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Your article mentions Taner Akcam, he is hardly a unbiased party.
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
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) Aenigma,can u b more straigtforward in the future sister?
