What is Taner Akçam?
{{Infobox person | name = Taner Akçam | image = Taner Akçam.PNG | caption = Akçam in Toronto, 2013 | birth_date = {{Birth-date and age|1953}} | birth_place = Ölçek, [[Ardahan Province]], [[Turkey]] | nationality = [[Germans|German]] | known_for = Discussion of [[Armenian genocide]], 1977 imprisonment | occupation = Historian | alma_mater = [[Middle East Technical University]] }} '''Altuğ Taner Akçam''' or '''Tanner Aktscham''' is a [[Turks in Germany|German]]-[[Turkish people|Turkish]] [[historian]], [[Sociology|sociologist]] and [[author]]. He is one of the first Turkish academics to acknowledge and discuss openly the [[Armenian Genocide]] by the [[Ottoman Empire|Ottoman]] Turkish government in [[1915]]. Taner Akçam was born in [[Ardahan]], [[Turkey]] in 1953. He graduated from the department of administrative sciences of {{ill|Middle East Technical University|en}}. After 1973, he joined left-wing political groups such as ODTÜ-DER and ADYÖD. In 1975, he was politically persecuted for his work on Armenian and Kurdish history. He was arrested in 1976 and convicted with 9 years prison sentence. On 12 May 1977, he escaped from the prison and moved to Germany. He lived in Germany between 1978 and 1995. He received his PhD in 1995 at {{ill|University of Hannover|en}}. After he became a professor, Akçam worked in {{ill|University of Minesotta|en}} and {{ill|Clark University|en}} in United States. ==Research== Taner Akçam worked on the history of Ottoman Armenians. He researched {{ill|Relocation and Resettlement Law|lt=deportation law|en|Temporary Law of Deportation}} and 1919 Istanbul trials. According to him and the historic consensus, what happened to Armenians meets the legal definition of genocide. Akçam worked in the Ottoman archives and found many documents.Examples of those documents are the Andonian documents,<ref>Lütem, Ömer Engin and Yiğit Alpogan. “Review Essay: Killing Orders: Talat Pasha’s Telegrams and the Armenian Genocide.” Review of Armenian Studies, Issue 37 (2018).</ref> t