{"id":109537,"date":"2022-11-30T16:08:10","date_gmt":"2022-11-30T13:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=109537"},"modified":"2023-03-16T20:59:14","modified_gmt":"2023-03-16T17:59:14","slug":"methodology-of-taner-akcam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2022\/11\/30\/methodology-of-taner-akcam\/","title":{"rendered":"METHODOLOGY OF TANER AK\u00c7AM"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"akcam\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The expanded English edition of German sociologist Taner Ak\u00e7am\u2019s  last book, The Young Turks\u2019 Crime against Humanity. The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire, was published in 2012 April. To analyze all the distortions, falsifications and other flaws of this book would mean writing a whole volume. However, some significant examples can be provided here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Mr. Ak\u00e7am alleges (p. 203) that \u201cthe clearest statement that the aim of the government\u2019s policies toward the  Armenians was annihilation is found in a cable of 29 August 1915 from Interior minister Talat Pasha to the province of Ankara.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, this telegram is mostly a list of interdictions of any violence against the displaced  Armenians. Especially, the telegram says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe transfer of Armenians, which is desired to be carried out in an orderly and prudent manner, should henceforth never be left to the individuals having fanatical feelings of enmity and that the Armenians, whether or not subject to relocation, will be definitely protected against any assault and attack.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 The \u201cmilitary courts\u201d were promised for the recalcitrant people (Hikmet \u00d6zdemir and Yusuf Sar\u0131nay, Turkish- Armenian Conflict Documents, Ankara, 2007, p. 235). Similarly, Mr. Ak\u00e7am claims that the note of Minister of Interior Talat to Grand Vizier Sait Halim sent on May 26, 1915 \u201chas never been completely translated into modern Turkish,\u201d which is false (\u00d6zdemir & Sar\u0131nay, pp. 55-56; pp. 58-59 for the English translation). More seriously, Mr. Ak\u00e7am alleges (pp. 136-137) that this document is \u201cthe clearest possible refutation of the official Turkish version of the events of 1915, which insists that the policies toward the Armenians were the result of the wartime exigencies. On the contrary, Unionist policy was aimed at resolving the issue of Armenian reforms in a definitive manner.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To come to such a conclusion, Mr. Ak\u00e7am cuts out several paragraphs of the document, which unequivocally present the relocation as measure decided chiefly because of \u201carmed attacks on security forces and armed uprisings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance (my emphasis): <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUnfortunately, while the means to bring about a final solution to this problem [by reforms] is being worked out, some of the Armenians living in places close to the battlefields have recently become involved in activities aimed at creating difficulties for our army in its fight against the enemy to protect the Ottoman borders. Those Armenians are trying to impede the operations of the army, and the transfer of supply and ammunition. They are combining their aspirations and activities with those of the enemy\u2019s and are fighting against us in the ranks of the enemy. Within the country, they dare to carry out armed attacks against the military forces and the innocent civilians, to become involved in acts of murder, looting and plundering in the Ottoman cities and towns, to provide supplies to the enemy\u2019s navy and to inform them of the places with fortified posts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conduct of such rebel elements has rendered it necessary to remove them from the area of military operations and to evacuate the villages serving as operational bases and shelters for the rebels.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The allusion to the reforms proposed in 1914 is only incidental and not the reason given by Talat for the relocation decision. Taner Ak\u00e7am also removes the reference to the protection of relocated Armenians, especially this sentence: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA decision has been taken to ensure the comfort of those subjects on their way to places allocated for their resettling. To ensure the subjects arrival at the resettlement places, and facilitate their rest, and protect of their live and properties on their journey.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 A third striking example of deliberate and serious distortion is the willing mistranslation (p. 208) of a telegram sent by the minister of Interior Talat to the governor Mehmet Re\u015fit on July 12, 1915 (my emphasis): <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn Mardin the Armenian bishop and some 700 persons from among Armenian and other Christian population were taken outside the city and slaughtered like sheep by some persons arrived from Diyarbek\u0131r.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Actually, the document says: \u201cParticularly, from individuals sent from Diyarbak\u0131r recently, it has been learnt that in Mardin, a total of seven hundred people consisting of Armenians and other Christians, also including the bishop, had been taken from their houses at nights and killed by beheading like sheep.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

 (\u00d6zdemir & Sar\u0131nay, p. 161). This document was published as early as 1995, with a transliteration. In 2007, a translation into modern Turkish and into English was published. In 2008, Yusuf Hala\u00e7o\u011flu <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taner Ak\u00e7am\u2019s mistranslation in the Turkish edition of the book. Regardless, it is maintained in the edition in English. Mr. Ak\u00e7am does not refrain from relying on completely discredited material, like the \u201cAndonian documents\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(pp. 268 and 272) and the so-called \u201cTen Commands\u201d attributed to the CUP (p. 197). It has been proven since 1983 that the \u201cAndonian documents\u201d are fakes, and I devoted a 59-pages article to demonstrating it again (Maxime Gauin, \u201cAram Andonian\u2019s Memoirs of Naim Bey and the Contemporary Attempts to Defend their\u2018Authenticity\u2019\u201d, Review of Armenian Studies, 23, 2011, pp. 233-292). It has been proven by Canadian historian Gwynne Dyer since 1973 that the \u201cTen Commands\u201d are apocryphal, and were not taken seriously by the British authorities (Gwynne Dyer, \u201cCorrespondence,\u201d Middle Eastern Studies, IX-3, 1973, pp. 378-379). Dr. Dyer replied to the pro- Armenian author Christopher Walker, who, having read the response, did never use the \u201cTen Commands\u201d anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even worse, Mr. Ak\u00e7am relies on the translation of this \u201cdocument\u201d by Vahakn Dadrian, who adds words (\u201ccommit massacres\u201d) which are not actually in the \u201coriginal\u201d (on this point: Ferudun Ata, \u201cAn Evaluation of the Approach of the Researchers Who Advocate Armenian Genocide to the Trials Relocation,\u201d in The New  Approaches to Turkish-Armenian Relations, Istanbul: Istanbul University Publications, 2008, p. 560). Mr. Ak\u00e7am also distorts material that is already questionable in itself, i.e., the partial accounts of trials which took place in \u0130stanbul from 1919-1920. Mr. Ak\u00e7am fails to explain how credible these tribunals were, and how they banned the right of cross-examination, the right to be assisted by a lawyer during the investigation and, from April to October 1920, the simple right to hire a lawyer. He fails to explain how the reliability of the newspapers of \u0130stanbul in 1919-1920 (the original material is completely lost); they were submitted to censorship, and the French military in \u0130stanbul  complained several times about unsubstantiated rumors and selective information published by at least some of these newspapers. Worse, Mr. Ak\u00e7am invents (pp. 414-415) a confession by Officer Yusuf R\u0131za.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He purely and simply inverts the sense of the published account (see Erman \u015eahin, \u201cReview Essay: The Armenian Question,\u201d Middle East Policy, XVII-1, Spring 2010, p. 153; this article is a devastating, 20-pages long, analysis of the first version, in Turkish, of The Young Turks\u2019 Crime against Humanity). Certainly, a better knowledge of Turko-Armenian history is needed, but for that, we need historians. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maxime GAUIN* – Contributing Analyst, Strategic Outlook <\/p>\n\n\n\n

*He is a Ph.D. candidate at Middle East Technical University History Department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Review of Armenian Studies, 23, 2011, pp. 233-292). It has been proven by Canadian historian Gwynne Dyer since 1973 that the \u201cTen Commands\u201d are apocryphal, and were not taken seriously by the British authorities (Gwynne Dyer, \u201cCorrespondence,\u201d Middle Eastern Studies, IX-3, 1973, pp. 378-379). Dr. Dyer replied to the pro- Armenian author Christopher Walker, who, having read the response, did never use the \u201cTen Commands\u201d anymore. Even worse, Mr. Ak\u00e7am relies on the translation of this \u201cdocument\u201d by Vahakn Dadrian, who adds words (\u201ccommit massacres\u201d) which are not actually in the \u201coriginal\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 (on this point: Ferudun Ata, \u201cAn Evaluation of the Approach of the Researchers Who Advocate Armenian Genocide to the Trials Relocation,\u201d in The New  Approaches to Turkish-Armenian Relations, Istanbul: Istanbul University Publications, 2008, p. 560). Mr. Ak\u00e7am also distorts material that is already questionable in itself, i.e., the partial accounts of trials which took place in \u0130stanbul from 1919-1920. Mr. Ak\u00e7am fails to explain how credible these tribunals were, and how they banned the right of cross-examination, the right to be assisted by a lawyer during the investigation and, from April to October 1920, the simple right to hire a lawyer. He fails to explain how the reliability of the newspapers of \u0130stanbul in 1919-1920 (the original material is completely lost); they were submitted to censorship, and the French military in \u0130stanbul complained several times about unsubstantiated rumors and selective information published by at least some of these newspapers. Worse, Mr. Ak\u00e7am invents (pp. 414-415) a confession by Officer Yusuf R\u0131za.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He purely and simply inverts the sense of the published account (see Erman \u015eahin, \u201cReview Essay: The Armenian Question,\u201d Middle East Policy, XVII-1, Spring 2010, p. 153; this article is a devastating, 20-pages long, analysis of the first version, in Turkish, of The Young Turks\u2019 Crime against Humanity). Certainly, a better knowledge of Turko-Armenian history is needed, but for that, we need historians. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maxime GAUIN* – Contributing Analyst, Strategic Outlook<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*He is a Ph.D. candidate at Middle East Technical University History Department.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The expanded English edition of German sociologist Taner Ak\u00e7am\u2019s  last book, The Young Turks\u2019 Crime against Humanity. The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire, was published in 2012 April. To analyze all the distortions, falsifications and other flaws of this book would mean writing a whole volume. However, some significant examples can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":774377,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[10396,124],"class_list":["post-109537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-armenian-question","tag-maxime-gauin","tag-taner-akcam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}