AUTHOR ARGUES THAT ARMENIAN GENOCIDE HAPPENED
By Jonathan Q. Macmillan
Contributing Writer
Harvard Crimson, MA
March 15 2007
Taner Akcam, a Turkish professor at the University of Minnesota, said
yesterday in a speech at Harvard what many Turks have refused to say:
"There was an Armenian genocide."
Akcam’s evening lecture-which was co-sponsored by the Harvard
Armenian Society, the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian studies,
and other groups-drew an audience of over three hundred to the Center
for Government and International Studies last night.
Akcam, who was sentenced by a Turkish Court in the 1970s to nearly
nine years in prison for his writing but escaped after one year to
political asylum in Germany, used last night’s opportunity to present
recent research that he claims shows that the Armenian genocide was
a real and deliberate act by Turkish leaders during World War I.
Akcam, whose book’s title-"A Shameful Act"-comes from a description
of the alleged genocide by Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,
cited a number of documents, many from the official Ottoman Archives,
that he said explicitly described a systematic plan on the part of
Turkey’s ruling party. One document stated, "What we are talking
about is the elimination of the Armenians."
Turkey did not acknowledge the genocide in the years immediately
following World War I because it was concerned that such
acknowledgement would imperil its territorial claims, Akcam said. But
he added that this should no longer be a concern for the Turkish
government.
"The question of territory should be considered closed and resolved,
and the question of responsibility and human rights abuses should be
considered unresolved," Akcam said.
The government of Turkey to this day acknowledges no wrongdoing.
Timur Soylemez, a counselor at the Turkish Embassy in Washington, wrote
in an e-mailed statement before Akcam’s speech that the allegations
of genocide "have never been historically or legally substantiated
beyond reasonable doubt."
"As the facts stand today, the events of 1915 fail to meet the
definition of genocide as established by international law," he wrote.
Soylemez declined to be interviewed by phone.
But Akcam said that the term "genocide" is "a distraction."
"The fundamental issue is not the definition of a term," he said.
"What needs to be reemphasized is the need for moral condemnation of
an act."
James R. Russell, the Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at
Harvard, noted in a phone interview yesterday that most scholars agree
that the Turkish government’s claims of innocence are "demonstrably
untrue."
"The extermination of the Armenians was pre-arranged," Russell said
yesterday morning. "It took place not only in the war zone; it took
place all across Anatolia, and the people who were systematically
murdered were virtually in all cases not connected to the war."
Harvard Armenian Society co-president Nina K. Kouyoumdjian ’08 said
before last night’s event that she hoped events like Akcam’s lecture
would raise awareness and prevent history from repeating itself.
"It’s not as if Armenians want the land back or anything," she said.
"We want to prevent events like this from happening to another group
of people."
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