A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility - Softcover

Akcam, Taner (trans Paul Bessemer).

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1845295528 ISBN 13: 9781845295523

Publisher: Constable, 2007

Synopsis

This is the definitive history of the 1915 Armenian Genocide. In 1915, the Turkish government systematically organized the wholesale slaughter of a complete race, the Armenians. Under the cover of World War-I, through the secret organization of unofficial gangs of Kurds, released prisoners, German officers and Turks who had lost their lands in the war against the Balkans, over 1 million Armenians were murdered, starved, raped and left to die. Following the War, as the Nationalist movement began to rise up from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, the allies tried to persecute the perpetrators of the genocide, in a series of trials where the term 'crimes against humanity' was first used, Turkey was allowed to hide its recent history. It has remained hidden ever since. As the nation attempts to enter the European Union, the question of 1915 has become ever more important with the arrest of writers such as Orhan Pamuk, and the introduction of Turkey into the EU.

About this title

About the Author

Born in Ardahan Province, Turkey, in 1953, Taner Akçam is the author of ten scholarly works of history and sociology, as well as numerous articles in Turkish,
German, and English. He currently teaches at the University of Minnesota.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The story of the Ottoman Empire's slaughter of one million Armenians in 1915—a genocide still officially denied by the 83-year-old modern Turkish state—has been dominated by two historiographical traditions. One pictures an embattled empire, increasingly truncated by rapacious Western powers and internal nationalist movements. The other details the attempted eradication of an entire people, amid persecutions of other minorities. Part of historian Akçam's task in this clear, well-researched work is to reconcile these mutually exclusive narratives. He roots his history in an unsparing analysis of Turkish responsibility for one of the most notorious atrocities of a singularly violent century, in internal and international rivalries, and an exclusionary system of religious (Muslim) and ethnic (Turkish) superiority. With novel use of key Ottoman, European and American sources, he reveals that the mass killing of Armenians was no byproduct of WWI, as long claimed in Turkey, but a deliberate, centralized program of state-sponsored extermination. As Turkey now petitions to join the European Union, and ethnic cleansing and collective punishment continues to threaten entire populations around the globe, this groundbreaking and lucid account by a prominent Turkish scholar speaks forcefully to all. (Oct.)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Constable
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1845295528
• ISBN 13: 9781845295523
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 608