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The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity
Introducing new evidence from more than 600 secret Ottoman documents, this book demonstrates in unprecedented detail that the Armenian Genocide and the expulsion of Greeks from the late Ottoman Empire resulted from an official effort to rid the empire of its Christian subjects. Presenting these previously inaccessible documents along with expert context and analysis, Taner Akam's most authoritative work to date goes deep inside the bureaucratic machinery of Ottoman Turkey to show how a dying empire embraced genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Although the deportation and killing of Armenians was internationally condemned in 1915 as a "crime against humanity and civilization," the Ottoman government initiated a policy of denial that is still maintained by the Turkish Republic. The case for Turkey's "official history" rests on documents from the Ottoman imperial archives, to which access has been heavily restricted until recently. It is this very source that Akam now uses to overturn the official narrative.
The documents presented here attest to a late-Ottoman policy of Turkification, the goal of which was no less than the radical demographic transformation of Anatolia. To that end, about one-third of Anatolia's 15 million people were displaced, deported, expelled, or massacred, destroying the ethno-religious diversity of an ancient cultural crossroads of East and West, and paving the way for the Turkish Republic.
By uncovering the central roles played by demographic engineering and assimilation in the Armenian Genocide, this book will fundamentally change how this crime is understood and show that physical destruction is not the only aspect of the genocidal process.
Although the deportation and killing of Armenians was internationally condemned in 1915 as a "crime against humanity and civilization," the Ottoman government initiated a policy of denial that is still maintained by the Turkish Republic. The case for Turkey's "official history" rests on documents from the Ottoman imperial archives, to which access has been heavily restricted until recently. It is this very source that Akam now uses to overturn the official narrative.
The documents presented here attest to a late-Ottoman policy of Turkification, the goal of which was no less than the radical demographic transformation of Anatolia. To that end, about one-third of Anatolia's 15 million people were displaced, deported, expelled, or massacred, destroying the ethno-religious diversity of an ancient cultural crossroads of East and West, and paving the way for the Turkish Republic.
By uncovering the central roles played by demographic engineering and assimilation in the Armenian Genocide, this book will fundamentally change how this crime is understood and show that physical destruction is not the only aspect of the genocidal process.
528 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2012
35 people are currently reading
502 people want to read
About the author
Taner Akçam
39 books52 followersAltuğ Taner Akçam is a Turkish historian and sociologist, recognized as a "leading international authority on the Armenian genocide". He is one of the first Turkish academics to acknowledge and openly discuss the Armenian Genocide.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 7, 2014
A forceful indictment of the crimes of the Young Turks which have gone largely unnoticed in circles where genocide is often discussed. Though a cliche, there is some truth to the old recollection that the deportation and slaughter of the ancient Armenian nation served as a blueprint for similar tragedies in the 20th Century.
Akçam's writing is bland but calculated in its detailed summary of the removal of Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, as well as the attempted assimilation of non-Turkish muslims of Anatolia. This work is precisely the kind of focused collection needed in the face of the revisionism practiced by the Republic of Turkey since its birth in the first quarter of the 20th Century. This is especially poignant as the steamroller of modernity and neoliberalism flatten all evidence of the past while propelling Modern Turkey to a possible position of leadership in the region of the old "Near East". Only once memory is possible can we learn to forgive and remember.
Akçam's writing is bland but calculated in its detailed summary of the removal of Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, as well as the attempted assimilation of non-Turkish muslims of Anatolia. This work is precisely the kind of focused collection needed in the face of the revisionism practiced by the Republic of Turkey since its birth in the first quarter of the 20th Century. This is especially poignant as the steamroller of modernity and neoliberalism flatten all evidence of the past while propelling Modern Turkey to a possible position of leadership in the region of the old "Near East". Only once memory is possible can we learn to forgive and remember.
June 14, 2013
How can they continue to deny that it happened? Admit it. Even if you had nothing directly to do with it. To continue the denial is to subject the victim to death again and again.
January 5, 2016
The book is quite interesting in revealing all the telegrams that went from the central government of Istanbul, controlled by Talaat himself. The author goes further into the minds of the CUP leaders to find out what methods they used to plan and organize the annihilation of the Armenian population and building up the new Turkey for Turks only, without the presence of the Arnenians, Greeks, Syriacs and Assyrians, who posed a threat to their national interests.
The editor could've done a better job in cleaning up the language mistakes. The author's is sometimes daunting as well. All in all, it's an interesting research on the strategy and tactics of the implementation of the Arnenian Genocide.
The editor could've done a better job in cleaning up the language mistakes. The author's is sometimes daunting as well. All in all, it's an interesting research on the strategy and tactics of the implementation of the Arnenian Genocide.
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October 25, 2021I can't give a "star rating" to this book. On one hand, it's hard to read because it's a virtual catalogue of primary documents with connective prose used to make an argument. On the other hand, that's why this book is of inestimable historical significance.
What Akçam has done with this book is to use mostly Ottoman documents (many recently only recently), with added support from international sources (especially German and American), court transcripts from after WWI, accounts from foreign individuals in the country at he time (missionaries, diplomatic agents, relief workers), and memoirs of survivors to show that the Ottoman central government pursued policies of population management and forced deportation that led inexorably toward the massacre of the vast majority of Armenian people living in the Ottoman Empire in the early 1900s. These policies and actions of physical destruction were accompanied/followed by acts of assimilation and cultural destruction. Taken together, these constitute genocide against the Armenian people.
Akçam's major coup, here, is his use of Ottoman central government communications—including some that Turkey still uses to deny that any genocide or mass killing of Armenians was perpetrated by the government—to demonstrate how the genocide was enacted. Whereas Turkey's frequent complaint is that accusations of genocide are an external attack on Turkey based on international propaganda, Akçam shows that the Ottoman government's own documents reveal their role in a massive crime against humanity.
Again, this isn't easy reading. It's dry, repetitive, and filled with history and geography that was almost completely unfamiliar to me (to my shame). But I'm very grateful that the book exists and that I had the opportunity to read it.
I'd like to read some of the survivors' memoirs at some point, to gain a more subjective, on-the-ground, narrative perspective on the atrocities committed by the Ottoman government and provincial officials.
What Akçam has done with this book is to use mostly Ottoman documents (many recently only recently), with added support from international sources (especially German and American), court transcripts from after WWI, accounts from foreign individuals in the country at he time (missionaries, diplomatic agents, relief workers), and memoirs of survivors to show that the Ottoman central government pursued policies of population management and forced deportation that led inexorably toward the massacre of the vast majority of Armenian people living in the Ottoman Empire in the early 1900s. These policies and actions of physical destruction were accompanied/followed by acts of assimilation and cultural destruction. Taken together, these constitute genocide against the Armenian people.
Akçam's major coup, here, is his use of Ottoman central government communications—including some that Turkey still uses to deny that any genocide or mass killing of Armenians was perpetrated by the government—to demonstrate how the genocide was enacted. Whereas Turkey's frequent complaint is that accusations of genocide are an external attack on Turkey based on international propaganda, Akçam shows that the Ottoman government's own documents reveal their role in a massive crime against humanity.
Again, this isn't easy reading. It's dry, repetitive, and filled with history and geography that was almost completely unfamiliar to me (to my shame). But I'm very grateful that the book exists and that I had the opportunity to read it.
I'd like to read some of the survivors' memoirs at some point, to gain a more subjective, on-the-ground, narrative perspective on the atrocities committed by the Ottoman government and provincial officials.
January 10, 2021
The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity
A good book to pair with this reading might be - The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey’s Destruction Of Its Christian Minorities 1894-1924, Benny Morris & Dror Ze’evi
The author pitches a sober account of the Ottoman & Turkish governments' deliberate involvement in the state-wide participation of what may be described as the Christian Holocaust, from using the Ottoman archives in Turkey currently highly-restricted from foreign researchers. Contrary to popular belief, Taner Akcam argues, the Ottoman archival records, despite their fervent attitude to burn contemporary cables, and by the Turkish government in the 1980s to purge their Prime Ministerial archives, the remaining documents provide a somewhat-reliable understanding of events from 1912-1918 that harmonise with the foreign documents, focussing specifically on 1915-1916.
The establishment of the maximum 5%-10% Christian population minority policy, especially of the Armenians, across Eastern and Central Anatolia was a planned effort to deport, annihilate, and subjugate the Christians in the area. Another cog in the working government-machine was the dual-track mechanism policy, one that allowed government plausible-deniability as Christian Armenians were being sent off to the Black Sea, the Syrian desert, Der Zor, Aleppo, and many other districts, to be slaughtered.
A good book to pair with this reading might be - The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey’s Destruction Of Its Christian Minorities 1894-1924, Benny Morris & Dror Ze’evi
The author pitches a sober account of the Ottoman & Turkish governments' deliberate involvement in the state-wide participation of what may be described as the Christian Holocaust, from using the Ottoman archives in Turkey currently highly-restricted from foreign researchers. Contrary to popular belief, Taner Akcam argues, the Ottoman archival records, despite their fervent attitude to burn contemporary cables, and by the Turkish government in the 1980s to purge their Prime Ministerial archives, the remaining documents provide a somewhat-reliable understanding of events from 1912-1918 that harmonise with the foreign documents, focussing specifically on 1915-1916.
The establishment of the maximum 5%-10% Christian population minority policy, especially of the Armenians, across Eastern and Central Anatolia was a planned effort to deport, annihilate, and subjugate the Christians in the area. Another cog in the working government-machine was the dual-track mechanism policy, one that allowed government plausible-deniability as Christian Armenians were being sent off to the Black Sea, the Syrian desert, Der Zor, Aleppo, and many other districts, to be slaughtered.
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November 6, 2012February 7, 2013
Really great source information from Turkish archives.
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September 16, 2018I wish there were more details and pictures.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews