Turkish Genocide Denial as a National Security Concept with Taner Akçam

Ellie Lerner and Vedanth Reddy sit down with Taner Akçam discuss the national security implications of Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide on stability and reconciliation efforts in the region today. Historian Taner Akçam is the inaugural director of the Armenian Genocide Research Program of the Promise Armenian Institute at UCLA. Previously he was the Kaloosdian and Mugar Chair in Modern Armenian History and Genocide in the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. Akçam grew up in Turkey, where he was imprisoned for editing a political youth journal and was subsequently adopted as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International in 1976. Akçam later received political asylum in Germany. In 1996 he received his doctorate from the University of Hanover with a dissertation on The Turkish National Movement and the Armenian Genocide Against the Background of the Military Tribunals in Istanbul Between 1919 and 1922.