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The International Herald Tribune (France)
Friday, September 23, 2005
page 5
(A full page advertisement)
A LETTER FROM THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF GENOCIDE SCHOLARS
President Vice-President Secretary-Treasurer
Israel Charney Gregory H. Stanton Steven Jacobs
(Israel) (USA) (USA)
TO PRIME MINISTER RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN
TC Bashabanlik
Bakanlikir
Ankara, Turkey
June 16, 2005
Dear Prime Minister Erdogan,
We are writing you this open letter in response to your call for an
`impartial study by historians' concerning the fate of the Armenian
people in the Ottoman Empire during World War 1.
We represent the major body of scholars who study genocide in North
America and Europe. We are concerned that in calling for an impartial
study of the Armenian Genocide you may not be fully aware of the
extent of the scholarly and intellectual record in the Armenian
Genocide and how this event conforms to the definition of the United
Nations Genocide Convention. We want to underscore that it is not
just Armenians who are affirming the Armenian Genocide but it is the
overwhelming opinion of scholars who study genocide: hundreds of
independent scholars, who have no affiliations with governments, and
whose work spans many countries and nationalities and the course of
decades. The scholarly evidence reveals the following:
- On April 24, 1915, under cover of World War 1, the Young Turk
government of the Ottoman Empire began a systematic genocide of its
Armenian citizens, an unarmed Christian minority population. More
than a million Armenians were exterminated through direct killing,
starvation, torture, and forced death marches. The rest of the
Armenian population fled into permanent exile. Thus an ancient
civilization was expunged from its homeland of 2,500 years.
- The Armenian Genocide was the most well-known human rights issue
of its time and was reported regularly in newspapers across the
United States and Europe. The Armenian Genocide is abundantly
documented by thousands of official records of the United States and
nations around the world including Turkey's wartime allies Germany,
Austria and Hungary, by Ottoman court-martial records, by eyewitness
accounts of missionaries and diplomats, by testimony of survivors,
and by decades of historical scholarship.
- The Armenian Genocide is corroborated by the international
scholarly, legal, and human rights community:
1) Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin, when he coined the term genocide in
1944, cited the Turkish extermination of the Armenians and the Nazi
extermination of the Jews as defining examples of what he meant by
genocide.
2) The killings of the Armenians is genocide as defined by the 1948
United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the
Crime of Genocide.
3) In 1997 the International Association of Genocide Scholars, an
organization of the world's foremost experts on genocide,
unanimously passed a formal resolution affirming the Armenian
Genocide
4) 126 leading scholars of the Holocaust inluding Elie Wiesel and
Yehuda Bauer placed a statement in the New York Times in June 2000
declaring the incontestable fact of the Armenian Genocide and urging
western democracies to acknowledge it.
5) The Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide (Jerusalem) and the
Institute for the Study of Genocide (NYC) have affirmed the
historical fact of the Armenian Genocide.
6) Leading texts in the international law of genocide such as William
A. Schabas's Genocide in International Law (Cambridge University
Press, 2000) cite the Armenian Genocide as a precursor to the
Holocaust and as a precedent for the law on crimes against humanity.
We would also note that scholars who advise your government and who
are affiliated in other ways with your state controlled institutions
are not impartial. Such so-called `scholars' work to serve the agenda
of historical and moral obfuscation when they advise you and the
Turkish Parliament on how to deny the Armenian Genocide. In preventing
a conference on the Armenian Genocide from taking place at Bogacizi
University in Istanbul on May 25, your government revealed its
aversion to academic and intellectual freedom - a fundamental
condition of democratic society.
We believe that it is clearly in the interest of the Turkish people
and their future as proud and equal participants in international,
democratic discourse to acknowledge the responsibility of a previous
government for the genocide of the Armenian people, just as the
German government and people have done in the case of the Holocaust.
Approved unanimously at the sixth biennial meeting of
The International Association of Genocide Scholars
June 7, 2005, Boca Raton, Florida
Contact:
Israel Charney, President, International Association of Genocide
Scholars; Editor in Chief, Encyclopedia of Genocide.
Gregory H. Stanton, Vice President, International Association of
Genocide Scholars; President, Genocide Watch; James Farmer Visiting
Professor of Human Rights, University of Mary Washington;
[email protected]
Friday, September 23, 2005
page 5
(A full page advertisement)
A LETTER FROM THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF GENOCIDE SCHOLARS
President Vice-President Secretary-Treasurer
Israel Charney Gregory H. Stanton Steven Jacobs
(Israel) (USA) (USA)
TO PRIME MINISTER RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN
TC Bashabanlik
Bakanlikir
Ankara, Turkey
June 16, 2005
Dear Prime Minister Erdogan,
We are writing you this open letter in response to your call for an
`impartial study by historians' concerning the fate of the Armenian
people in the Ottoman Empire during World War 1.
We represent the major body of scholars who study genocide in North
America and Europe. We are concerned that in calling for an impartial
study of the Armenian Genocide you may not be fully aware of the
extent of the scholarly and intellectual record in the Armenian
Genocide and how this event conforms to the definition of the United
Nations Genocide Convention. We want to underscore that it is not
just Armenians who are affirming the Armenian Genocide but it is the
overwhelming opinion of scholars who study genocide: hundreds of
independent scholars, who have no affiliations with governments, and
whose work spans many countries and nationalities and the course of
decades. The scholarly evidence reveals the following:
- On April 24, 1915, under cover of World War 1, the Young Turk
government of the Ottoman Empire began a systematic genocide of its
Armenian citizens, an unarmed Christian minority population. More
than a million Armenians were exterminated through direct killing,
starvation, torture, and forced death marches. The rest of the
Armenian population fled into permanent exile. Thus an ancient
civilization was expunged from its homeland of 2,500 years.
- The Armenian Genocide was the most well-known human rights issue
of its time and was reported regularly in newspapers across the
United States and Europe. The Armenian Genocide is abundantly
documented by thousands of official records of the United States and
nations around the world including Turkey's wartime allies Germany,
Austria and Hungary, by Ottoman court-martial records, by eyewitness
accounts of missionaries and diplomats, by testimony of survivors,
and by decades of historical scholarship.
- The Armenian Genocide is corroborated by the international
scholarly, legal, and human rights community:
1) Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin, when he coined the term genocide in
1944, cited the Turkish extermination of the Armenians and the Nazi
extermination of the Jews as defining examples of what he meant by
genocide.
2) The killings of the Armenians is genocide as defined by the 1948
United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the
Crime of Genocide.
3) In 1997 the International Association of Genocide Scholars, an
organization of the world's foremost experts on genocide,
unanimously passed a formal resolution affirming the Armenian
Genocide
4) 126 leading scholars of the Holocaust inluding Elie Wiesel and
Yehuda Bauer placed a statement in the New York Times in June 2000
declaring the incontestable fact of the Armenian Genocide and urging
western democracies to acknowledge it.
5) The Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide (Jerusalem) and the
Institute for the Study of Genocide (NYC) have affirmed the
historical fact of the Armenian Genocide.
6) Leading texts in the international law of genocide such as William
A. Schabas's Genocide in International Law (Cambridge University
Press, 2000) cite the Armenian Genocide as a precursor to the
Holocaust and as a precedent for the law on crimes against humanity.
We would also note that scholars who advise your government and who
are affiliated in other ways with your state controlled institutions
are not impartial. Such so-called `scholars' work to serve the agenda
of historical and moral obfuscation when they advise you and the
Turkish Parliament on how to deny the Armenian Genocide. In preventing
a conference on the Armenian Genocide from taking place at Bogacizi
University in Istanbul on May 25, your government revealed its
aversion to academic and intellectual freedom - a fundamental
condition of democratic society.
We believe that it is clearly in the interest of the Turkish people
and their future as proud and equal participants in international,
democratic discourse to acknowledge the responsibility of a previous
government for the genocide of the Armenian people, just as the
German government and people have done in the case of the Holocaust.
Approved unanimously at the sixth biennial meeting of
The International Association of Genocide Scholars
June 7, 2005, Boca Raton, Florida
Contact:
Israel Charney, President, International Association of Genocide
Scholars; Editor in Chief, Encyclopedia of Genocide.
Gregory H. Stanton, Vice President, International Association of
Genocide Scholars; President, Genocide Watch; James Farmer Visiting
Professor of Human Rights, University of Mary Washington;
[email protected]