Binghamton University professor resigns over dispute on Armenian Genocide

PanARMENIAN.Net - The issue that has roiled U.S.-Turkish relations in recent months "how to characterize the mass killings of Armenians in 1915" has set off a dispute over politics and academic freedom at an institute housed at Georgetown University. Several board members of the Institute of Turkish Studies have resigned this summer, protesting the ouster of a board chairman who wrote that scholars should research, rather than avoid, what he characterized as Armenian Genocide, The Washington Post reports.



"Within weeks of writing about the matter in late 2006, Binghamton University professor Donald Quataert resigned from the board of Governors, saying the Turkish ambassador to the United States told him he had angered some political leaders in Ankara and that they had threatened to revoke the institute's funding.



After a prominent association of Middle Eastern scholars learned about it, they wrote a letter in May to the institute, the Turkish prime minister and other leaders asking that Quataert be reinstated and money for the institute be put in an irrevocable trust to avoid political influence.



The ambassador of the Republic of Turkey, H.E. Nabi Sensoy, denied that he had any role in Quataert's resignation. In a written statement, he said that claims that he urged Quataert to leave are unfounded and misleading.



The dispute shows the tensions between money and scholarship, and the impact language can have on historical understanding.



Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed when the Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War I. Armenians and Turks bitterly disagree over whether it was a campaign of genocide, or a civil war in which many Turks were also killed," the edition says.



The Turkish studies institute, founded in 1983, is independent from Georgetown University, but Executive Director David Cuthell teaches a course there in exchange for space on campus.



Julie Green Bataille, a university spokeswoman, wrote in an e-mail, "We will review this matter consistent with the importance of academic freedom and the fact that the institute is independently funded and governed." The institute's funding, a $3 million grant, is entirely from Turkey.