Michael Enright intelligently begins his program by stating "It is impossible to underestimate the power of the word 'genocide.' And it is equally impossible to underestimate the consequences when the word is NOT used," faulting those who avoided the word when describing events in Darfur. He further adds:

"Armenians themselves call it “The Forgotten Genocide.” And while it may have happened 90 years ago, in a far-away corner of the Ottoman Empire, it is as alive for Turks and Armenians today as it was those many long decades ago."

Host Michael Enright

I like the fact that Enright specified the Armenians as mislabeling their raison d'etre as a "Forgotten Genocide.” when their money and loudness has insured their myth as the second best researched "genocide" after the Holocaust. However, this "genocide" is not alive for most Turks, who have better things to do with their lives; Turks made the mature decision to move away from these ugly events, to stress brotherhood and a looking to the future. Had Turkish grandparents instilled their children with hatred for the excruciating crimes the Armenians had committed (with Russian help), while ethnically cleansing hundreds of thousands of fellow Ottomans, then the episode would have been alive. The only reason why it's alive for some Turks is because even the silent Turks have come to realize the ugly charges of the genocide industry cannot remain unanswered.

"Taner Akçam has become the first Turkish historian to call the Armenian killings a genocide. In response, his life has been threatened. No university in his own country will hire him. He has been derided as a traitor, and hailed as a hero."

If his life has been threatened, I hope it was never so seriously. Even those who regard Akcam as a traitor address him in a civil manner as possible, an attitude steeped in Turkish tolerance, in marked contrast to the fanatical Armenian "I will KILL you" mentality (one example) that too often surfaces with perceived slights. (Not to say some Turks are without this "Oriental mentality" either; but Akcam could not have operated as seriously, even in Turkey itself, if he felt his life was in danger. The same applies to his fellow turncoat, Halil Berktay, who actually has been spreading his poison in Turkey itself, at Sabanci University. Since both Akcam and Berktay are the same peas in a pod, if Berktay has found a Turkish university to hire him, there is no reason why the same courtesy couldn't be extended to Akcam, as well.

Akcam's life has been seriously threatened, and we'll soon discover the ones doing the threatening were not the Turks, but those who lie in Akcam's own anti-Turkish bed.

 

 

To Akcam's credit, sometimes he has rare "honesty attacks," as demonstrated by the following reply to the host's question regarding the reason for why the Armenians were killed:

"...Undoubtedly the culture of tension between Christian and Muslim populations is one of these reasons. But both peoples, the Muslims and Christians, lived in the area more than 500 years without any problem."

Good for Akcam that he did not espouse one of the favorite Armenian theories providing a murder motive, that "Muslims hate Christians"; he also didn't travel down the road of the favorite theory, "Pan-Turanism"... that Turks hoped to Turkify the empire. (Curiously leaving other Ottoman non-Turks intact.) Akcam provides his own theory:

"There are of course different reasons, but, if you ask me, I would underline one important reason, and I would define this more as a political reason. The basic fear of the Ottoman Empire was that they were going to lose the eastern part of Anatolia. In 1914, before World War One, there was an agreement between the Russian government and the Ottoman government. According to this agreement, the Ottoman authorities should implement certain reforms in eastern Anatolia. These reforms should give certain autonomy to the Armenians. According to the Ottoman authorities, this was the beginning of Armenian independence in eastern Anatolia."

Definitely, the Ottoman Empire was well aware that the European imperialists succeeded in stirring up the peoples in the Balkans, resulting in the massive loss of territories and Turkish lives. The Europeans were now pulling the same trick with the Armenians. The handwriting was on the wall.

What Akcam is not telling us is that the Armenians were accorded "internal autonomy" (as Hovannisian described it) centuries ago. The Turks wanted to get away from the dictates of its mortal Russian enemy, and offered a real autonomy to the Armenians themselves, as we covered earlier, through the work of Nassibian. The fact is, the Armenians prospered under the Ottomans unlike any other time in their history; they were treated worse by the Russians and even the Armenians themselves.

Here is the flaw in Akcam's theory: the Turks didn't have to respect this treaty that Russia twisted the Turks' arm with. Once war started and the Turks annulled this treaty, why should they have been afraid of the implications of the treaty? That was not a reason to get rid of the Armenians. The Ottomans were saying "screw you" to the world; they also eliminated the humiliating Capitulations during WWI... the whole idea was to reclaim their sovereignty, as the nation had degenerated into little more than a European colony. War was not an excuse to implement a large-scale, expensive relocation policy when resources and manpower were so scarce. If killing off the Armenians was on the Turks' minds, it would logically have been much smarter to use them as much as possible during desperate wartime, and murder them after the war had been won.

"The Turks had just sustained in the Caucasus a severe defeat. They needed every available man and every round of ammunition to cheek the advancing Russians. It is therefore incredible that without receiving any provocation they should have chosen that particularly inopportune moment to employ a large force of soldiers and gendarmes with artillery to stir up a hornet’s nest in their rear. Military considerations alone make the suggestion absurd." C.F. Dixon-Johnson's "The Armenians," 1916.

Akcam goes on to explain that each time reforms were granted, "Ottoman authorities never implemented these democratic rights." That is absolutely an untrue statement. As an example, Armenians were granted the right to bear arms along the way. (That is what caused Adana in 1909 to become a powderkeg.) What prevented the reform process from running smoothly was the constant interference of the powers, and the subsequently emboldened minorities who took advantage of their greater freedoms by working against the state.

Akcam's diabolical conclusion: "They thought that instead of creating an establishment of an Armenian—allowing of a nation-state there, to kill them, to homogenize the region, is the best political solution." After the Turks actually offered the Armenians autonomy in the Dashnak conference of Erzurum in the autumn of 1914. What a despicable distortion. The true sequence of events was that the Armenians were offered a reward of what resembled "actual" autonomy (this would have likely been under some Ottoman control) if the Armenians had only done their patriotic duty and fought against the enemies of the state. The Armenians decided to stab their nation in the back by becoming, as Boghos Nubar put it, "belligerents de facto." The existence of the nation was threatened with this betrayal, combined with the need to fight hostile superpowers (already in agreement through secret treaties as to how to divide the Ottoman lands between themselves), and the entire Armenian community had to be moved elsewhere, for reasons of national survival. The reasons were much more pressing than why the United States resettled their Japanese during WWII, because the United States' existence was not immediately threatened, and their Japanese community was loyal. The relocation of the Armenians was meant as temporary, and they were allowed to come back; even before the official decree of return was issued, Armenians were trickling back anyway. (Already present in large numbers, in 1916. See Morgenthau reference, above.)

In fact let's dwell on that Morgenthau reference for a moment. Now, let us please bear in mind this is coming from Henry Morgenthau, one of the worst accusatory Turcophobes from the period who lied through his teeth to satisfy his own agenda, and who relied exclusively on Armenian sources. If Morgenthau himself is saying in early 1916 that "Armenians were found in good numbers in almost all the interior cities of Turkey," and that the government's role was "passive" toward the Armenians, what kind of an extermination policy is that? What kind of a homogenization is that, if around half the number of pre-war Armenians still remained in the state at the end of the war, according to the often-deceptive Armenian Patriarch himself? (Remember, the ones who lost their lives mostly died of famine and disease, the same reasons that claimed the lives of most of the 2.5 million-plus Turkish mortality.) It is the duty of immoral "historians" with an agenda to completely overlook the facts (not the "official" facts from the "Turkish government," but the facts presented by AKCAM'S OWN pro-Armenian sources), and make terrible "genocide" accusations..

Shame. Shame on Taner Akcam.

 

 The host asks Akcam why today's Turkish historians deny Akcam's reality, and Akcam replies "they don’t want to be reminded of that past." Isn't this explanation absolutely ridiculous? As if today's Turks (let along professional historians whose business deals with the past) have any care or even concept of events that happened so long ago. Perhaps Akcam is mixing "Turks" up with "Armenians" (with the crucial difference that Armenians live to be reminded of this past).

Another reason is that "founders of the Turkish Republic were either participants in this genocidal process or they enriched themselves from this process." When the host asks whether Ataturk should be among the implicated, Akcam replies, "Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was one of the opponents of this genocidal policy."

I'll admit, Akcam surprises me sometimes. His pattern is lie, lie, lie, lie, and all of a sudden... out of nowhere... truth. Here he admirably breaks from the ranks of the genocide forces, those such as Levon Marashlian, Rudy Rummel and countless others, who squarely pin the genocidal blame on Ataturk as well. (At least regarding the post war "Phase Two." So when Ataturk's forces clashed with the Armenian Republic, a war that Armenia provoked according to its own prime minister, Ataturk is blamed for further massacres... even though Near East Relief representatives themselves are on record (in the case of 1920 Kars... incidentally, the province with many Turkified Armenians where Akcam was born) for stating that there were no massacres.

Yet Akcam has a way of undoing even his rare moments of truth; in this case, he adds, "(Ataturk) openly accused the Unionist leaders who organized this genocide of being murderers." Is Akcam referring to the mysterious Los Angeles Examiner article (August 1, 1926) by a Swiss journalist of whom no traces could be found, and the one where Ataturk's own schedule book does not record any interviews given? That is, the one all major biographies of Ataturk avoided mentioning because of the knowledge that this interview was a fake? To get the real scoop on Ataturk's Armenian views, the interview to consult would be March 27, 1921's Public Ledger, conducted by Clarence Streit. (On the same page as the link provided directly above.)

What Akcam is telling us is that "It is a psychological difficulty to call these founders thieves and murderers." Too bad Akcam harbors no such difficulties, psychological or otherwise... making false statements come all too naturally to him. Before one accuses anyone of being a "thief" or a "murderer," what does one need? (Assuming one possesses morality.) One needs evidence. Not hearsay or fabrications, such as the testimony from the 1919 puppet courts.

Here is the reality, as provided for by former P.O.W. and later assistant to the British High Commission (the ones who supervised the occupation of the beaten Ottoman nation), Harold Armstrong (from "Turkey in Travail," as he describes the Turkish officials imprisoned for the Malta Tribunal; Armstrong's accent is understandably on P.O.W.s, but the near-entirety of these men — 144 at one point — were being held for crimes against Armenians):

"The story of these deportees is a sorry one. Among them were evil criminals, who had murdered prisoners-of-war. Many were ordinary normal Turks who had been leading men in Turkey during the war. Some were arrested on the poor evidence of a couple of Armenian women or on that of an enemy. More than one was arrested in error. They were imprisoned in conditions quite out of keeping with their rank or position. They were kept two years in confinement without being charged with any crime. They were herded all together, those arrested for political offences old and new, and those for massacre, murder and evil crimes. Thus the foul beast Mazlum Bey from Afion-Kara-Hissar, who had murdered British prisoners-of-war and committed loathsome crimes and offences, was confined with Said Halim Pasha, the old Grand Vizier, who had opposed the declaration of war and had been persuaded by Enver Pasha against his better judgment to sign. It was as if the victorious Germans had shut Lord Balfour in with a gang of criminals like Crippen and Mahon... the affair dragged on, and late in 1921 all these prisoners without distinction were released, and those who wished it were shipped back to Turkey. The results of these deportations were considerable...

The belief in British justice suffered a rude shock. Many of the deportees were men of great importance. When released they became ministers and deputies in the Angora Government, and their hatred of the British was not diminished by their imprisonment, degradation and general treatment in Malta."

Of course these ordinary normal Turks and patriots who had experience in government were going to lend their expertise to the depleted, struggling new nation, by becoming ministers and deputies in the Angora Government. Therefore, according to Akcam, one reason why today's Turkish historians are "deniers" is because... they need to protect the reputations of these men? Men who couldn't be found guilty, even by the desperate British who hoped to virtually wipe the Turkish nation off the earth's face, through the Sèvres Treaty?

 

  The "Historian" Gets Personal

 Akcam offers insight into his life by stating, "...between 1990—I was in Germany, and my Ph.D. is also from Germany, and I was living in Germany. In 1995 I returned to Turkey and tried to settle there and tried to find a job."

"I had certain agreements with certain institutions. One private university in Istanbul agreed to hire me, but at the last second, they decided to drop their decision. "

They were all afraid: "I must add that there was no official pressure at that time towards these universities, but these scholars, the academicians who are going to decide on that issue, got certain letters, unsigned or signed as 'A Group of Turkish Intellectuals.' In these letters, these scholars and universities were warned [not] to get in touch with me. This is an indirect threat. Everyone knew that these letters were coming from the authorities, the Secret Service, or groups within the Turkish state, and so the universities were scared to hire me."

That's nonsense. Akcam is speculating again. Pro-Armenian propaganda always has it that the sinister Turkish government. will always be behind the opposing forces to the Armenian myth. The reality is that the Turkish government is completely at a loss in handling this "genocide" business. As Harold Armstrong deduced with some overstatement, "The Turks... were incommunicative people with no power of self-expression nor of propaganda in their own interests."

I'm not in a position to conclusively say whether the "sinister" Turkish government was behind these threats; what I'm saying is that if I were a Turk living in Turkey, and if I were to hear a poisonous propagandist like Akcam were being considered to soil impressionable students' minds, I'd surely fire off such a letter. I wouldn't care what the "Turkish government" had to say.

Akcam explains why it is important to tell the story of the genocide:

"I was a member of this generation who were really fighting for human rights and democratic rights, in Turkey. That’s why I know what torture means, I know what violence means. It’s part of my own history."

He's got that right. What he doesn't reveal is that he was a convicted terrorist who played a part in the violence of that tumultuous period. For example, on November 4, 1975, he reportedly participated in an act of violence in Malatya, which resulted in an injury to a cab driver.

Here is how Akcam explained this part of his past:

"...I was arrested in 1976 because of the article I wrote in a students’ newspaper. The reason why I was arrested is that I wrote that there are Kurds living in Turkey. In fact, the Turkish state claimed at that time that there were only Turks in Turkey. In the 1970s, this was a founding myth of the modern Turkish state. It was a criminal offense. It was against the law to acknowledge the existence of Kurds in Turkey. Because of that reason, I was put in jail and sentenced to ten years. Then, after one year, I thought “it is enough,” and I escaped from the prison. Then I came to Germany, where I was given political asylum in 1978. After some personal tragedies as a result of my political role, I decided to quit politics and change the direction of my life. It was the middle of the 1980s. I went to academia."

If only all prisoners could get out of jail when they think, "it is enough." Despite their vile MIDNIGHT EXPRESS reputation, Turkish prisons must be the easiest in the world to bust out of. Those who have blown Turkish joints include Billy Hayes, Mehmet Ali Agca [the criminal who shot the Pope], Peter Balakian's "action priest" relative...

So Akcam innocently provides as the reason for his imprisonment that he wrote an article about Kurds. I'm betting the "Kurd" word was not so much a taboo in 1976's Turkish media as Akcam hoped for the radio listener to believe. No, the reasons for his imprisonment were far more serious.

From "From Terrorism to Armenian Propagandist: The Taner Akcam Story," by Mustafa Artun, March 19 , 2001:

...Akcam moved from student activism into political terrorism by joining the THKP-C (...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... 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,

...He criticized DEV-YOL's leader Muftuoglu 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.

...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.

 The Turkish Response

 The program deserves a lot of credit for including the lengthy statement prepared by the Ottowa Turkish Embassy. It was so nicely prepared, here it is in its entirety:

Enright: Now, we asked for a response from the Turkish Embassy in Ottawa. Here is part of the Embassy’s official statement to The Sunday Edition.

[ME reads from statement:]

The question — whether the events in Anatolia during the First World War can be termed a genocide — is too complex to treat in a short time. The Turkish people, not only the Turkish Government as many times mistakenly put, firmly believe that what happened to the Armenians was not genocide. This stance does not aim to belittle the suffering of Armenians as well as of Turks or to deny that high numbers of lives have been lost in Anatolia. Every loss of life is deplorable and tragic. To mourn these losses and learn about our common history is one thing but attempting to use these tragic — tragic equally to both sides — events for political or material gains today is another.

In the years that the Ottoman Empire was getting closer to its final collapse, Armenians had decided to wage an armed struggle against Ottomans with the aim of creating an independent state of their own in Eastern Anatolia.

The problem with the Armenian case was that in the territory that they were claiming, they were only a minority. Therefore, for them to be able successfully to form an independent state was possible only by ethnically “cleansing” the majority Turks from these lands, something which they planned and started to do. They actually attacked and did whatever harm they could inflict on Turkish interests. For the Ottoman Government, they were terrorists instigating rebellion.

Alarmed by this imminent security risk and the strategic threat posed by the Armenian support of the enemy, that is, the Allied forces, the Ottoman Government decided in May 1915 to relocate only the eastern Anatolian Armenians from the six provinces with Armenian population to other parts of the Empire, away from a war zone in which they were collaborating with invading Russian armies.

Many Armenian convoys, once uprooted, became victim of unlawfulness prevailing in the region as well as the harsh natural conditions aggravated by the war. As a result, many Armenians were killed while many others made into one of these cities and formed today’s Diaspora. But, one has to remember that the number of Muslim and Turks perished in those years in those conditions is no less than those of Armenians.

The Turkish people are deeply offended by the accusations branding them as being genocidal- They find it disrespectful of their unmentioned millions of dead in a time of desperation not only for Armenians, but more so for the Turks. It is not accurate if the issue is presented as one between the Armenian Diaspora and the Turkish Government.

What determines genocide is not necessarily the number of casualties or the cruelty of the persecution but the “intent to destroy” a group. Historically the “intent to destroy a race” has emerged only as the culmination of racism, as in the case of anti-Semitism and the Shoah. Turks have never harbored any anti-Armenian racism.

There is no evidence that the Ottoman Government wanted to exterminate Armenians by this decision of relocation. On the contrary, all the evidence shows just the opposite that they wanted to implement this relocation decision without risking lives.

Killing, even of civilians, in a war waged for territory, is not genocide. The victims of genocide must be totally innocent. In other words, they must not fight for something tangible like land, but be killed by the victimizer simply because of their belonging to a specific group.

What happened between Turks and Armenians was a struggle for land; branding it as genocide, a term coined to depict the Shoah, is in our opinion, the greatest disgrace to the innocent victims of the Holocaust. It is deplorable that, some Armenian groups in the Diaspora would like to exploit the horrors generated by the Holocaust as a tool in their bid to realize their self-centered, dreamy national aspirations, terribly hopelessly far from the realities.

ME: That’s the official statement from the Turkish Embassy in Ottawa.

Holdwater: They slipped up, though, in their claim that only the "eastern Anatolian Armenians from the six provinces" were relocated. The rest is excellent.

 Why, how dare there be any nuance representing the historical reality when the pro-Armenians would prefer an uninterrupted, propagandistic monologue! Taner Akcam embarrassed himself with the following reply:

Thank you again for your invitation to appear as a guest on CBC's "Sunday Edition." I certainly appreciated sharing my findings on the Armenian genocide with a Canadian audience through the medium of a free press and am looking forward to contribute further.

I was, however, extremely surprised to learn that a long statement from the Turkish Embassy was read by host Michael Enright immediately following my remarks. This is shocking not only because I was given no opportunity to respond, but also, and more seriously, because Canada's national radio broadcaster felt it necessary to solicit an official position-statement from a foreign state, which had the effect of making the whole interview seem pointless and refuting my position. To me, this statement and its broadcasting are equivalent to issuing a fatwa. As you might know the fatwa is a kind of verdict issued by religious authorities, known as Muftis, to settle disputed questions in Islamic culture. A fatwa guides the believers in how to act and think and is tantamount to the “final word” on an issue. The Turkish state continues this Islamic tradition and considers it necessary to have one official “last word” on any historical topic.

I have had enough personal experience with authoritarian governments to know the difference between legitimate free speech and the legitimizing of an official party line. But my problem here is not only with the Turkish government, which considers that it has the right to dictate what its citizens should think about history; rather, my problem here is with CBC and its need to seek an official statement. You invited me as a scholar to talk on a historical topic and the Turkish state is not my counterpart. Surely this is not a standard which you follow for your historical problems here in Canada. To put it another way, had I been asked to comment on the historical treatment of Native Americans, surely the CBC would never have dreamt to ask the American State Department for an official stance on my position and broadcast it after my interview. This kind of action has the effect of a double standard; what you would not do with your own history, please don’t do it with others.

If you really want to support free speech in general, and, especially in Turkey, please don’t legitimize the Turkish state’s official “fatwas” by broadcasting them as a normal follow-up to an academic debate. The best way to aid Turkish society in its struggle for human rights and democracy is to remind the Turkish state that in Western societies the states, as a rule, don’t have official lines or positions on certain historical events.

You might also be interested to know that Turkey’s current official state position on the Armenian genocide is “let the historians discuss the issue; it’s not state business.” However, it seems that Turkey does not actually stick to this position and quickly intervenes if one of its citizens has a position other than its official “fatwa.” Likewise, CBC doesn’t want to leave the Turkish state out of the debate and felt it was necessary, or was compelled, to seek their official position; if the latter is the case, CBC owes us an explanation for what forced them to do so.

Thank you again for the opportunity to share my view of history. I hope that in the future CBC will be more sensitive in constructing discussions on historical topics.

Sincerely,

Taner Akçam
Visiting Associate Professor
Department of History
University of Minnesota

 

(History... and Taner Akçam, in the same sentence. Chilling.)