For many who challenge their government’s official version of events, slander, e-mailed threats, and other forms of harassment are all too familiar. As a former Amnesty International prisoner of conscience in Turkey, I should not have been surprised. But my recent detention at the Montreal airport – apparently on the basis of anonymous insertions in my Wikipedia biography – signals a disturbing new phase in a Turkish campaign of intimidation that has intensified since the November 2006 publication of my book, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility.
At the invitation of the McGill University Faculty of Law and Concordia University, I flew from Minneapolis to Montreal on February 16, to lecture on A Shameful Act. As the Northwest Airlines jet touched down at Trudeau International Airport about 11:20 a.m., I assumed I had plenty of time to get to campus for the 5:00 p.m. event. Nearly four hours later, I was still at the airport, detained without any explanation.
“Where are you going? Where are you staying? How many days are you staying here?” asked the courteous officer from Citizenship and Immigration Canada. “Do you have a return ticket? Do you have enough money with you?”
As the border control authorities were surely aware, I travel frequently to Canada: three or four trips a year since 2000, most recently with my daughter in October 2006, just before the publication of A Shameful Act. Not once in all that time had I been singled out for interrogation.
“I’m not sure myself why you need to be detained,” the officer finally admitted. “After making some phone calls, I’ll let you know.”
While he was gone, my cell phone rang. The friend who had arranged to pick me up at the airport had gotten worried when I failed to emerge from the Customs. I explained the situation as well as I could, asking him to inform my hosts, the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism at McGill and the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies at Concordia, that I might be late for the lecture. The Zoryan Institute and the Armenian Students’ Associations of Montreal, co-presenters of the event, would also need to be updated.
The immigration officer returned with a strange request: could I help him figure out why I was being detained? You’re the one detaining me, I was tempted to say. If you don’t know the reason, how do you expect me to know? You tell me. It was like a scene from Atom Egoyan’s Ararat. I knew better than to challenge him, giving the impression that I had something to hide.
“Let me guess,” I answered. “Do you know who Hrant Dink was? Did you hear about the Armenian journalist who was killed in Istanbul?” He hadn’t.
“I’m a historian,” I explained. “I work on the subject of the Armenian Genocide of 1915. There’s a very heavy campaign being waged by extreme nationalist and fascist forces in Turkey against those individuals who are critical of the events that occurred in 1915. Hrant Dink was killed because of it. The lives of people like me are in danger because of it. Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s Nobel Laureate, couldn’t tolerate the attacks against him and had to leave the country. Many intellectuals in Turkey are now living under police protection.” The officer took notes.
“In connection with these attacks there has been a serious campaign against me in the United States,” I went on. “I know that the groups running this campaign are given directives and are controlled by the Turkish diplomats. They spread propaganda stating that I am a member of a terrorist organization. Some rumors to that effect must have reached you.” The officer continued to write.
“For your information, in 1976, while I was a master’s degree student and teaching assistant at Middle East Technical University, I was arrested for articles I had written in a journal and sentenced to eight years and nine months in prison. I later escaped to Germany, where I became a citizen. The Turkish criminal statute that was the basis for my prosecution, together with similar laws, was repealed in 1991. I travel to Turkey freely now and went there most recently for Hrant Dink’s funeral.”
The officer finished his notes. “I’m sorry, but I have to make some more phone calls,” he said, and left.
My cell phone rang again. It was McGill legal scholar Payam Akhavan, an authority on human rights and genocide, who was to have introduced my lecture. Apologizing for my situation, Prof. Akhavan let me know that he’d contacted the offices of Canadian Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day and Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity Jason Kenney. Bishop Bagrat Galstanian, primate of the Diocese of the Armenian Church of Canada, also called to confirm that he too had been in touch with Secretary Kenney’s office. I was going to be released.
About 3:30 p.m. the officer returned with a special one-week visa. Upon my insistence that I had a right to know exactly why I had been detained, he showed me a sheet of paper with my photograph on top and a short block of text, in English, below.
I recognized the page at once. The photo was a still from the 2005 documentary, Armenian Genocide: 90 Years Later, a co-production of the University of Minnesota Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Twin Cities Public Television. A series of outtakes from the film, originally posted on the CHGS website, could be found on the popular Internet video site YouTube and elsewhere in cyberspace. The still photo and the text beneath it comprised my biography in the English-language edition of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia which anyone in the world can modify at any time. For the last year – most recently on Christmas Eve, 2006 – my Wikipedia biography had been persistently vandalized by anonymous “contributors” intent on labeling me as a terrorist. The same allegations had been repeatedly scrawled, like gangland graffiti, as “customer reviews” of A Shameful Act and my other books at Amazon.com.
It was unlikely, to say the least, that a Canadian immigration officer found out that I was coming to Montreal, took the sole initiative to research my identity on the Internet, discovered the archived Christmas Eve version of my Wikipedia biography, printed it out seven weeks later on February 16, and showed it to me – voilà! – as a result.
The fact is that my upcoming lecture had been publicized well in advance in the Canadian print and broadcast media. An announcement had even been inserted in Wikipedia five days before my arrival. Moreover, two Turkish-American websites hostile to my work – the 500-page Tall Armenian Tale, and the 19,000-member Turkish Forum listserv – had been hinting for months that my “terrorist” activities ought to be of interest to American immigration authorities. It seemed far more likely that one or more individuals had seized the opportunity to denounce me to the Canadians. Although I was forced to cancel two radio interviews, I made it to the McGill campus in time to lecture on A Shameful Act.
For many Turkish intellectuals, freedom of speech has become a struggle in North America as well as in our native country. What is happening to me now could happen to any scholar who dissents from the official state version of history.
Since my return from Montreal, the Canadian immigration authorities have refused to say exactly why I was detained. As a result, I am unable to face my accusers or examine whatever “evidence” may be filed against me. Although I have formally requested access both to my Canadian and American dossiers – a process that could take months – I have had to cancel all international appearances. Meanwhile, my Wikipedia biography and Amazon book pages remain open to malicious insertions at any time.
Nevertheless, my American book tour continues under tightened security. Although it is stressful and very sad to have to lecture under police protection, I have no intention of canceling any of my domestic appearances. After all, the United States is not the Republic of Turkey. The Turkish authorities whether directly or through their grassroots agents have no right to harass scholars exercising their academic freedom of speech at American universities. Throughout my life I have learned in unforgettable ways the worth of such freedom, and I intend to use it at every opportunity.
Taner Akçam – Turkish intellectual, professor at the University of Minnesota, and the author of A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility – recently became the subject of a formal complaint under Turkey’s Penal Code Article 301: the same “crime” of “insulting Turkishness” for which Hrant Dink was tried and found guilty by the Turkish judiciary.
