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Article: Nation-making amnesia.(Books)(A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility)(Book review)
- Article from:
- Commonweal
- Article date:
- February 23, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Commonweal Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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A Shameful Act
The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility
Taner Akcam
Metropolitan Books, $30, 496 pp.
It is hard for Americans to imagine a topic almost a century old that remains so wounding that writers risk their lives merely for raising it. Yet in Turkey, the nightmarish events of 1915-16, when upwards of a million Armenians may have perished at the hands of the Ottoman Turks, remain so bitterly contested that even using the word "genocide" can get you into trouble. Recently an organization of Turkish nationalist lawyers brought charges against the novelist Elif Shafak--citing a 2005 law against "insulting ...