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The Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem, Israel protests the Turkish Government’s cancellation of an important scholarly conference on "the Armenian question" sponsored by a consortium of Turkish universities, which was to have been conducted in Turkish at one of the universities with an expected attendance of more than 700 registrants.
The program titles of many of the presentations made it very clear that many of the scholars addressing the conference intended to recognize the historical validity of what is known in history in the free world as "the Armenian Genocide." They were going to do so despite the fact that current Turkish law prescribes jail sentences of several years for statements either about the Armenian Genocide or calling for Turkey withdrawing from Cypress. These speakers are loyal Turks who love their country and want to see it advance and grow. Several of them have written about the importance for Turkey itself to achieve a free society, with guaranteed academic freedom, freedom of speech, and freedom of ideas; and thus also for Turkey to demonstrate its readiness to be accepted in the European Union.
Our Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem was perhaps the first in the world to hold an interdisciplinary, multiple ethnic conference on the genocides of all peoples when we convened the "First International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide" in 1982. Six lectures out of a total of 300 at our conference were scheduled to deal with the Armenian Genocide. As reported in many stories in the New York Times and other world press, Turkey pressured Israel to remove these six lectures, the government of Israel shamefully complied, and when we refused to do so the government attempted with considerable use of government powers to close our conference down entirely. Fortunately, even when Israel errs, it is overall a genuine democracy, and our insistence on holding the conference including the lectures on the Armenian Genocide could not be broken. The process of our resistance and success has been honored many times in articles and books by many writers ever since (for example, in the Yale Review).
The Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide calls on all governments of the world to strive for a high level of accuracy, objectivity and transparency about genocidal massacres and genocides, including by its own peoples for many of our peoples in our shared Earth-world have committed genocidal atrocities against others. In the long run, the goal of human life, and all government, should be to protect human lives more and more.
Prof. Israel Charny, Executive Director, Prof. Yair Auron, Associate Director, Marc Sherman, M.L.S., Assistant Director; Email: [email protected]
The program titles of many of the presentations made it very clear that many of the scholars addressing the conference intended to recognize the historical validity of what is known in history in the free world as "the Armenian Genocide." They were going to do so despite the fact that current Turkish law prescribes jail sentences of several years for statements either about the Armenian Genocide or calling for Turkey withdrawing from Cypress. These speakers are loyal Turks who love their country and want to see it advance and grow. Several of them have written about the importance for Turkey itself to achieve a free society, with guaranteed academic freedom, freedom of speech, and freedom of ideas; and thus also for Turkey to demonstrate its readiness to be accepted in the European Union.
Our Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem was perhaps the first in the world to hold an interdisciplinary, multiple ethnic conference on the genocides of all peoples when we convened the "First International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide" in 1982. Six lectures out of a total of 300 at our conference were scheduled to deal with the Armenian Genocide. As reported in many stories in the New York Times and other world press, Turkey pressured Israel to remove these six lectures, the government of Israel shamefully complied, and when we refused to do so the government attempted with considerable use of government powers to close our conference down entirely. Fortunately, even when Israel errs, it is overall a genuine democracy, and our insistence on holding the conference including the lectures on the Armenian Genocide could not be broken. The process of our resistance and success has been honored many times in articles and books by many writers ever since (for example, in the Yale Review).
The Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide calls on all governments of the world to strive for a high level of accuracy, objectivity and transparency about genocidal massacres and genocides, including by its own peoples for many of our peoples in our shared Earth-world have committed genocidal atrocities against others. In the long run, the goal of human life, and all government, should be to protect human lives more and more.
Prof. Israel Charny, Executive Director, Prof. Yair Auron, Associate Director, Marc Sherman, M.L.S., Assistant Director; Email: [email protected]