New York Times Review of Taner Akcam's Genocide Book

Ever hear of Taner Akcam? You should have, because he is considered one of the first Turkish academics to accept and openly discuss the Armenian Genocide. The New York Times published a review of his book, "A SHAMEFUL ACT: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility." Here is a snippet:

...a Turkish blast against this national denial. A historian and former leftist activist now teaching at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota, Akcam is often described as the first Turkish scholar to call the massacres genocide, and his impressive achievement here is to shine fresh light on exactly why and how the Ottoman Empire deported and slaughtered the Armenians.

He directly challenges the doubters back home, basing his powerful book on Turkish sources in the old Ottoman script — including the failed Ottoman war crimes tribunals held after World War I. Although he bolsters his case with material from the American, British and German archives, he writes that the remaining Ottoman records are enough to show that the ruling party’s central committee "did deliberately attempt to destroy the Armenian population."

I encourage all of you to read the review, if not the book. Whether or not you agree with the rest of his book, the fact that a Turkish academic can stand up against 90+ years of deliberate denial is admirable.

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Source: New York Times