TURKEY RECONSIDERING GENOCIDE DENIAL POLICY
PanARMENIAN.Net
15.02.2010 17:56 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Turkey is reconsidering Genocide denial policy. This
is the process that we are in now, said Taner Akcam Associate Professor
of History at Clark University, the author of "A Shameful Act: the
Armenian Genocide and Turkish Responsibility" book.
"This is hard to explain to the Armenian community but the countdown
process has already been started in Turkey. It is not visible from
outside because the politicians are still using the "old-conventional"
language. However, I would like to emphasize that the time for people
like Halacoðlu or Elekdað is over. We will experience a change in the
policy towards 1915 but I personally think that this will probably
happen after the next election in 2011," Akcam told PanARMENIAN.Net
reporter.
"The AKP won’t move on this issue much because they have other
priorities such as a new constitution, the Kurdish issue and pushing
back the military into barracks… It could be too risky for the
AKP to put the Genocide issue on their agenda at this juncture,"
Clark University Professor stated.
Born in the province of Ardahan, Taner Akcam graduated from Middle
East Technical University in Ankara and emigrated to Germany, where
he worked as a research scientist in the sociology department at the
Hamburg Institute for Social Research. Akcam earned his doctorate
from the University of Hannover with a dissertation on The Turkish
National Movement and the Armenian Genocide Against the Background
of the Military Tribunals in Istanbul Between 1919 and 1922.
Akcam’s initial research topic was the history of political violence
and torture in late Ottoman and early Republican Turkey. Since 1990,
however, he has focused his attention on Turkish nationalism and
the Armenian Genocide, with eleven books and numerous articles to
his credit.
The Armenian Genocide (1915-23) was the deliberate and systematic
destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during
and just after World War I. It was characterized by massacres, and
deportations involving forced marches under conditions designed to
lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of deaths
reaching 1.5 million.
To date, twenty countries and 44 U.S. states have officially recognized
the events of the period as genocide, and most genocide scholars
and historians accept this view. The Armenian Genocide has been also
recognized by influential media including The New York Times, BBC,
The Washington Post and The Associated Press.
The majority of Armenian Diaspora communities were formed by the
Genocide survivors.
The Justice and Development Party (Turkish: Adalet ve Kalkýnma Partisi,
abbreviated AK Parti or AKP) is a Turkish political party.
The AKP portrays itself as a moderate, conservative, pro-Western party
that advocates a liberal market economy and Turkish membership in the
European Union. In 2005, the AKP was granted observer membership in
the European People’s Party. The AKP won 46.6% of the popular vote
and was allocated 341 seats in the rescheduled 22 July 2007 elections.
Abdullah Gul, a prominent AKP leader and former Foreign Minister,
is currently the President of Turkey, while Recep Tayyip Erdoðan is
the head of the party and the Prime Minister.