THE INTIMIDATION CAMPAIGN AGAINST TANER AKÇAM
University of Minnesota sociologist-historian Taner Akçam, 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. Akçam 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, Akçam 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 Akçam'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 Akçam's critically acclaimed study, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, the campaign intensified. Akçam'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, Akçam 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 Akçam'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 Hürriyet, one of the most widely read newspapers in Turkey.
In May 2007, citing the heightened danger to his own life, Akçam unmasked the secretive Webmaster of Tall Armenian Tale as Turkish-American illustrator Murad "Holdwater" Gümen of New York City. Death threats and denunciations followed. Hürriyet portrayed Akçam 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 Akçam 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."
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