Taner Akçam

Taner Akçam is a Professor of History at Clark University in the United States and the author of numerous studies on modern Turkish history. He was born in 1953 in the Ardahan province of Turkey. In 1976, he was sentenced to nine years in prison for publishing a student journal that focused on Turkey's treatment of the Kurds. He escaped to Germany, where he was granted political asylum in 1978. He is one of the first Turkish academics to speak openly about the Armenian Genocide. His book, "The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity," was awarded the Albert Hourani Book Award by the Middle East Studies Association and was listed among the best books on the Middle East on the Foreign Affairs magazine website.