For one thing, in the post–World War I era, the so-called Young Turks who had led the genocide were still in power and ordered the destruction of countless incriminating documents. Akçam, writing from the safe distance of the University of Minnesota, has worked through thousands and thousands of documents to find concrete evidence thereof, against considerable difficulty.
No one knows how many Armenians died at Turkish hands in the 1910s, but the number almost certainly exceeds one million. Beyond its timeliness, A Shameful Act is sure to take its lasting place as a classic and necessary work on the subject.Turkish historian Akçam capably refutes those who deny the Armenian genocide, who will probably not change their minds. He also probes the crucial question of how Turkey succeeded in evading responsibility, pointing to competing international interests in the region, the priorities of Turkish nationalists, and the international community's inadequate attempts to bring the perpetrators to justice.Īs Turkey lobbies to enter the European Union, Akçam's work becomes ever more important and relevant. The first scholar of any nationality to have mined the significant evidence-in Turkish military and court records, parliamentary minutes, letters, and eyewitness accounts-Akçam follows the chain of events leading up to the killing and then reconstructs its systematic orchestration by coordinated departments of the Ottoman state, the ruling political parties, and the military. Now, in a pioneering work of excavation, Turkish historian Taner Akçam has made extensive and unprecedented use of Ottoman and other sources to produce a scrupulous charge sheet against the Turkish authorities.
Although Armenians and world opinion have held the Ottoman powers responsible, Turkey has consistently rejected any claim of intentional genocide. In 1915, under the cover of a world war, some one million Armenians were killed through starvation, forced marches, forced exile, and mass acts of slaughter. A landmark assessment of Turkish culpability in the Armenian genocide, the first history of its kind by a Turkish historian
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