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...

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.

This obviously is a political book on a controversial past event. Since I know little on this subject so I bought this book to learn more on this subject but unfortunately it means that I cannot assess the facts of the book properly.

The argument of the writer is that a dangerous shift took place in the Ottoman Empire and its policy changed to a Turkish nationalism. To these Turkish nationalist the existence of the Armenians in Turkish areas was a threat to this state so from about 1915 to the early 1920's they created a planned genocide of the Armenians.

After reading the book which I found tedious in parts, I am not convinced that he has proved his argument that a genocide took place.

Genocide surprisingly is a difficult case to prove. Partly because fortunately we have few examples as they are not that common. However also because the evidence is suppressed and denied for example during WW2, the Nazi destroyed the evidence while they did it and after almost all senior Nazis denied knowledge or responsibility for it.

What the book does show is that last scale deportations of the Armenians took place and that these did result in large-scale crimes against them which include robbery, kidnapping and a million murders. Having said this, I am not so sure it matters whether a genocide took place, clearly many people were murdered because they were Armenians.

After 1920s when they should have some justice, it was denied. It is a shame that so few people that did these robbery, kidnapping and murders were punished.

'A Shameful Act' written by Taner Akcam is a very well written book about the events leading up to the genocide of the Armenians and afterwards when the first world war ended. Topics from the book include what led to the decision for genocide and why the postwar trials failed. When reading this book you will find a walk-through guide regarding this history written from a neutral point of view which leads me to highly recommend this book.

Taner Akcam funded by the Armenian National Committee of America and their political and propaganda machine, pushes his propaganda by randomly selecting quotes that can be used to manipulate the reader into thinking it's proof. Taner Akcam loves to mistranslate, misquote, and take quotes out of context, and lacks any documents to prove anything. Taner Akcam, lacks all scholarly ethics in this propaganda book. Most Western historians like the respected Dr. Bernard Lewis, Dr. Guenter Lewy, Dr. Justin McCarthy, Dr. Stanfard Shaw, and many others provide books that actually cite references that prove that the Ottoman government tried it's best to stop ethnic violence between Turks and Armenians. Were Armenians massacred ? Yes, hundreds of thousands. Were Turks massacred? Yes, hundreds of thousands. Was it Genocide and an extermination campaign by the government? NO. Get a real Western unbiased Ottoman Historians to inform you about Ottoman history, not Armenian historians who clearly have bias and a nationalistic agenda to force the recognition of their genocide throughout the world, by equating it to other real proven genocides.

Stop letting people like Taner Akcam water down real genocides like the Holocaust, Darfur, and Rwanda with their propaganda and fictional literature and their false analysis mixed with random selective quotes by people who had their own national agenda in mind, such as Henry Morganthau (He despised the Ottoman Empire, enough so to spread a political hate campaign against Turks, the Ottoman Empire, and Muslims).

Try a real history book such as:
The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide (Utah Series in Turkish and Islamic Stud)

I found this book riveting particularly some long passages of detail that painstakingly document communications between officials in Turkey, demonstrating the organization that was put in place to remove the Armenian population. Akcam's position is clear- he condemns the genocide- and he does it as a Turk, which is what makes this book so valuable and important. We know from the news accounts in the western press of the time that the genocide was no secret; there were outpourings of condemnation that one can easily access and read today, but the denial of the Turkish government has stood in the way of mending relations between the historically joined population of this region. I hope that this book marks the beginning of an era of understanding, forgiveness and equality.

When I finished this book, just as I felt while reading it, I was underwhelmed with its shallowness and its unsubstantiated but copious details. Akcam's background doesn't lend to any credibility either. The fact that he had escaped from jail and that he is now without a nation, without a home, does create a feeling of pity in the reader but does nothing to erase the propaganda nature of the book. I did feel sorry for the writer but did not believe his claims. If I were an Armenian, I would find a better spokesperson for my cause than a bitter, lonely man who is so desperately seeking respect amongst the real scholars.

As I read the book, I was always aware that it was promoted by certain parties for certain reasons (namely, if "genocide" claims are accepted all over the world then Armenia can claim land from what is now Turkey). The book's propaganda aspect and bias is painfully obvious, nothing is balanced or objective. It is not about history, it is about a specific goal.

Akcam starts with a position (he says "yes genocide" at the beginning of the book), then lists partial quotations from sources that support this starting point. This is not research! If I started with the opposite position, and used exactly the same sources, I could just as well list as many quotations that supported my theory. All his references can also be used to prove "no genocide." Akcam has taken every citation out of context and this is obvious to the reader.

On the internet I found a lengthy analysis of the book, written by someone named Yucel Guclu. This review mentions Russian State Historical Military Archive in Moscow, State Historical Archive in St. Petersburg and The French archives in Paris, Nantes and Vincennes. Akcam did not consult any of these archives. No wonder the book reads like a propaganda material as opposed to a "history" book. Clearly, Akcam is on a mission, he wants to be provocative, hence his selectiveness in his sources.

Guclu ends his analysis with these words: "Akcam's central thesis and accompanying facts are unconvincing. What happened back in 1915 was a tragedy but by no means a genocide. It was wartime and both sides suffered great losses, sorrow and pain. No program of genocide was ever proposed, planned or carried out by the Ottoman government. No empirical evidence to document these claims has ever been uncovered in any archives. To the contrary, the relocation orders demonstrate that no policy of genocide existed, the Ottoman government did all it could to prevent killings and to settle the Armenians away from the war zones. The author takes his conclusions ready-made from others, instead of forming them himself from the sources he used. It is the historian's task to examine motives, causes and consequences without rancour or partisan loyalty; this Akcam does not do. It may be that he finds difficulty in correlating evidence, or even of interpreting a piece of evidence correctly."

My sentiments exactly.

I recently watched a documentary titled "The Armenian Revolt." It is a far more objective account of the events of early 1900s, between Ottoman Armenians and Ottoman Muslims. I understand the desire of the Armenians to be compensated for their suffering but they also have to admit that they brought that suffering upon themselves (and upon the muslim population) by revolting against their own government and taking up arms alongside the invading enemy forces (Russian, French). Akcam cannot white-wash the Armenian wrong-doings and atrocities by simply excluding them from his book. The reader is not stupid. I am sure even the most uninformed reader would get the "something is missing" feeling. People know propaganda when they see it.

One last word on the documentary "The Armenian Revolt", there are numerous historians in it who don't seem to be endorsing Akcam's view. Just compare the credentials of the historians such as Bernard Lewis, Justin McCarthy and Guenter Lewy to those of Akcam's. I recommend Guenter Lewy's book, "The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey" for anyone who wishes to learn both sides of the story. You can also listen to his speech (available on video sites), which is a well-balanced, far more truthful and objective (fair to both sides) account of 1915.

Akcam continues to be the boldest Turkish intellectual alive, and his Amazon reviews seem to reflect that! A quick google search for AKCAM AMAZON will yield a paper he published that references these very Amazon reviews, which he has suggested are part of a hate campaign against him that has featured numerous death threats and various Turkish nationalist fantasies about his having been a "terrorist" before he became a scholar. Yikes!

Politics aside, Akcam collects and orders an incredible amount of data, with a downright psychotic penchant for citation: 100+ pages of citations. This is significant, as this subject tends to feature a comical back-and-forth between western scholars and Turkish scholars, as Turkish scholars struggle to refute, confuse, obscure, or otherwise mitigate every aspect of the Armenian persecution. To get a sense of just how silly this pattern is, just do some reading about the "Hitler quote".

For me, Akcam was at his best in his two-page Author's Note, where he cuts to the soul of the question of the Armenian Genocide and its denial, as well as the preposterousness of so many of these Amazon reviewers: The terms Armenian and Turk "are in fact the very cause of the problems explored in this book, as well as being incorrect." While the terms are employed historiographically and conversationally, they are "ahistorical constructions". In short, they are narrative placeholders that ultimately hold no meaning. Oh, if only the people of the Caucasus and Anatolia could accept that!

Today, writing this book is a criminal act in Turkey, where "insulting Turkishness" carries a jail sentence; for Hrant Dink it carried a death sentence. After that law is gone, the concepts "Turkishness" and "Armenianness" must go as well, so these ancient sisters and brothers can find each other again. A good first step is this book, which Akcam has risked his life to write.

Akcam continues to be the boldest Turkish intellectual alive, and his Amazon reviews seem to reflect that! A quick google search for AKCAM AMAZON will yield a paper he published that references these very Amazon reviews, which he has suggested are part of a hate campaign against him that has featured numerous death threats and various Turkish nationalist fantasies about his having been a "terrorist" before he became a scholar. Yikes!

Politics aside, Akcam collects and orders an incredible amount of data, with a downright psychotic penchant for citation: 100+ pages of citations. This is significant, as this subject tends to feature a comical back-and-forth between western scholars and Turkish scholars, as Turkish scholars struggle to refute, confuse, obscure, or otherwise mitigate every aspect of the Armenian persecution. To get a sense of just how silly this pattern is, just do some reading about the "Hitler quote".

For me, Akcam was at his best in his two-page Author's Note, where he cuts to the soul of the question of the Armenian Genocide and its denial, as well as the preposterousness of so many of these Amazon reviewers: The terms Armenian and Turk "are in fact the very cause of the problems explored in this book, as well as being incorrect." While the terms are employed historiographically and conversationally, they are "ahistorical constructions". In short, they are narrative placeholders that ultimately hold no meaning. Oh, if only the people of the Caucasus and Anatolia could accept that!

Today, writing this book is a criminal act in Turkey, where "insulting Turkishness" carries a jail sentence; for Hrant Dink it carried a death sentence. After that law is gone, the concepts "Turkishness" and "Armenianness" must go as well, so these ancient sisters and brothers can find each other again. A good first step is this book, which Akcam has risked his life to write.

Seller prompt and transaction smooth - I am pleased to have this book - my ancestors are Armenian/Turkish and this book provides the family with facts added to personal event(s)memories handed down from generation to generation...I am so glad the author had the courage to write this book, and that it is available to the public - perhaps after reading this book, people will be more attentive to one another, and never allow governments (or anyone) to effect the same policies again - thank you.

I have read the book thoroughly and found quite good in terms of the sources used and the consistency of the theme. However, I realized that the author deliberately does not touch some fields in order not to jeopardize his position among his Armenian employers. Firstly, He claims that the only thing Ottoman Armenians wanted was the Reforms; if the government had implemented the changes they agreed with Dashnak Party, It would have been no revolt whatsoever. He also claims that most of the revolts that took place in various towns in Anatolia were simply the resistance for the deportation decision. On the contrary, we clearly know that the motive was not a Reform demand. The motive was a demand that leads to and independent Armenian State within the Turkish territories. He also dismisses the Armenian terrorist activities within the empire in order not to justify the deportation. Fortunately, He tells every account about the wide support that was provided to the Russian army and Western powers by Armenians.

The other thing I have found quite interesting is that he hardly mentions how "genocide" took place. According to his writing, special organization was responsible for killing Armenians so Regular army was told not to interfere and most of the cases Armenians were massacred just out of the towns where they were living. That was it. How can you overlook something that is extremely important for your case even though telling every small political and administrative event that occurred during the period? I think if a court deals with this issue they have to find psychical evidence which is the bodies of 1.5 millions people across the country. Even if your family members were subjected a massacre, even other hundreds of other families claim to have been massacred. These do not prove that this was genocide as you can find similar stories on the other side.

I think the problem we have is that Armenian people are so convinced that genocide took place against them and we can change not their mind and we do not have to. But they have to accept that if injustice was done to them, Propaganda books or propagandists are not something that they can rely on. The truth is always exposed sooner or later. I would advise them (Armenia) to take Turkey to court, called International Justice Court, in Lahey in Switzerland to get a conviction and get on with their lives. That's why I do not find Armenians genuine on this subject. Why spent millions of dollars for propaganda and why not submit a petition to the Court.

Turkey is a beautiful country, big enough to embrace all kind of people and live in harmony as long as violence does not occur. When we look at the shore lines throughout Turkey we can easily claim that hundreds of thousands of people who originally were born outside of Turkey live in a peaceful environment which I envy as a person who live outside of Turkey.

Thanks for readin my opinions