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ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Two Reviews by Amb. (ret.) John M. Evans
http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2012/0106/bk/book06_evans_judgment.html
Young Turks
The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity:The Armenian
Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire By
Taner Akcam, ISBN-13-978-0691153339,Princeton University
Press, 2012, 483 pp. $39.50, Kindle edition:
ASIN:B007BP3BIU, $21.73.
Judgment at Istanbul: The Armenian Genocide Trials By
Vahakn N. Dadrian and Taner Akcam,
ISBN-13-978-0857452511, Zoryan Institute (Berghahn
Books), 2011, 363 pp., $110.00
These two books are the latest, and perhaps most conclusive, of the
many I have read about the 1915 Armenian Genocide. Dr. Taner Akcam's
The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and
Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton University Press,
2012) constitutes a major breakthrough in our understanding of the
social engineering that led to the near destruction of the Armenians
of Anatolia, and of the dual-track mechanism for organizing it that
the Young Turks employed. Judgment at Istanbul: The Armenian Genocide
Trials (Zoryan Institute; 2011) co-authored by Akcam and veteran
Armenian historian Vahakn Dadrian, gives the English-speaking world,
for the first time, the full story of the courts-martial constituted
by the Ottoman Government in 1919 to hold to account the perpetrators
of the deportations and massacres (seven of the most important of
whom had already escaped to safety on a German warship).
Both volumes are a must for serious scholars of the Armenian Genocide,
but The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity is the better value
for most readers (Judgment at Istanbul, published first in Turkish
in 2008, and now in English from Berghahn Books, lists at $110),
although university libraries will want to have both.
Dr. Akcam, a Turkish historian now at Clark, was the first scholar of
Turkish origin to recognize the Armenian Genocide; he has made huge
contributions to understanding it in his 2004 From Empire to Republic:
Turkish Nationalism & the Armenian Genocide and A Shameful Act: The
Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (2006)
and in innumerable articles and lectures.
A close friend of the Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who was
assassinated on an Istanbul street in January, 2007, Akcam has himself
been the target of death threats, yet he has continued to mine the
Ottoman archives, which he is able to read in the pre-reform script,
with jaw-dropping results.
One of his recurring themes is that the Ottoman archives, far from
painting a picture at odds with that which is already familiar to
scholars of American, German and Austrian documentation, actually
confirm the basic facts of the 1915 atrocities. But what Akcam has
managed to do, this time by scouring the archives of the Ministry of
the Interior (presided over at the time by Talat Pasha), is to bring
to light the steady, mechanical and precise nature of the Young Turks'
obsession with reducing the Armenian population of Anatolia to 5 to
10 per cent of the population in all localities - a goal that required
both forced deportations, carried out with an outward show of legality,
and massacres, secretly ordered through special channels and carried
out in large part by the Special Organization (teskilatimahsusa )
and bands of Kurdish marauders.
In a way, Akcam's account is oddly reassuring, as it gets to a basic
and banal, if also horrifying, truth: the Turks did not so much loathe
the Armenians as view them as competitors in the impending challenge
of building a new state, inspired by extreme Turkish nationalism,
on the ruins of the defunct Ottoman Empire.
This is not to understate the crimes committed, which included rape,
forced assimilation and murder, as well as wholesale expropriations
of land and property: genocide, in short. But as atrocious as the
Young Turks' behavior was, it is somehow more comprehensible in terms
of the dark logic of Turkish ultra-nationalism, and not just as a
result of free-floating ethnic or religious hatred. Still, as Akcam
shows, the other Christian and non-Turkish populations - Greeks,
Assyrians and Kurds - similarly did not fit into this state-building
project, but it was the Armenians who were most savagely targeted for
annihilation. They clearly were not removed for "wartime necessity,"
as Akcam demonstrates. In particular, it emerges that the Armenian
Reform Agreement (Yenikoy Accord) of 1914, forced on the Sultan by
the Allies, notably Russia, was viewed by the Young Turks as a major
threat - and ultimately did a terrible disservice to the Armenians.
Akcam is very careful not to let his elucidation of the causes
of the atrocities be taken as a justification for the Genocide -
he does not "blame the victim," - but I expect his work will draw
critics to the extent it fails to confirm long-held assumptions,
assertions and denials.
Meanwhile, the earlier (and less accessible) book, Judgment at
Istanbul, painstakingly mines the pages of the Takvim-i-Vekâyi (the
official organ of the Ottoman Parliament), court records and the
Turkish press to demonstrate the sheer scale and broad involvement
of Turkish officialdom and society in carrying out the deportations
and worse.
Both volumes, to be fair, record also a few exculpatory episodes of
Turkish officials who would not go along with the Committee of Union
and Progress's murderous plans and paid dearly for their refusal to
obey orders. When the Ottoman courts-martial targeted Mustafa Kemal
(the future Ataturk), not for genocide, but for mutiny, he ultimately
responded by tearing down the 800-year-old dynasty at the head of the
nationalist movement that launched the War of Independence and created
the Republic of Turkey. While Ataturk was not directly involved in
the 1915 genocide (the term "a shameful act" is his), many of his
confrères in building the new Turkish state were, and the pattern
of official denial was set early on. With less than two years to go
until the centenary, much will yet be written, but I doubt as much
light will be shed as by these two valuable volumes.
All students of the Armenian Genocide owe Taner Akcam and Vahakn
Dadrian a great debt for their persistent and systematic scholarship
over the years against very heavy headwinds, including the outright
hostility of certain states. bluestar
American Diplomacy is the Publication of Origin for this work.
Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back
to American Diplomacy
Author John M. Evans, a career Foreign Service Officer who served as
the U.S. Ambassador to Armenia from 2004 to 2006, stirred controversy
in February 2005 by publicly dissenting from the policy of the Bush
Administration on the 90-year-old issue of the Armenian Genocide. A
native of Williamsburg, VA, educated at Yale and Columbia, Evans
served in Tehran, Prague, Moscow, Brussels (NATO), the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe, St. Petersburg and Washington,
reaching the rank of Minister-Counselor. He lives in Washington, DC.
His views as expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the
U.S. Department of State, from which he is now retired.
Two Reviews by Amb. (ret.) John M. Evans
http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2012/0106/bk/book06_evans_judgment.html
Young Turks
The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity:The Armenian
Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire By
Taner Akcam, ISBN-13-978-0691153339,Princeton University
Press, 2012, 483 pp. $39.50, Kindle edition:
ASIN:B007BP3BIU, $21.73.
Judgment at Istanbul: The Armenian Genocide Trials By
Vahakn N. Dadrian and Taner Akcam,
ISBN-13-978-0857452511, Zoryan Institute (Berghahn
Books), 2011, 363 pp., $110.00
These two books are the latest, and perhaps most conclusive, of the
many I have read about the 1915 Armenian Genocide. Dr. Taner Akcam's
The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and
Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton University Press,
2012) constitutes a major breakthrough in our understanding of the
social engineering that led to the near destruction of the Armenians
of Anatolia, and of the dual-track mechanism for organizing it that
the Young Turks employed. Judgment at Istanbul: The Armenian Genocide
Trials (Zoryan Institute; 2011) co-authored by Akcam and veteran
Armenian historian Vahakn Dadrian, gives the English-speaking world,
for the first time, the full story of the courts-martial constituted
by the Ottoman Government in 1919 to hold to account the perpetrators
of the deportations and massacres (seven of the most important of
whom had already escaped to safety on a German warship).
Both volumes are a must for serious scholars of the Armenian Genocide,
but The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity is the better value
for most readers (Judgment at Istanbul, published first in Turkish
in 2008, and now in English from Berghahn Books, lists at $110),
although university libraries will want to have both.
Dr. Akcam, a Turkish historian now at Clark, was the first scholar of
Turkish origin to recognize the Armenian Genocide; he has made huge
contributions to understanding it in his 2004 From Empire to Republic:
Turkish Nationalism & the Armenian Genocide and A Shameful Act: The
Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (2006)
and in innumerable articles and lectures.
A close friend of the Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who was
assassinated on an Istanbul street in January, 2007, Akcam has himself
been the target of death threats, yet he has continued to mine the
Ottoman archives, which he is able to read in the pre-reform script,
with jaw-dropping results.
One of his recurring themes is that the Ottoman archives, far from
painting a picture at odds with that which is already familiar to
scholars of American, German and Austrian documentation, actually
confirm the basic facts of the 1915 atrocities. But what Akcam has
managed to do, this time by scouring the archives of the Ministry of
the Interior (presided over at the time by Talat Pasha), is to bring
to light the steady, mechanical and precise nature of the Young Turks'
obsession with reducing the Armenian population of Anatolia to 5 to
10 per cent of the population in all localities - a goal that required
both forced deportations, carried out with an outward show of legality,
and massacres, secretly ordered through special channels and carried
out in large part by the Special Organization (teskilatimahsusa )
and bands of Kurdish marauders.
In a way, Akcam's account is oddly reassuring, as it gets to a basic
and banal, if also horrifying, truth: the Turks did not so much loathe
the Armenians as view them as competitors in the impending challenge
of building a new state, inspired by extreme Turkish nationalism,
on the ruins of the defunct Ottoman Empire.
This is not to understate the crimes committed, which included rape,
forced assimilation and murder, as well as wholesale expropriations
of land and property: genocide, in short. But as atrocious as the
Young Turks' behavior was, it is somehow more comprehensible in terms
of the dark logic of Turkish ultra-nationalism, and not just as a
result of free-floating ethnic or religious hatred. Still, as Akcam
shows, the other Christian and non-Turkish populations - Greeks,
Assyrians and Kurds - similarly did not fit into this state-building
project, but it was the Armenians who were most savagely targeted for
annihilation. They clearly were not removed for "wartime necessity,"
as Akcam demonstrates. In particular, it emerges that the Armenian
Reform Agreement (Yenikoy Accord) of 1914, forced on the Sultan by
the Allies, notably Russia, was viewed by the Young Turks as a major
threat - and ultimately did a terrible disservice to the Armenians.
Akcam is very careful not to let his elucidation of the causes
of the atrocities be taken as a justification for the Genocide -
he does not "blame the victim," - but I expect his work will draw
critics to the extent it fails to confirm long-held assumptions,
assertions and denials.
Meanwhile, the earlier (and less accessible) book, Judgment at
Istanbul, painstakingly mines the pages of the Takvim-i-Vekâyi (the
official organ of the Ottoman Parliament), court records and the
Turkish press to demonstrate the sheer scale and broad involvement
of Turkish officialdom and society in carrying out the deportations
and worse.
Both volumes, to be fair, record also a few exculpatory episodes of
Turkish officials who would not go along with the Committee of Union
and Progress's murderous plans and paid dearly for their refusal to
obey orders. When the Ottoman courts-martial targeted Mustafa Kemal
(the future Ataturk), not for genocide, but for mutiny, he ultimately
responded by tearing down the 800-year-old dynasty at the head of the
nationalist movement that launched the War of Independence and created
the Republic of Turkey. While Ataturk was not directly involved in
the 1915 genocide (the term "a shameful act" is his), many of his
confrères in building the new Turkish state were, and the pattern
of official denial was set early on. With less than two years to go
until the centenary, much will yet be written, but I doubt as much
light will be shed as by these two valuable volumes.
All students of the Armenian Genocide owe Taner Akcam and Vahakn
Dadrian a great debt for their persistent and systematic scholarship
over the years against very heavy headwinds, including the outright
hostility of certain states. bluestar
American Diplomacy is the Publication of Origin for this work.
Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back
to American Diplomacy
Author John M. Evans, a career Foreign Service Officer who served as
the U.S. Ambassador to Armenia from 2004 to 2006, stirred controversy
in February 2005 by publicly dissenting from the policy of the Bush
Administration on the 90-year-old issue of the Armenian Genocide. A
native of Williamsburg, VA, educated at Yale and Columbia, Evans
served in Tehran, Prague, Moscow, Brussels (NATO), the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe, St. Petersburg and Washington,
reaching the rank of Minister-Counselor. He lives in Washington, DC.
His views as expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the
U.S. Department of State, from which he is now retired.