TURKISH SCHOLAR PRESENTS HIS LATEST BOOK ON GENOCIDE IN NY
PanARMENIAN.Net
April 13, 2012 – 14:53 AMT
PanARMENIAN.Net – Prof. Taner Akcam lectured to a packed Persson Hall
Auditorium at Colgate University, NY, on April 5, launching his new
book The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and
Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire, which has just been published
by Princeton University Press, The Armenian Weekly reported.
Akcam spoke about the importance of the new archival documents he
unearthed in the ministry of the interior archives in Istanbul. He
explored the Young Turks’ policies of forced conversions and planned
absorption of orphaned Armenian children as a dimension of the
genocidal process through which Armenian identity was obliterated by
the central planning of the Ottoman government in 1915. Akcam also
discussed the significance of Talat Pasha’s orders to massacre about
200,000 Armenians in Der Zor, Syria, in the summer of 1916. The lecture
was followed by a lively question and answer session and a reception.
In his introduction, Akcam’s host, Prof. Peter Balakian, noted:
“Akcam’s work remains groundbreaking, vitalizing, essential. Not
only has he opened up space inside Turkey for an honest evaluation
of the genocide of the Armenians, but also he has given courage to a
generation of younger Turkish scholars to tackle this history from the
premise of truthful acknowledgment of Lemkin’s definition of genocide.”
The lecture was sponsored by Colgate’s Office of the Dean and Provost,
its Peace and Conflict Studies Program, and the Core Program, in
which Balakian teaches his course on modern genocide.
Akcam holds the Kaloosdian and Mugar Chair in Armenian Genocide
Studies at Clark University.