TURKISH SCHOLARS PROTEST POSTPONEMENT OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE CONFERENCE
YEREVAN, JUNE 2. ARMINFO. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
will meet with President Bush on June 8 in Washington to again brand
his country as a mature and democratic nation ready for EU membership,
reports the Armenian Assembly of America.
In the last week, however, Turkey has again shown that its actions
run contrary to the rosy image it tries to portray. The forced
postponement of an unprecedented Armenian Genocide conference at
Bosphrous University had led hundreds of Turkish academics to protest
the government’s latest assault on free speech.
Below are the latest news release by the International Association of
Genocide Scholars and a letter from a representative of the Middle
East Studies Association to Prime Minister Erdogan condemning the
Turkish government’s interference with academic freedom.
The Association particularly says: We who serve as the Executive
Committee of the International Association of Genocide Scholars
protest and condemn the cancellation of the historians conference on
the Armenian question in Turkey by the Turkish government as a major
violation of basic standards of academic freedom in the free world.
At long last, Turkish academics and intellectuals, sponsored by
three honorable universities, were scheduled to conduct a conference
in which the historical reality of the Armenian genocide was to be
examined by many of the participating lecturers.
The government of Turkey is understandably struggling to win its
possible acceptance as a member of the European Union, and it is in
this climate that many Turkish intellectuals have moved courageously
to address the Armenian genocide, a truth which is still punishable
by Turkish law.
For the Turkish government to cancel the conference is a shameful
step and a setback to Turkey joining the free world in its growing
standards of historical truth and responsibility.
The Executive Committee of the International Association of Genocide
Scholars calls on the Republic of Turkey to allow full and free debate
and academic scholarship on the fate of the Armenian people in Ottoman
Turkey in 1915-1923.