Taner Akçam

Altuğ Taner Akçam ( born October 23, 1953 in Ardahan ) is a Turkish historian, sociologist and author. He is one of the first Turkish academics who responded to the Armenian genocide by the Ottomans public in 1915. Akçam has published the most detailed work on the processes of Istanbul 1919/1920 in the defeated Ottoman Empire. The bulk of the work encompassing the translated from the Ottoman process logs the trial, as they were then published in the Takvim -i Vekayi, as well as newspaper reports about two private negotiations. The translations are from Hayrettin Aydın. Akçam is a former student of Vahakn Dadrian.

Career

Akçam studied at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara Administrative Sciences and Economics. In the mid-1970s Akçam supported a leading member of the militant group Dev Yol ( Revolutionary Way Devrimci Yol ) and the editor of Devrimci Genclik Dergisi ( Revolutionary Youth Magazine ). In 1976 he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was a year later escape from prison and emigrate to the Federal Republic of Germany. He continued his political activities continued in 1988 and worked at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research on the history of violence and torture in Turkey. It was created in 1995 received his doctorate at the University of Hannover. Currently Akçam is Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, USA.

He has published several books and articles in English, German and Turkish to Turkish-Armenian history.

Writings (selection )

• From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide, Zed Books, 2004, ISBN 1-84277-527-8
• Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey, Publications on the Near East, University of Washington, Sibel Bozdogan ( Editor ), University of Washington Press, 1997, ISBN 0-295-97597-0
• Dialogue across to international divide: Essays towards a Turkish - Armenian dialogue, Zoryan Institute, 2001, ISBN 1-895485-03-7
• Armenia and the Genocide: The Istanbul processes and the Turkish national movement, Hamburger Edition, 1996, ISBN 3-930908-26-3
• İnsan hakları ve Ermeni sorunu: Ittihat ve Terakki'den Kurtuluş Savaşı'na, İmge Kitabevi, 1999, ISBN 975-533-246-4 (English translation: A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, Metropolitan Books, 2006, ISBN 0-8050-7932-7 )
• Siyasi kültürümüzde zulüm ve işkence ( Arastirma - inceleme dizisi ) İletişim Yayıncılık, 1992, ISBN 975-470-249-7
• Ermeni meselesi Hallolunmuştur, İletişim Yayıncılık, Istanbul 2008, ISBN 978-975-05-0562-1
• The Young Turk's Crime Against Humanity. The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire, Princeton University Press, 2012, ISBN 978-069-11-5333-9.