TURKISH HISTORIAN GIVES LECTURE ABOUT ARMENIAN GENOCIDE AT PHILADELPHIA LA SALLE UNIVERSITY
ArmInfo
2009-11-06 16:12:00
ArmInfo. The known Turkish historian Dr. Taner Akcam has recently given
lecture about Armenian genocide at Philadelphia La Salle University
(USA), Akcam himself told ArmInfo.
He said that the lecture was about the historical reasons and
background of the Armenian genocide. In this matter it was very much
important that intervention of the forces of foreign superpowers in
Turkey to protect the christian minorities of the country led to the
Armenian genocide implemented by the hands of Young Turks, he said.
Taner Akcam (* October 23,1953, Turkey) is a Turkish historian,
sociologist and publicist. He is one of the first Turkish academics
to acknowledge and discuss openly the Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman
Turkish government in 1915. Akcam studied at the Middle East Technical
University in Ankara. He was a faculty member of Administrative
Sciences, Department of Political Economy. He received his Bachelor
of Administrative Sciences in 1976. He stayed at the university as
a Master’s student and assistant in the same department for some time.
In 1976 he was arrested and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment as
the editor-in-chief of a political journal. He escaped prison one
year later. He has been living in the Federal Republic of Germany
since early 1978 as a political refugee. He continued his political
actvities and in 1988 started working for the Hamburg Institute for
Social Research on the history of violence and torture in Turkey. He
earned his Doctorate Degree at The University of Hannover in 1995.
The topic was called Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide
on the Background of Military Tribunals in Istanbul between 1919 and
1922. Currently he belongs to the scientific staff of the Hamburg
Foundation to promote science and culture, working at the Hamburg
Institute for Social Research. Today, Akcam is currently a Visiting
Associate Professor of History at the University of Minnesota.