Hello, Mr. Harut; I am still waiting for your response to my message I sent you a week ago. You are a very prolific writer; I thought you would have replied by now. I understand you also didn’t respond to Mr. Mehmet Arif Demirer on his article he sent you nearly a year ago on Garo Paylan raising the issue of “Armenian genocide” at the Turkish Grand Assembly in 2016. You conveniently ignored all the historical facts in that article and still penned your April 3, 2023 article in The California Courier (“Ottoman Parliament and Senate in 1918 Acknowledged ‘the Armenian Massacres’”).
I now notice that on your April 10, 2023 column you brought up a “new discovery” by Taner Akçam: https://www.thecaliforniacourier.com/turkey-bought-poison-gas-from-nazi-germany-to-kill-kurdish-alevis-armenians-in-1938/.
Akçam is a very interesting “scholar.” In fact a “gem,” as far as the Armenian lobby. Tessa Hofmann and Vahakn Dadrian did a wonderful job on him, and the Armenian lobby knows what a “gold mine” is when it sees one. In February 2022 Akçam got a new appointment at UCLA to lead the university’s “Armenian Genocide Research Program.” Certainly a very fitting appointment after holding the Kaloosdian and Mugar Professorship in “Modern Armenian History and Genocide” at the Clark University in Massachusetts. After all, thanks to Prof. Richard Hovannisian, Akçam was a guest speaker at UCLA in 2005 (photo attached). Akçam now has German nationality, and his articles are welcome at the Agos newspaper in Turkey.
A good reading on Akçam is found at: https://tallarmeniantale.com/akcam.htm. For example, one notable fact on Akçam’s credibility as a scholar is that, among some of his peers, Akçam has been characterized as a “village idiot.” He even received the scorn of his own brother on the contradictions and distortions on one of his writings:
Akçam even denied that, for an event to be called “genocide,” a ruling by a court is necessary: https://www.gazeteduvar.com.tr/forum/2019/11/04/sil-bastan-soykirim-ve-bilgi-kirliligi
Voila! This, from a “genocide scholar”!
While on the subject, I have a question on Akçam. You know that Akçam is an ex-convict with the Leninist-Marxist “Dev-Yol” background. He jumped prison 1977 in Turkey and escaped to Germany. In 2000 he entered the USA, presumably to give a talk, probably with a visitor’s visa, and later received an immigrant visa. It was no secret who sponsored his talk and his entry visa. It is nearly impossible for a person of Akçam’s background to obtain a visitor’s visa, let alone an immigrant visa, to the USA. In fact, on February 16, 2007 Akçam was detained in Canada at the airport in Montreal for nearly 4 hours because he was considered a terrorist. Two days later he was likewise temporarily detained at the US border.
My question is: How did someone with Akçam’s background enter the USA in 2000, and later received the immigrant status? I have a pretty good idea; but it is better that you, with all your connections, explain.
By the way, the argument that he was declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International will not do. That did not erase Akçam’s criminal record.
F. Demirmen
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