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The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity. The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire, by Tañer Akçam, Princeton University Press, 2012, 528 pp.
Reviewed by WOLFGANG G. SCHWANITZ
Tañer Akçam reminds us in his book The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity, that six years ago, a Turkish court sentenced two journalists to a year in jail for using the term, "genocide" to describe "events of 1915." It passed a suspended sentence on Sarkis Seropyan and Arat Dink, the latter, the son of the slain journalist Hrant Dink (to whom this book is dedicated). The court ruled that talk of genocide adversely affects national security, that the claim of genocide supports some plans aiming to change Turkeys geographic and political boundaries, and, therefore, that the claim is part of a campaign to destroy the physical and legal structure of the state. The term, "genocide," the judge opined, may lead to questioning of the sovereign rights of the Republic which is under siege by genocide resolutions. The assertion "genocide was perpetrated," he maintained, does not fall into the category of protected speech. According to Turkish law, such freedoms can be limited in order to protect the security of the nation.
By dint of this unique logic, Tañer Akçams name appeared on a 2009 hit list with "traitors to national security" (p. xii). On this list, too, was Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, whom a court likewise fined in 2011. In 2008, paragraph 301 of the Turkish penal code was softened. Thus, insult to "Turkishness" was redefined as insult to the "Turkish nation." On March 9, 2011, the European Parliament flagged this paragraph as detrimental to freedom of speech. Yet, the Turkish courts continue to prosecute persons who have exercised this right. Others like Akçam, who live in America, received death threats, while Turkish officials maintain a blackout on this subject. What, then, happened in 1915 that justifies a formal state denial and threats to independent researchers ?
Akçam offers answers. In his previous book, A Shameful Act,1 this chair of Armenian Studies at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts identified the perpetrators of the genocide against Armenians. Now, in The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity, he focuses on the period 1913 to 1918. In his reading, this...