Peace and Conflict Studies - Spring 2014

Peace and Conflict Studies Volume 21, Number 1 79 really raising their voice and, well, the state has to hear it at some point and I think they are hearing it. (In Trebitsch, Schültze, & Friedler, 2009) The march has since become an annual event in Istanbul. In January 2012, it grew into a protest involving “tens of thousands of Turks” who used the occasion to contest Turkey’s lack of media freedom and corrupt justice system (Albayrak, 2012). The willingness of some Turkish citizens to protest may stem from an empathetic stance for the repression of Turkey’s fourteen million Kurdish citizens and their desire for an independent or autonomous Kurdish state (“Turkey and its rebel Kurds,” 2010). This also dates back to the end of the Ottoman Empire, when Kurds believed in a realistic opportunity for an independent nation based on their close relationship with the Young Turk government – a relationship so close that many Kurds had an active role in the Armenian genocide (Hovannisian, G., 2010, pp. 225-226). It is an irony of history that after Kurds helped rid eastern Turkey of Armenians and other Christians, they then became subjects of Turkish repression. Now, their struggles against Turkey’s government are also drawing attention to the historic treatment of the Armenians and the genocide denial. Kurdish leaders in Diyarbakir, Turkey have recently issued a recognition and apology for the role Kurdish communities played in the Armenian and Assyrian genocides, and called on Turkish authorities to recognize the genocide and take steps towards atonement (Akkum, 2013). Collaboration has been a factor in some recent efforts for Turkish recognition, particularly at the academic level. In 2000, 126 international holocaust scholars signed an affirmation of the Armenian genocide as historical fact and published it in The New York Times (“Centre for Holocaust,” n.d.). The Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute (n.d.) (“Public Petitions”) also has a petition of 150 scholars and writers who condemn the denial and urge governments and media to recognize and refer to the Armenian genocide as such. Under the heading “Recognition,” the website for the 2009 genocide documentary Aghet – a genocide (n.d.) lists 15 Turkish scholars who have recognized the Armenian genocide. One of these, historian Taner Akçam, situates himself within this struggle in describing his writing as “a call to the people of Turkey to consider the suffering inflicted in their name” (2006, p. 2). Akçam used his access to Turkey’s state archive to publicize nationally “self-incriminating documents” (Hovannisian, G., 2010, p. 216). In The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity, Akçam (2012) uniquely draws together both Muslim Turkish historical perspectives and those of other ethnic religious groups present during the era of the genocide, including the Ottoman Armenians (p. xiii). Akçam and others emphasize the importance of acknowledgment of responsibility for