Taner Akcam: acknowledgment by US government might force Turkey to understand that blackmailing and threatening do not offer solutions for historical problems

PanARMENIAN.Net - United States is avoiding the official recognition of the Armenian Genocide out of a similar misguided concern for national security in the Middle East, California Courier Publisher Harut Sassounian cited Turkish scholar Taner Akcam as saying.

“Morality is a very real issue, and for real politic to be successful in the region; moral values, in this instance, the specific one of acknowledging historic wrongdoings, must be integrated into a policy of national security…. Failure to confront history honestly is one of the major reasons for insecurity and instability in the region,” Taner Akcam stated at his lecture in Los Angeles.

Akcam revealed that after World War I, Turkey’s leaders, including Mustafa Kemal, acknowledged the Armenian massacres and favored the prosecution of their perpetrators in order to gain support of the Allies for the preservation of the territorial integrity of Ottoman Turkey.

Akcam warned the United States that any policy “that ignores morality and forgets the addressing of historic wrongdoings is doomed to fail in the end.” He suggested that Turkey should be made to understand that “bullying and threatening others is not the behavior of an international actor”.

“Turkey cannot continue with the same repressive domestic policies towards its own history and minorities under the guise of national security and cannot threaten other countries in expressing their thoughts on 1915, and at the same time pretend to be a member of democratic countries in the world. An open, official acknowledgment by the US government might force Turkey to understand that blackmailing and threatening other states and suppressing and persecuting its own intellectuals do not offer solutions for historical problems and for security,” the Turkish scholar concluded.