Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #226041 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-21
• Released on: 2007-08-21
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. The story of the Ottoman Empire's slaughter of one million Armenians in 1915—a genocide still officially denied by the 83-year-old modern Turkish state—has been dominated by two historiographical traditions. One pictures an embattled empire, increasingly truncated by rapacious Western powers and internal nationalist movements. The other details the attempted eradication of an entire people, amid persecutions of other minorities. Part of historian Akçam's task in this clear, well-researched work is to reconcile these mutually exclusive narratives. He roots his history in an unsparing analysis of Turkish responsibility for one of the most notorious atrocities of a singularly violent century, in internal and international rivalries, and an exclusionary system of religious (Muslim) and ethnic (Turkish) superiority. With novel use of key Ottoman, European and American sources, he reveals that the mass killing of Armenians was no byproduct of WWI, as long claimed in Turkey, but a deliberate, centralized program of state-sponsored extermination. As Turkey now petitions to join the European Union, and ethnic cleansing and collective punishment continues to threaten entire populations around the globe, this groundbreaking and lucid account by a prominent Turkish scholar speaks forcefully to all. (Oct.)
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From Booklist
Akcam has attracted considerable attention for being one of the first Turkish intellectuals to devote his career to studying the systematic slaughter of one million Armenians during World War I. For this reason, he has been harshly criticized by those who would deny the existence of an Armenian genocide. Akcam's earlier work, From Empire to Republic (2004), contextualized the genocide within a climate of Turkish nationalism and attempted to provide the basis for a Turkish national conversation about trauma and culpability. Although essentially similar to that book in its analysis of Turkish culpability, his latest study is considerably broader in historical scope. He seeks to harmonize the conventional narrative of the collapsing Ottoman Empire with victims' perspectives of Turkish dominance over minorities. He does this by showing a state--rent by internal power struggles and terrified of being partitioned--that pursues genocide as a way of avoiding catastrophic collapse. Clearly a companion to Peter Balakian's Burning Tigris (2003) and other accounts of the genocide, this book also deserves to be read in concert with recent works analyzing the politics of genocide and national shame in Germany. Brendan Driscoll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

--The New York Times Book Review
"Impressive achievement... Shines fresh light on exactly why and how the Ottoman Empire deported and slaughtered the Armenians."

Customer Reviews

Was There Turkish Responsibility
The Turkish responsibility is a question everyone wants to ask on the fate of Armenians in World War One.

Taner Akcam definitely wondered but concluded since many Armenians died, then there must have been some plan to exterminate them based on the opinions of some Westerners who were trying to force the United States into World War One by distributing stories (grossly exaggerated) of atrocities of Germans, Austro-Hungarians, and the Ottoman Empire, since they were the Central Powers.

However, many US and German consuls who were able to stay in the Ottoman Empire to witness the relocation of Armenians reported to their ambassadors that the Ottoman authorities tried to help many of the Armenians but that there was such a food shortage, that even the Turkish soldiers went to war hungry. Sanitary conditions in Eastern Turkey were terrible, and the Ottoman Empire was bankrupt. The Ottoman Empire had a war on all 3 fronts. Taner Akcam, by ignoring these makes conclusions on 1915 based on the opinions of some anti-Turkish reporters and diplomats.

Considering, Taner Akcam did indeed escape from a Turkish prison, regardless of why he was imprisoned, it shows he truly has a strong grudge against the Turkish government. By writing books about the sensitive genocide debate, he tries to pollute opinions to support the thesis that there was an Armenian Genocide, even though so many Turks were killed before the relocations of Armenians and after the rebellions by Armenians for the purpose of creating a Free Armenia.

Taner Akcam offers a valid and lucid perspective...
Taner Akcam offers a valid and lucid perspective as well as a historically accurate explanation regarding the circumstances surrounding the Ottoman Empire's systematic massacre and elimination of the Armenians. His book is a true testimonial of Turkish crimes against humanity. This book clearly defines the complicity of the (Ottoman) Turkish state. The author evaluates and explains how during the war, 1915 thru 1921, the Turks methodically, planned and executed this genocide - and that their malicious actions were not just random happenstance resulting from said war. The act of genocide is distinguished from "normal" warfare in Mr. Akcam's book, leading the reader and the world to ponder if and when there will be retribution and justice for the Armenians...

crimes against humanity

One of the many achievements of Taner Akcam's excellent, provoking and unsentimental 'A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the question of Turkish Responsibility' is in shifting a generally acknowledged human disgrace from the particular to the whole.

This impeccably researched and written historical tragedy, is specifically aimed at the people of Turkey to consider the suffering inflicted in their name on minorities, especially the Armenians,living within the borders of the Ottoman Empire prior to, during and immediately following the First World War.

But equally, he is alert to the self-interest and lack of responsibility shown by the major Western powers, all sheltering uneasily together under the umbrella of an evolving World War that inevitably occurred. This included Russia in a state of revolution itself.

As Akcam unerringly concludes, the Great Powers used the terms human rights and democracy to "legitimize the most obvious colonial moves" towards Ottoman territory and the Turkish people began to view these notions as "Western hypocrisy."

Following the international failure post-war and subsequently to bring perpetrators of the Armenian genocide to justice, Akcam suggests mankind may not yet be able "to draw a clear line of division between humanitarian goals, on the one hand, and a state's economic and political interests, on the other."

In this situation, which would seem to apply to the great majority of major and minor players of our globe's so-called United Nations, how can we (as Akcam says) "come to a consensus about ethical norms."

As long as man and womankind harbour and prefer for whatever reason to express actively or passively negative qualities like self-interest,greed, pride and dominance, violence and war and "crimes against humanity" will continue.

Nevertheless,it is a book such as this, so ably scribed and argued, that offers new hope and, perhaps ultimately, relief from our darkest propensities.