The Young Turks' Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Human Rights and Crimes Against Humanity)
Co-Winner of the 2013 Albert Hourani Book Award, Middle East StudiesOne ofForeignAffairs.com's Best Books on the Middle East for 2012"Akam has long courted controversy in Turkey, where he was jailed as a student activist in the 1970s before claiming asylum in Germany, but his intellectual courage is beyond question. Moreover, while Turkey's official account of what happened in 1915 is unchanged, Turkish public and intellectual opinion is now much more open to debate. This dispassionate, scholarly study is a valuable contribution to help that debate move on."--Delphine Strauss,Financial Times"[T]he fact that a Turkish historian with access to the Ottoman archives has written this book is of immeasurable significance."--Foreign Affairs"Akam has long been the most vocal Turkish scholars regarding the Ottoman participation in genocidal acts against Armenians. Here, using Ottoman archival sources, the author makes his case that the Young Turk government had planned prior to WWI to remove the empire's Christian and no-Turkish Muslim population. . . . The author's discussion of the removal and execution of the Armenians is extremely detailed and well documented, and his usage of Ottoman sources, although questioned by Turkish nationalist scholars, is a very important addition to the study of this issue."--Choice"[A] major breakthrough in the our understanding of the social engineering that led to the near destruction of the Armenians of Anatolia, and of the dual-track mechanism for organizing it that the Young Turks employed. . . . [A] must for serious scholars of the Armenian Genocide."--John M. Evans, former U.S. Ambassador to Armenia (2004-2006),American Diplomacy"Taner Akam's study represents a giant step forward. He produced a most important book, all the more so because the ideology of Islamism has endured, and most recently some of its outstanding proponents have seized power in the Middle East."--Dr. Wolfgang G. Schwanitz,Scholars for Peace in the Middle East"Taner Akam's study represents a giant step forward. He produced a most important book, all the more so because the ideology of Islamism has endured, and most recently some of its outstanding proponents have seized power in the Middle East."--Wolfgang G. Schwanitz,Jewish Political Studies Review"The Young Turks' Crime against Humanityis an informative work whose usefulness is greatly enhanced by several well-drawn maps. Akcam draws upon rich archival sources--particularly the Prime Ministerial Ottoman Archive in Istanbul and the archives of the Ministry of the Interior, as well as Turkish court proceedings immediately after the war--to advance an argument about the deliberate 'demographic engineering' planned and implemented by the Ottoman state before and during the First World War."--Peter Gatrell,European Review of History"This book, an edited translation of the now outdated 2008 Turkish original, is a welcome addition to the scholarship."--Ugur Ungor,European History Quarterly"The book is a welcome addition to the scholarship on the Armenian genocide. Clearly structured . . . the book offers some captivating discussions."--Ugur Umit Ungor,Journal of Ecclesiastical History"Akcam's impressive brick-by-brick dismantling of the official Turkish historiography will certainly become a landmark study of the Armenian Genocide and will help serve as yet another nail in the coffin of state-sponsored genocide negationism."--Artyom H. Tonoyan,Journal of Church and State