Taner Akcam Interview

[DominO123]

http://www.cbc.ca/thesundayedition/media/akcam_se050206.ram

[nairi]

What a bad interviewer... Who is he??

[DominO123]

What a bad interviewer... Who is he??

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You'll know when the idiot get my answer that I will post in this thread. Did you hear what he did at the end?

[Stormig]

Hmmmmm, I have mixed feelings about the last bit in the interview. While I approached the interview with a perspective gained after someone elsewhere commented that the longer the excuses and apologetics droned on, the more the attempt at cover-up was betrayed, I still have to admit that I think it can still mislead someone who is not at all familiar with any of this, and the effect would have been different if the letter had been read at the start of the interview. At least then Akcam could have corrected the fact about the word "genocide" being coined by Lemkin specifically for the Armenians and not the Jewish victims of Nazism.

[Dave]

"CBC Radio Provides Platform to Armenian Genocide Deniers": Canadian Armenian Leaders

Montréal, Feb. 6 - The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) demonstrated a lack of judgment when it failed to invite representatives of the Canadian-Armenian community to its Feb. 6 Sunday Edition radio program where following the discussion of a book on the Armenian Genocide, only the Turkish Embassy was allowed to present its side.

 

The Armenian National Committee of Canada (ANCC) president, Dr. Girair Basmadjian, said: "It's regrettable that deniers of the Armenian Genocide (the Turkish Government) have been provided with a platform while the representatives of the Canadian-Armenian community have not been offered the opportunity to respond to the Turkish Government's propaganda."

 

In a 25-minute segment, host Michael Enright interviewed Prof. Taner Akçam, the author of "From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide". Following the interview, Mr. Enright read a lengthy statement sent by the Turkish Embassy in Ottawa. No such statement was read from the Armenian Embassy of Ottawa.

 

Prof. Akçam is one of many Turkish historians to recognize publicly the mass killings and deportation, in 1915, of 1.5 million Armenians as genocide. His book represents a scholarly attempt to document the Armenian Genocide from the perpetrator's, rather than the victim's perspective. In the interview, Prof. Akçam stated that he has been refused posts in Turkish universities because of his recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

 

"We commend the CBC and thank Mr. Michael Enright for their decision to shed light on the Forgotten Genocide of the 20th century, and Prof. Akçam's scholarly research. At the same time we were surprised and disappointed to hear Mr. Enright read the Turkish Embassy's statement which was, as usual, full of historical fabrications and misinformation, the usual official stance of successive Turkish governments. To us, it is a sheer error of judgment to confront an honest academician with a baseless political onslaught, without even giving a chance for the author to respond." said Dr. Basmadjian.

 

The Canadian-Armenian community leader said that it was unfortunate that the CBC provided an opportunity for such a statement from the Turkish Embassy while not inviting Canadian-Armenians the same opportunity. "Moreover, the statement was an outright insult to the author, Dr. Akçam, who did not lack courage to express the historical truth. The Canadians of Armenian origin representing survivors of the said Genocide are commemorating the 90th anniversary this year, are insulted by such statements on a respectable broadcasting corporation such as the CBC." added Dr. Basmadjian.

 

It was omitted by the programmer the fact that the Armenian Genocide was recognized as such by the Senate and House of Commons of Canada on 2002 and 2004 respectively, and by provincial legislatures of Ontario and Quebec dating back to 1980.

 

Genocide denial out of ignorance or a false sense of "balanced journalism" or "political correctness" is irresponsible and only serves to promote revisionist policies. "Do we provide Holocaust deniers with such courtesies or platforms?" asked Dr. Basmadjian.

 

The ANCC believes the denial of the Armenian Genocide is an encouragement for its repetition, as it eventually happened in Ukraine, Germany, Cambodia and Rwanda. In light of these events, it is appropriate that the CBC apologize to the Armenian listeners and promise to present the same opportunity to the Armenian Embassy in the future.

 

from http://www.armeniadiaspora.com/js_05/050206cbc_radio.html

[vava]

In general Enright's reporting is balanced and usually well prepared (albeit it can sometimes drag on....) I don't think he did a great job on this one. I heard most of the interview live last Sunday and most of this interview was decidedly supportive of the Armenian position. But unfortunately, I missed the end portion, so I'll have to listen to the archived version in order to be able to comment.

[Anoushik]

You'll know when the idiot get my answer that I will post in this thread. Did you hear what he did at the end?

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Shame on him. Why did he have to read the Turkish Embassy's response? What would his show gain? What were they afraid of? ...What a nice way to end the interview

[Stormig]

The same person who commented that the reading of the letter in the end wasn't in vain said that there could be more about this sort of thing next week as it was a follow-up in a series on the Shoah and other genocides and their consequences and denials in general. In short, it may not end here. If the opportunity to step in and weed out the BS in the embassy letter exists, it should by all means be seized.

[DominO123]

The same person who commented that the reading of the letter in the end wasn't in vain said that there could be more about this sort of thing next week as it was a follow-up in a series on the Shoah and other genocides and their consequences and denials in general. In short, it may not end here. If the opportunity to step in and weed out the BS in the embassy letter exists, it should by all means be seized.

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The problem here is that there will be many Armenians that have no clue that will be answering with an email, and the worthy answers will be lost in the bunch.

 

The right thing would be everyone sending Quebecers answer.

[DominO123]

You'll know when the idiot get my answer that I will post in this thread. Did you hear what he did at the end?

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I appologise for having called him an idiot. I was overreactive... my nature I guess.

 

He's a good man. From what I have heard, he has read many letters this Sunday answering, and only one was from a Turk.

[Armen]

THE SUNDAY EDITION

CBC Radio One

 

Program City: TORONTO

Broadcast Date: 6/2/05

Start Time: 09:11:00

End Time: 11:58:53

 

Michael Enright, Host

 

Live: Start Hour Two

 

Recording: Come Dance With Me (00:01:00)

 

Work Name: COME DANCE WITH ME

Recording Format (Medium): CD

Recording Title (CD or Album): NIGHT OUT WITH VERVE, DISC 1; WINING

Spine: 31435317

Label Name: VERVE

 

LYRICIST, SAMMY CAHN

 

COMPOSER, JIMMY VAN HEUSEN

 

PIANO, OSCAR PETERSON

 

DOUBLE BASS, RAY BROWN

 

DRUMS, ED THIGPEN

 

 

 

Live: Taner Akçam (00:28:03)

 

A Conversation with Historian Taner Akçam on Armenian Genocide &

Turkish Statement (Feb 6/05)

 

SUNDAY EDITION (2) (CBC-R)

 

Aired: 06 Feb 2005, 10:06am, 00:27:40

 

Bowden's Media Monitoring Ref#:44AC85 (44AC85-2)

 

Michael Enright: 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.

 

This past week, a special United Nations committee concluded that the

rape and murder of tens of thousands of civilians in Darfur

constituted a crime against humanity ...but it fell short of being a

"genocide." Genocide, as the UN defines it, is "acts committed with

the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical,

racial or religious group."

 

There will be fall-out for generations from the decision NOT to call

Darfur a genocide. As there has been fall-out for almost a century

from refusal of many governments to use the word to describe the

slaughter of Armenians in 1915.

 

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.

 

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. Professor Akçam is

now a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota. This morning

he is in a Minnesota Public Radio studio in Minneapolis. Good

morning, sir.

 

Taner Akçam: Good morning.

 

ME: What a pleasure to have you with us after reading about you and

reading your work. It's quite important that you join us this

morning. Let me ask you—I know that the Turkish government has for

years vehemently denied that what happened in 1915 was genocide. Are

they still denying it as strongly?

 

TA: This is still the official Turkish state policy, that what

happened in 1915 was not a genocide.

 

ME: And this is in the textbooks, in the schools, this is taught in

the universities, and all of that?

 

TA: No. It is a little bit complicated. Until recently, it was not a

topic in the Turkish curriculum. Nineteen-fifteen was referred to

only as a deportation of the Armenian people in eastern Anatolia

because of the war conditions. Only these two sentences, nothing

more. But recently they changed the curriculum. Now they are teaching

Turkish students—or the students in Turkey from all nationalities,

Kurds, Armenian students also—that what happened wasn't a genocide,

this is only an Armenian lie.

 

ME: "An Armenian lie." That's the phrase.

 

TA: Yes.

 

ME: Just give us a brief synopsis, if you will, of exactly what

happened to the Armenians in Anatolia in 1915.

 

TA: The beginning of the deportation was in 1915, May, and continued

until the beginning of 1917. Almost the entire Armenian population of

Anatolia was deported to the deserts of Syria and Iraq. The official

version, the official reason was that the Turkish authorities—or the

Ottoman authorities—of that time considered the Armenian population,

especially in eastern Anatolia, as a threat. They covered up their

operations as a necessity of the war. During this deportation, they

organized a paramilitary organization, and this organization—a secret

organization, a military organization—attacked the Armenian convoys.

The number of dead is between, according to Turkish numbers, three

hundred and six hundred thousand, and according to Armenian or

scholarly estimation, around 1 and 1 million Armenians perished

during that period. Most of the reasons for the deaths were killing,

hunger, starvation, health conditions, disease, and so on. At the end

almost the entire Armenian population was deported and eliminated.

 

ME: What was the—obviously not the stated reason, because the Turks

didn't want to—the Ottoman Empire at the time didn't want to—talk

about it, but why the enmity toward the Armenians?

 

TA: It is not only a problem of a culture or a problem of hate. There

are certainly different reasons for deportation and for genocide.

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.

 

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.

 

ME: Which they couldn't abide. They couldn't have that.

 

TA: Exactly. This agreement was also not a desire of the Ottoman

authorities. They were compelled to sign this agreement. When they

entered the war, the first thing that they did was that they annulled

this agreement. They discharged this agreement. They declared this

null and void. When they lost the first war against the Russians,

they thought the Russian army will come and occupy eastern Anatolia

and what they will do first is to implement this reform plan. This

means the creation of an independent state in eastern Anatolia.

 

This was the history of the decline process of the Ottoman Empire.

This was how it started in 1812 with Serbia, then continued with

Romania, Bulgaria, then continued in Lebanon, then Greece. This was

the independence movement of the Christian nationalities in the

Ottoman Empire. They first get certain democratic rights, autonomies.

Ottoman authorities never implemented these democratic rights. Then

the big powers interfered, and it ended with a separation, with an

independent nation-state of each Christian group. They thought this

will—exactly this same process will happen with the Armenians. 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.

 

ME: So it was ethnic cleansing and the deportations and slaughter.

But what I don't understand is why—thirty, forty, eighty years

later—that the Turkish historians were not looking at it the way you

did, and coming out and saying that yes, in fact, it was a genocide.

Other countries have faced their own history: South Africa, Germany,

Rwanda, and so on. What was the problem with Turkey admitting what

had happened?

 

TA: I think there are a lot of factors which cause this denial

policy. I will start with the psychological, the moral, reason. If I

summarize this issue, I would say that the Armenians symbolized and

were a constant reminder to the Turks of their most traumatic

historical events, namely, the collapse of the Empire and loss of

almost 90% of their territory over a forty-year period. They lived,

in the last 100 years of their Empire, under the constant fear that

they would disappear from the stage of history. The fear of total

obliteration from the stage of history was a permanent feeling during

the demise process of the Empire, in a simple way. They felt that

they would disappear as actors from the stage of history. That's why

they don't want to be reminded of that past.

 

A very important factor also, an additional factor is that an

important number of founders of the Turkish Republic were either

participants in this genocidal process or they enriched themselves

from this process.

 

ME: Does that apply to Kemal Atatürk?

 

TA: Exactly, just the opposite. This is the important thing that I

constantly remind and write. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was one of the

opponents of this genocidal policy.

 

ME: And he was the founder of modern Turkey.

 

TA: Exactly. He openly accused the Unionist leaders who organized

this genocide of being murderers. But there are a number of other

founders of the Republic who participated in that process. It is a

psychological difficulty to call these founders thieves and

murderers. This is the basic psychological problem. But based on

Mustafa Kemal's position, we can reverse this historiography in a

different way, definitely.

 

ME: Alright. Let me—I want to bring this down to yourself and your

researches and your writings. You use the word "genocide." Now, what

happened when you published your work? What was the reaction, first

of all, among academics and perhaps other historians, but also in the

government and people?

 

TA: There are quite a number of other academicians in Turkey who

openly talked to me and told me that what happened was a genocide. I

think I would argue that among the critical scholars in Turkey, there

is a consensus that what happened was an ethnic cleansing. The term,

the G-word, is not actually the main problem in Turkey today, if you

ask me.

 

ME: "G-word," the genocide.

 

TA: The "G-word" is "genocide." Whether you call it genocide or

ethnic cleansing, it was a crime against humanity. There is a

consensus among the critical intellectuals in Turkey that what

happened was a crime against humanity. They never—

 

ME: Now, let me stop you there. Is this a consensus that those people

who are holding to it are willing to declare publicly? Or, why are

you the only one? Why are you the first to come out and do it and say

it publicly, if there is this consensus?

 

TA: I said, "among the critical scholars." This is not—this is maybe

twenty, thirty percent of Turkish academia. The basic reason why they

haven't come up with their statement is the fear that they would lose

their jobs. There is no open restriction, open suppression policy by

the state, but this atmosphere is very important.

 

After publishing my book, I can give an example. There was no single

book review. My first book was published in 1991. Can you imagine

that a book made five editions within two years without any book

review?

 

ME: In the whole country, there wasn't one review of the book?

 

TA: There wasn't one review, and the fifth edition—this means that

each edition was 2,500 [copies], and the book sold—this is an

academic book, a scholarly book—

 

ME: Right.

 

TA: —sold in Turkey more than 10,000 [copies]. Without any book

review, this book sold in that amount.

 

ME: What happened to you? You talk about some of the other

academicians who were fearful of losing their jobs. You couldn't get

work as a professor, isn't that right?

 

TA: Yes, 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. It was the same experience with other

universities. They all gave me the same answer: We are scared, we

could get certain difficulties from the official authorities. 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.

 

ME: Our guest this morning is Taner Akçam. He's a visiting professor

at the University of Minnesota. He's in the studio in Minneapolis

this morning. He is the first Turkish historian—the first Turkish

historian—to use the word "genocide" in dealing with what happened to

the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire in 1915, 1917. We're

talking about the impact of that. Why is it important for you to tell

the story of the genocide?

 

TA: One important reason is my own experience. I know what torture

is, I know what suppression is, I know what persecution is. I was a

member of a certain students' generation in Turkey, a certain

democratic tradition, a member of the '68 generation in Europe and

Turkey—

 

ME: Right.

 

TA: —and 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.

 

ME: You'd better expand on that. You were thrown in jail in Ankara.

When you said earlier that you were living in Germany: you fled to

Germany, didn't you. You had to get out of Turkey.

 

TA: Yes. 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.

 

ME: Yeah, but people—you changed the course of your life, but people

were trying to kill you, right? I mean, the German police offered you

protection. They even offered you plastic surgery so you could change

the way you looked.

 

TA (laughs): If a filmmaker is listening, I can tell him or her the

details. The whole story's really tailor-made for a movie.

 

ME: Well, you're going to write your memoirs, I hope. Are you?

 

TA: Everyone wants [me to write them], but I don't have time. I think

working on the Genocide is more important than my personal story, at

the moment. Yes, I was threatened by the PKK at that time.

 

ME: That's the Kurdish—

 

TA: That's the Kurdish separatist organization. One can compare this

organization with Pol Pot or Stalin or even with Saddam Hussein. The

number of people that the leader of that organization liquidated is

more than, unfortunately, 3,000. They liquidated more than 3,000 of

their own members. I was opposed to that also. They wanted to kill

me. They couldn't find me, and so they killed one of my best friends

in Hamburg. This was the turning point for me.

 

I started very accidentally, coincidentally, studying the history of

violence and torture in Ottoman Turkish society. If one studies the

violence in Ottoman society, he unavoidably comes across the Armenian

Genocide, especially in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Violence was a very common device against the Armenians. This was the

beginning for me, and it was the propelling factor for me to be

[involved] with the Armenian Genocide.

 

ME: Turkey is desperate to get into the European community. It wants

to join Europe. The European community has officially recognized the

Armenian Genocide. Does that mean, if for no other reason but for

practical, economic reasons, the government of Turkey will finally

come out and say, "Yes, it was a genocide," in order to get into the

EU?

 

TA: I'm not sure whether it is so important for the Turkish

government to use the "G-word." The basic problem is generally facing

the history. It is not only the Armenian Genocide. We have to see

that Turkey has a lot of human rights violences. I'll give you only

one number. Only between 1921 and 1938, in the first sixteen years of

the Republic period, there were more than twenty Kurdish uprisings

against the Turkish authorities, and there were a lot of violence,

massacre, human rights abuses. I'm not counting all other human

rights abuses after each military coup d'état, which were supported

mostly by the Western powers: 1960, 1970, 1980, 1997, and so on. This

means if Turkey wants to be a member of the European Union, Turkey

should come to terms with its own history. Turkey should start to

discuss its past in a democratic way. If a country wants to become a

democratic country, there must be an open discussion on its own past.

The Armenian Genocide is a part of it. Turkey, in that sense, must

come to terms with its past. And that will happen.

 

ME: Will it—?

 

TA: They will apologize. This is our position—this is my

position—that Turkey should acknowledge this as a genocide, but there

are other ways of acknowledging that there are wrongdoings in the

past. We know that from different experiences in the world.

 

ME: Will you ever be able to go back to Turkey? I know you go as a

citizen, but will you ever be able to get a job at a university? Or

will you ever be able to teach in your homeland again? Or will you

ever be acknowledged by the elites or by the government or by anybody

as having done a courageous thing?

 

TA: I think there will be a change, and 2015 will, in that sense, be

a very important symbolic date. It is the hundredth year of the

anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, and it is—eventually also could

be— the official date of Turkey's membership. We can make both of

these days one. In that day, Turkey can declare openly that what

happened in history was a genocide in the past, and so, then, become

a member of democratic Europe. So then it could be possible for me to

find a job in a Turkish university. I hope it could be earlier than

2015.

 

ME: Well, we join you in that hope. Thank you so much.

 

TA: I thank you.

 

ME: It's a great pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much.

 

Professor Taner Akçam is the first Turkish historian to use the word

"genocide" in referring to what happened to the Armenians. This

morning he was in a Minnesota Public Radio studio in Minneapolis.

 

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.

[DominO123]

Taner Akcam's response letter to CBC following his interview

 

 

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

[Dave]

Where did you find this?

[vava]

It was on CBC radio - you can find the transcript at http://www.cbc.ca/thesundayedition/

[Dave]

Yes, but I was talking about what Quebecer posted (Taner Akcam's response). Is that available in that site too?

[vava]

Actually, I'm not sure where Domino found the response letter. You'll have to ask him

[DominO123]

Akcam emailed it to me.

[armjan]

the turkish embassy's response makes me sick.

they label us as racists, backstabbers, and got what we deserved.

I have more respect for an aminal than i do for those cockroches. I swear, if I saw a cat drowning(i really dislike cats) and a turk, I will 10/10 times go for that cat without even thinking for a nanosecond and will feel no remorse.

 

I will now go listen to Harout Pamboukjian to calm my nerves down.

[phantom22]

Now even Taner Akcam is correctly labelling the official Turkish government rebuttals as "fatwas."

 

Ask any elderly Turk in the hinterland and they will fess up to what happened to the Armenians. I wonder what they did to that elderly Turkish farmer who matter-of-factly told this to the writer of the recent National Geographic article.

 

We know that they are planning to "fry" Orhan Parmuk.

 

There was an article in Radikal today stating that a Turkish MP wants it all to come out, that it is getting tiring for Turkey. Why don't they put their legitimate claims against the Balkan countries on the table, instead of trying to cover up what former Turkish regimes did?