Interview with Taner Akçam

[Mehmet Cagatay <mehmetcagatayaydin@xxxxxxxxx>]

I was writing something on the occation of the first anniversary of Hrant
Dink's murder, then I just came across a recent interview with Taner
Akçam, a Turkish historian who has been subjected to a sort of witch-hunt
by Turkish authorities and nationalists on the occasion of his opinions
about the Armenian Genocide. I thought subscribers might be interested in:



Is It Still Genocide if Your Allies Did It?

How did you get involved in researching the Armenian Genocide?

I began in 1988 at the Hamburg Social Research Institute, working on the
history of torture and violence in Turkish political culture. At first, I
was studying and researching later Ottoman history. However, if one looks
at this time period, one comes inevitably upon the massacres of 1894-1896
and the deportation and killing of the Armenians in 1915.

In 1991, the Institute launched a project to investigate whether or not
the [lessons of the] Nuremburg Trials could be universalized. At the time
there were no serious discussions about this subject. We wanted to know
whether one could establish a court that would punish officials for the
crimes they committed in the name of their government or nation. Within
that project, I suggested looking into the Istanbul trials of 1919 and
1922 -- these were the trials that attempted to establish responsibility
for the Armenian Genocide. They were sort of precursors to Nuremburg. So
these two components came together, and I that's how I really started
working on the Genocide.

And you're from Turkey? Are you a Muslim?

I grew up in a very secular family. My father was an atheist, but I grew
up, of course, within Islamic culture. I am sure I carry on much of this
Islamic culture in the way I live, but in terms of my personal
convictions, I am very secular.

Please understand that I am a very ordinary Turkish intellectual. I come
from the '68 Generation -- here it was the Hippie Generation, but we too
were against the Vietnam War, American foreign policy, and so on. As
progressive people of that time in Turkey, we believed that we, Turks
created our nation-state in a fight against the great imperialist powers.
We assigned a very negative role to the Christian minorities in Turkey, to
the Armenians. To us, they were collaborators. This is how we perceived
ourselves and the world, and how we saw Turkey's past. Since we saw all
Christians in Turkey as allied with the imperialist state, we had a very
negative image of them. As progressives, we always thought it was better
not to touch on the topic of the Armenian Genocide, because to do so would
be to enter a very dark, suspicious terrain, which could not be understood
easily. It was not easy for me to decide to work on the Genocide. At first
I thought: I'm working on a very suspicious terrain, better not to go in,
actually.

You were active in protests from an early age, correct?

In my early period, in the early 1970s, I was in high school when the
student movement was very active. This was a huge anti-war movement. When
I started studying at the University it was already 1971, and 1971 was the
military coup d'état in Turkey. We were under the control of military. At
the beginning, we students were trying to reform the universities. We
wanted students to have a voice. Later, they became radicalized,
describing themselves as a socialist and democratic revolutionary
movement. In 1974 there was the first free election in Turkey. The
students became active, and I was one of these student activists
influenced by his older brothers in the '68 movement. We wanted reform at
the universities.

Now, this is important to understand because of the ongoing Turkish
campaign in the United States to discredit me as a terrorist. The story
begins with my arrest in 1974 for leafleting. At that time, the students
didn't have representation at the universities. Our major demand was to
have the freedom to establish a student organization to allow the
university to hear us.

In order to distribute a leaflet in Turkey you had to go to the central
police station and get special permission. You had to have this permit in
your possession while distributing literature. However, even if you had
this permit -- as I did -- you could still get arrested and held in jail
for two or three days; which is exactly what happened to me. That was my
"terrorist act": distributing leaflets -- with permission, mind you --
which said I opposed the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. I was against war. So
the police arrested me and I spent two days in prison.

Now today, in the United States, you can go online and read about Taner
Akçam's terrorist activities in 1974. It's very simple in the United
States to stigmatize someone as a terrorist. With that label attached to
someone's name, you can portray Al Qaeda and Taner Akçam in the same
picture.

full: 
http://www.lawandpolitics.com/minnesota/Is-It-Still-Genocide-if-Your-Allies-Did-It/cef7381e-fe46-102a-aeb9-000e0c6dcf76.html

       

Mehmet Çagatay
http://weblogmca.blogspot.com/


      
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