From Empire to Republic

Taner Akçam is Visiting Professor at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Taner Akçam has gained prominence in academic circles as the first Turkish historian to publicly argue that the disappearance of the Armenian population from Anatolia in the last decades of the Ottoman Empire was the result of genocide. This book, a set of inter-related essays on the place of the Armenian question in Turkish public life, will not make Akçam any less controversial a figure. He focuses on the mentality of the perpetrator rather than the victim, and argues that the humiliating transformation 'From Empire to Republic' was the key experience leading to the emergence of a genocidal mentality among the Young Turks.

• PrefaceIntroduction1. What Are Turkey's Fundamental Problems? A Model for Understanding Turkey Today2. A Theoretical Approach to Understanding Turkish National Identity3. Some Aspects of Turkish National Identity and the Armenian Genocide4. The Homogenizing and Ethnic Cleansing of Anatolia5. The Decision for Genocide in Light of Ottoman-Turkish Documents6. The Treaties of Sèvres and Lausanne: An Alternative Perspective7. The Causes and Effects of Making Turkish History Taboo8. The Genocide and Turkey9. Some Theoretical Thoughts on the Obstacles to Armenian-Turkish ReconciliationSelect BibliographyIndex