AZG Armenian Daily #137, 21/07/2007

Genocide Denial

THE INTIMIDATION CAMPAIGN AGAINST TANER AKCAM

University of Minnesota sociologist-historian Taner Akcam, an
international authority on the 1915 Armenian Genocide, is the target
of an ongoing intimidation campaign to portray him as a convicted
terrorist and a traitor to his native Turkey.

A noted writer and lecturer on Turkish nationalism, the Armenian
Genocide, and Armenian-Turkish dialogue, Prof. Akcam relocated to the
United States in 2001, the year that his writings began to appear in
English and the campaign against him was launched in response.

In a sensational commentary published by the Washington, DC-based
Assembly of Turkish American Associations, Akcam was denounced as
a mastermind of terrorist violence, including the assassinations
of American and NATO military personnel. Disseminated online by the
19,000-member Turkish Forum and posted since 2004 at the influential
Genocide-denialist site Tall Armenian Tale, these allegations were soon
copied to well over 10,000 Web pages, including Akcam’s book reviews
at Amazon and his persistently vandalized biography at Wikipedia. He
began receiving death threats after Turkish Forum posted his contact
information so that readers could "send greetings to this traitor."

Following the November 2006 publication of Akcam’s critically acclaimed
study, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of
Turkish Responsibility, the campaign intensified. Akcam’s lectures
and book tour were violently disrupted, and poison-pen letters were
emailed to the hosting universities. Tellingly, a planned disruption at
Yeshiva University was called off after conference organizers appealed
to the Turkish Consulate in New York. In February 2007, en route to
lecture at McGill University Law School, Akcam was detained in the
Montreal airport for nearly four hours on suspicion of terrorism. He
was shown, as evidence, his vandalized Wikipedia biography.

Just one month before the Montreal incident, the assassination of
Akcam’s friend and colleague, Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink,
had put Turkey’s intellectuals on high alert. They knew that in the
months before his murder, Dink had been targeted as a traitor by an
increasingly vicious media campaign. Leading the pack was Hurriyet,
one of the most widely read newspapers in Turkey.

In May 2007, citing the heightened danger to his own life,
Akcam unmasked the secretive Webmaster of Tall Armenian Tale as
Turkish-American illustrator Murad "Holdwater" Gumen of New York
City. Death threats and denunciations followed. Hurriyet portrayed
Akcam as a cowardly traitor who "vomits hate towards our country." No
attempt was made to interview him, and his letter to the editor
was ignored.

"Once again, intellectuals and activists who dare to question the
government’s ‘official history’ are being put on notice," said Akcam
on July 16. "This shameful campaign not only endangers my life and
the lives of my colleagues, my family and friends; ironically enough,
the very notion of free expression is being undermined by the very
institution that depends on it most: the public press.

"And what is the point, after all?" he continued. "I published a
scholarly study that deviated from the official position of the
Turkish State. One should ask the Turkish authorities whether they
truly believe that shooting the messenger will prove that their
position on 1915 is the correct one."