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ARMENIANS A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, by Taner Akçam. Tr. by Paul Bessemer. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006. x + 376 pages. Map. Notes to p. 464. Index to p. 483. $30.
Reviewed by Edward J. Erickson
Elizabeth Kolbert's prerelease review of Taner Akçam's A Shameful Act (see "Dead Reckoning" in The New Yorker, November 6, 2006) immediately established a favorable climate for this book. Subsequent reviews have done the same (e.g., Gary Bass, "Turkey's Killing Fields" in the NY Review of Books, December 2006). A Turk himself, Akçam is well known for his criticism of his country's denial of the Armenian genocide. The book under review is me English translation of a study Akçam published in Turkey in 1999 (calling into question the commonly held idea that these subjects are taboo in contemporary Turkey).
Akçam's stated purpose in this book is to use Ottoman archival documents to confirm that the Ottoman state conducted a carefully planned campaign of annihilation against the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire. In theory this differs significantly from previous authors who have relied largely on American, Austrian, and German records and the official Ottoman gazette accounts of the 1919 trials. His secondary purpose...