Panorama, a website in Armenia (English version here) has an article on Turkish scholar Dr. Taner Akcam, who recently swept through Southern California, including a stop at the Armenian Rights Council of America in Altadena on May 7. Akcam is one of the first Turkish scholars to acknowledge the Armenian genocide, which has not endeared him to officials in his home country according to the Panorama article by Harut Sassounian, publisher of The California Courier:
Dr. Akcam disclosed that “Ergenekon,” the recently exposed criminal group that enjoyed support of the Turkish military, had prepared a hit list of five individuals, including ... himself, all targeted for assassination because they spoke out on the Armenian Genocide. They were condemned to death as “Traitors to National Security." ... In Akcam’s view, this mindset was not simply the perverted view of an isolated terror group, but that of Turkey’s legal establishment.
Reporter Sassounian also adds:
At a small gathering, after the May 7 lecture, Akcam disclosed for the first time an alarming incident that had taken place in 1995, following a talk he had delivered on the Armenian Genocide in Yerevan. At the last minute, he had cautiously decided to give a milder version of his prepared remarks. Upon his return to Istanbul, he was shocked when confronted at the airport by Turkish police who had in their possession the harsher version of his talk. He had handed that original version to Armenian officials -- the organizers of the Genocide conference. Someone in Armenia must have leaked his text to the Turkish authorities. Dr. Akcam was able to save his neck from Turkish intelligence agents by showing them the copy of the milder speech that he had actually delivered!
Read the whole thing.
