated all over the internet, eventually reaching the open-source encyclopedia, Wikipedia. This campaign intensified after the publication in November 2006 of my book, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility [9]; it culminated in my detention by Canadian and American border authorities in February 2007, on suspicion of terrorism. As evidence, they showed me my vandalised Wikipedia biography [10].

Just one month before this incident, the assassination of Istanbul-based journalist Hrant Dink [11] on 19 January 2007 by an ultra-nationalist gunman had put Turkey's intellectuals on high alert. We knew that in the months before his death, Dink had been targeted by an increasingly vicious media campaign intent on portraying him [11] as a traitor. Among other things, Dink was pilloried for revealing the Armenian identity of Sabiha Gökçen [12], the adopted daughter of Turkey's founding father, Kemal Atatürk. Leading the pack against Dink was Hürriyet newspaper [13], one of the most influential publications in Turkey.

The voice of "freedom"

In the campaign against me, disinformation from Tall Armenian Tale was copied to YouTube videos describing my "terrorist" activities. I received death threats by email. My lectures and book tour were disrupted, and poison-pen letters were sent to the hosting universities. Following my lecture on 1 November 2006, at City University of New York, I was physically assaulted.

My detention was the last straw. I challenged Murad Gümen to stand up in public.

The unmasking of an individual who had been running a campaign of slander against me was presented to readers of Hürriyet as a criminal or unethical act. I was said to have endangered Murad Gümen's life.

"Murad Gümen, who has been defending Turkey for over thirty years under the assumed name 'Holdwater', had his identity unmasked by Taner Akçam, supporter of the claim of a so-called genocide....Upon publication of his identity, Gümen became a target and has been the subject of a hate campaign" ("Secret Lobbyist Deciphered," Hürriyet, 21 June 2007).

Also in openDemocracy on Turkey's contest of memory over the Armenian genocide:

Hrant Dink, "The water finds its crack: an Armenian in Turkey [13]" (13 December 2005)

Murat Belge, "The trials of free speech in Turkey [13]" (6 February 2006)

Fatma Müge Göçek, "Hrant Dink (1954-2007): in memoriam [13]"(22 January 2007)

Vicken Cheterian, "The pigeon sacrificed: Hrant Dink, and a broken dialogue [13]"(23 January 2007)

Gunes Murat Tezcur, "Hrant Dink: the murder of freedom [13]" (23 January 2007)

Peter Balakian, "Hrant Dink's assassination and genocide's legacy [13]" (29 January 2007)

Hratch Tchilingirian, "Hrant Dink and Armenians in Turkey [13]" (23 February 2007)

openDemocracy publishes a quarterly digest of selected articles on a particular topic. The second issue, published in April 2007, is entitled Turkey: Writers, Politics and Free Speech. It contains the above articles and many more. For details and purchase, click here [14]

"Murad Gümen, whose identity was unmasked by Taner Akçam, has been the target of a flood of insults sent by Armenians via the internet. Gümen, who's been accused of racism, has had his photograph published on the Web....[Taner Akçam]'s disappeared. It has not been possible to reach Taner Akçam....Murad Gümen is a successful illustrator and film producer who lives in America" ("Immediate Target," Hürriyet, 22 June 2007).

"Taner Akçam fled Turkey years ago. He lives overseas, in the United States at this point, and gets fed by the Armenian lobby. He vomits hate towards our country in all of his books and his speeches. Recently he unmasked the website that was maintained by Murad Gümen, who has been defending the Turkish position on Armenian issues in the United States, and he revealed the latter's identity which had been kept secret until now. This individual named Taner Akçam who has spent his life living outside of the country, writing articles and giving speeches against Turkey...[T]his individual...escaped overseas, works in opposition to Turkey, betrayed his country, and serves the Armenian lobby by promoting the position that 'there was an Armenian genocide' all over the world!" (Emin Çolasan [15], "Bravo Atilla Koç! This is How You Introduce Turkey!", Hürriyet, 23 June 2007).

A weapon of power

Hürriyet's reportage concerns me deeply, for three reasons.

First, it bears an uncanny resemblance to the lynching mentality [15] that was created against Hrant Dink. Having revealed the identity of a secret slanderer, I am now being denounced as a traitor who "vomits hate towards our country."

My second cause for concern has to do with an anonymous email that I received on 11 June 2007: "Today we have started fighting you and those creatures you call your friends, within the boundaries of the law. But if we don't get the result we're looking for, we'll start trying other alternative ways. It would be better for world peace and truth if sewer germs like you were taken off the planet... tomorrow is going to be much more difficult for you. Pray that the devil takes you away soon because otherwise you'll be living a hell on earth... you think you've discovered who ‘Holdwater' is ...you have gotten it all wrong. Right now the world is full of millions of Holdwaters...One day you and your wild Armenian blood brothers will drown in this sea of Holdwaters...The truth hurts...it really does. One day you are going to feel the pain so badly that when you read these lines, you'll remember how you were."

The similarity in character between the campaign against me by Hürriyet and the language used in this threatening email is frightening [16].

The writer of that letter concludes, "Who am I? You're going to find out, Taner, you're going to find out." Was it a coincidence that the Hürriyet campaign began just ten days later?

Third, Hürriyet cold-bloodedly disregarded the most basic principles of journalism. Their headline on the second day of coverage proclaimed that I had "disappeared". Readers were given the impression that I had gone into hiding the day after Hürriyet reported my unmasking of Murad "Holdwater" Gümen [17].

The fact is that my office address, telephone numbers, and email address are all available [18] online. The University of Minnesota, College of Liberal Arts, the department of history, and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies [19] each has full-time staff. There is no record of a call, not one single email, from Hürriyet. They never bothered to contact me. They didn't check their facts or attempt to interview me. And when I demanded a correction, the editor-in-chief ignored my letter.

Thus, in Dink's case and also in mine, one of the most influential and widely circulated national newspapers in Turkey does not hesitate to transform itself into a weapon. Once again, intellectuals and activists who dare to question the government's "official history" are being put on notice. This shameful campaign [20] not only endangers my life and the lives of my colleagues, my family and friends; ironically enough, the very notion of free expression is being undermined by the very institution that depends on it most: the public press.

And what is the point, after all? I published [21] a scholarly study that deviated from the official position of the Turkish state. One should ask the Turkish authorities whether they truly believe that shooting the messenger will prove that their position on 1915 is the correct one.

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Source URL:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/turkey_and_history_shoot_the_messenger
Links:
[1] http://www.zedbooks.co.uk/book.asp?bookdetail=3536
[2] http://a%20shameful%20act:20/
[3] http://www2.cla.umn.edu/faculty/public_profile.php?UID=takcam
[4] http://www.genocidestudies.org/Faculty/Faculty_2005.htm
[5] http://www.zoryaninstitute.org/Table_Of_Contents/dialogue_akcamforeword.html
[6] http://www.zedbooks.co.uk/book.asp?bookdetail=3536
[7] http://a%20shameful%20act:20/
[8] http://www.tallarmeniantale.com/
[9] http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-11/uom-nbb111306.php
[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taner_Ak%25C3%25A7am
[11] http://www.englishpen.org/writersinprison/honorarymembers/turkey/hrantdink/
[12] http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/gokcen.html
[13] http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/anasayfa/,
[14] http://www.lulu.com/browse/preview.php?fCID=750786
[15] http://hurarsiv.hurriyet.com.tr/goster/haber.aspx?id=6763291&yazarid=5
[16] http://www.bianet.org/english/kategori/english/100839/akcam-i-have-never-been-so-scared
[17] http://www.tallarmeniantale.com/holdwater-message.htm
[18] http://www2.cla.umn.edu/faculty/public_profile.php?UID=takcam
[19] http://www.chgs.umn.edu/
[20] http://www.armtown.com/news/en/azg/20070721/2007072101/
[21] http://www.chgs.umn.edu/histories/turkishArmenian/akcamDocs.html



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Thanks for the article Kaddersokak. Sounds much more trustworthy than any of the nationalistic, selective bullshit posted by your comrade oufiE.

Hi Everyone,
This is a real story and background about Taner Akcam, he is actually was a terrorist a while ago and now he claims he knows the history better than anybody.. anyways, this is his story, enjoy reading

You may have heard that the ranks of those who accuse Turkey of having committed a "genocide" against the Armenians now include a Turkish citizen named Taner Akcam. Akcam who is affiliated with a German research center and claims a doctorate in history, has become the darling of the Armenian diaspora activists in this country and in Europe. He has been invited to the United States several times--all expenses paid by Armenian organizations--to give talks and participate in conferences. Currently, he is a "visiting scholar" at the Armenian Research Center (ARC) at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. The ARC serves as one of main mouthpieces of anti-Turkey Armenian propaganda in the U.S. Its Director, Dennis Papazian, is a well-known professional falsifier of history who has consistently denied that Armenians were involved in the deaths of thousands of Turks in Eastern Anatolia during World War I.

During the past decade, Akcam has published several books in Turkey on the Armenian issue, including Turk Ulusal Kimligi ve Ermeni Sorunu (Turkish National Identity and the Armenian Question). Akcam's publications show no evidence that he knows Ottoman Turkish or that he has ever worked in the Ottoman archives. In his writings, Akcam parrots the familiar arguments that have become the staple of the Armenian propaganda machine. He wholeheartedly endorses the Armenian claim that the Armenians were the victims of a horrible "genocide" that was planned and carried out by the Ottoman government during World War I. While dismissing the actions of the Armenian terrorist organizations against the Empire's Turkish and Muslim populations, he puts the blame for the tragic events that took place more than 80 years ago solely on the Young Turk leadership. Moreover, in line with the standard Armenian arguments, Akcam asks that Turkey formally apologize for its "crimes" to cleanse its national and collective conscience from this "horrible" burden. In his only publication to appear in English so far--an essay that was translated from German by none other than the well-known protagonist of the Armenian version of history, Vahakn Dadrian--Akcam goes so far as to argue that there was a close connection between the Armenian "genocide" and the national resistance movement in Anatolia led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and that the foundations of the new Turkish Republic reflected the involvement of its leadership in a genocidal policy. At the conclusion of his essay, Akcam wonders how traumatic it would be for Turks to discover that the individuals they regarded as "great saviors" and "people who created a nation from nothing" were in fact "murderers and thieves".

To understand how a person who claims Turkish citizenship can express such outrageous views, it is important to know something about his background. Taner Akcam was born in Kars--a province where there is a sizeable number of Turkified Armenian families--and he is the son of the leftist writer Dursun Akcam. Taner Akcam became involved in radical leftist activities while he was still a lycee student. His radicalism intensified while he studied at the Middle East Technical University in the early 1970s. Akcam moved from student activism into political terrorism by joining the THKP-C (Turkiye Halk Kurtulus Partisi-Cephesi-Turkish People's Liberation Party-Front) in 1972--a terrorist organization that was implicated in the assassinations and killings of numerous far-right militants, Turkish security officials, and American and NATO military personnel. In the mid-1970s, Akcam became a leading member of DEV-YOL (Devrimci Yol-Revolutionary Path) and the editor of its periodical Devrimci Genclik Dergisi (Revolutionary Youth Magazine). It might be recalled that DEV-YOL was one of the two principal leftist terrorist organizations (the other being DEV-SOL) that played a major role in the bloody escalation of political violence in Turkey during the 1970s. In the bizarre ideological divisions among the leftist groups that proliferated on the Turkish political scene at the time, DEV-YOL was known as following a "pro-Soviet" line in terms of its international loyalties. DEV-YOL's bloody terrorist activities, which claimed hundreds of fatalities and a large number of serious injuries, included assassinations, armed attacks, bombings, and bank robberies. The group also achieved notoriety when it set up a so-called "liberated zone" in the town of Fatsa on the Black Sea coast where DEV-YOL militants established their control for several months before being routed by the security forces.

During this period of heightened terrorism, Akcam was an active participant in the planning of assassinations and armed attacks against the targets chosen by DEV-YOL. He was in the inner leadership circle of the terrorist organization and worked as the right-hand man of its leader Oguzhan Muftuoglu. In addition, as the editor of DEV-YOL's magazine, he wrote numerous articles exhorting DEV-YOL militants to engage in violence to bring down "the oligarchy", to punish "the fascists", and to get rid of "American imperialism". By the mid-1970s, as political violence between the far-left and ultra-nationalist groups escalated, Akcam had become one of the leading "theoreticians" of leftist terrorism and violence in Turkey.

Taner Akcam was arrested in 1976. After a trial that lasted several months he was sentenced to eight years and nine months for his role in fomenting terrorism and political violence. However, Akcam did not stay in jail for long: in a spectacular incident that made the headlines in the Turkish press, he escaped from a prison in Ankara along with four other convicted terrorists in March 1977. After hiding in Turkey for several months, he managed to find his way to Germany where he asked--and received--political asylum.

In Germany, Akcam continued his involvement in radical leftist activism and became the leader of a group known as Gocmen Harekat¹ (Migrant's Movement) that sought to reorganize the other leftist terrorists who had escaped from Turkey. In the aftermath of the 1980 military coup in Turkey, Akcam became a leading figure in mobilizing demonstrations and protests against Turkey in Germany. He also wrote articles in various leftist publications in which he criticized DEV-YOL's leader Muftuo?lu for his "pacifism" and called for the renewal of the "armed struggle" in Turkey. He also maintained his fanatical criticisms and attacks against of the West in general, and the United States in particular. In an interview in 1989, he declared: "I consider saying 'yes' to NATO and the European Union the biggest shame for a revolutionary. I am against the West since I consider it an imperialist power...and because I view the technology, culture, and politics of the West dangerous for all mankind."

Akcam returned to Turkey in 1993 for the first time since his prison escape. Since his 1977 conviction and sentence had expired, he could not be put back into prison. In a press conference that he held upon his arrival to Istanbul, he stated that "DEV-YOL's struggle" was going to continue. However, by the early 1990s, DEV-YOL had become a relic of the past and a new generation of terrorists had appeared on the scene that did not much care for older militants such as Akcam. Taner Akcam then worked for a period as an "advisor" to another former leftists radical, Gurbuz Cap¹n, who had become the mayor of Esenyurt municipality in Istanbul.

In the 1990s, Akcam decided to reinvent himself as a "scholar" by writing books and articles on the Armenian question. Following graduate work in the university, he became affiliated with a research center in Hamburg. His uncritical acceptance of the Armenian version of the events that took place in Eastern Anatolia during World War I quickly gained him the sympathy and support of the anti-Turkey groups--Armenians, Kurds, and Greeks--first in Europe, and later in the U.S. At last, after spending years in terrorist organizations, hiding from the police, and living in exile as a refugee, Akcam had found his true calling in life. By gaining the dubious distinction of being the first "Turkish scholar" to agree wholeheartedly with all the Armenian allegations and claims against Turkey, Akcam finally managed to make a name for himself outside of terrorism and also earn a livelihood through the financial support provided by Armenian diaspora organizations.

Akcam's critical views about Turkey and the actions of the Turkish state is typical of a generation of leftist intellectuals and political activists who emerged on the Turkish political scene beginning in the late 1960s. For them, the Turkish state is capable of doing nothing good and worthy and everything that smells foul and nasty. As their hopes for a leftist revolution in Turkey faded away with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the communist regimes around Turkey, they have searched for new venues to vent their anger and opposition to the Turkish state. Some former radical leftists have taken up political Islam as their new cause. Others have become supporters of radical Kurdish nationalism and the PKK. And in the case of Akcam, his lifelong opposition to Turkish state has manifested itself through his unabashed support for the Armenian falsifiers of history.

It is lamentable that a person who has been a fanatical critic of the U.S. throughout his adult life and who has worked in terrorist organizations that were directly responsible for the deaths of American citizens is now warmly embraced by Armenians living in this country. Perhaps this should not come as a surprise since the Armenian activists have shown, over and over again, that they are willing to provide moral and material support to those who engage in terrorist acts directed at Turkey and Turkish officials. As a former terrorist leader with a long record of involvement in activities against the Turkish state, Akcam should feel at home among his new Armenian patrons.



Taken from turkeyforum.org