More on the firing of Quataert

[Joseph]

Commentary

Turkish Ambassador Fires Scholar
For Telling the Truth on Genocide

By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier
Back in 1985, Prof. Donald Quataert, Associate Professor of History at the
University of Houston, and 68 of his pro-Turkish colleagues signed a joint
statement questioning the veracity of the Armenian Genocide and asking the U.S.Congress not to approve a commemorative resolution on this crime against humanity. That denialist statement, paid for by the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, was published as a half-page ad in the May 19, 1985 editions of the Washington Post and the New York Times.
Incidentally, Prof. Quataert, along with scores of other scholars, had
received funding from the Institute of Turkish Studies (ITS) and other Turkish sources.

The ITS was founded in 1982 by the Turkish government in Washington, D.C., with a $3 million grant. When I pointed out in my Oct. 24, 1985 column that many of the signatories of that Turkish ad had received funds from ITS, Heath Lowry, then Executive Director of ITS, threatened to file a libel lawsuit against me, unless I retracted my column and published his lengthy letter of complaint. I rejected his request and my lawyer threatened to counter-sue the ITS, prompting Lowry to drop his lawsuit. I had been told that Lowry had a direct hand in drafting the 1985 denialist statement as well as collecting the signatures of the 69 scholars. Twelve of those 69 scholars currently serve on the ITS board, including Lowry and Justin McCarthy, another notorious denialist.

Last week, an unexpected revelation was made concerning Prof. Quataert who had served as Chairman of the ITS Board of Governors from 2001 until the end of 2006. Prof. Mervat Hatem, President of the Middle East Studies Association, sent a letter to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, expressing her outrage at the dismissal of Dr. Quataert from the ITS Chairmanship. The MESA letter revealed that Prof. Quataert was forced to resign "after he refused to accede to the request of ITS's honorary chairman, [Turkey's] Ambassador [in Washington] Nebi Sensoy, that he issue a retraction of a scholarly book review he wrote" about the Armenian Genocide.

The letter also indicated that "unnamed high officials in Ankara" had "threatened to revoke the funding of ITS if he [Quataert] did not publicly retract statements made in his reviewor separate himself from the Chairmanship of the ITS."

Prof. Hatem expressed her serious concern that "the reputation and integrity
of the ITS, as a non-political institution funding scholarly projects that
meet stringent academic criteria, is blackened when there is government
interference in and blatant disregard for the principle of academic freedom." She reminded Prime Minister Erdogan that the dismissal of "Dr. Quataert sharply contrasts with your government's recent call to leave the debate regarding the events of 1915 to the independent study and judgment of scholars." Prof. Hatem concluded her letter by asking the Turkish authorities to reinstate Prof. Quataert as chairman and place ITS funds in "an irrevocable trust immune from political interference and infringement of academic freedom." Copies of the MESA letter were sent to Amb. Sensoy, the ITS Board and the President of Georgetown University where the Turkish Institute is housed. Prof. Quataert's difficulties started when in Fall 2006 the Journal of Interdisciplinary History published his review of Donald Bloxham's book, "The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians."

In that review, Prof. Quataert boldly criticized Turkish scholars' work on the Armenian Genocide by stating that "they were not writing critical history but polemics. Many of their works were directly sponsored and
published by the Turkish government"

Dr. Quataert noted that the "wall of silence" of Turkish scholars on the
Armenian Genocide was "crumbling." Despite his earlier objection to the word genocide, he explained why he had decided to use that term for the first time in his book review. While acknowledging that his reference to the Armenian Genocide "may provoke anger among some of my Ottomanist colleagues," he said that not doing so "runs the risk of suggesting denial of the massive and systematic atrocities that the Ottoman state and some of its military and general populace committed against the Armenians." Prof. Quataert further observed: "Indeed, accumulating evidence is indicating that the killings were centrally planned by Ottoman government officials and systematically carried out by their underlings." He concluded the book review by admitting that "what happened to the Armenians readily satisfies the U.N. definition of genocide."

Prof. Fatma Muge Gocek, an Associate Member of ITS, told the Armenian
Reporter last week that after Prof. Quataert's dismissal two ITS board members had resigned and two more, in addition to herself, were considering doing so. A knowledgeable source disclosed to this writer that the two ITS board members who have resigned are: Prof. Resat Kasaba, Chair of the International Studies Program at the University of Washington-Seattle and Marcie Patton, Associate Professor of Political Science at Fairfield University.

Dr. Gocek, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, sent a letter to the ITS last week, expressing her surprise that she was still on its Board. She said that no one from ITS had contacted her in more than five years. She described Prof. Quataert's dismissal "as an infringement on his academic freedom" and the Turkish government's funding of ITS "with strings attached" as "unethical."

Prof. Quataert's transformation from a denialist to a believer in the
Armenian Genocide is based on the growing body of scholarship in recent years both within and outside Turkey. A comparison of the 2000 and 2005 editions of his book, "The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922," illustrates the gradual evolution of his position on the Armenian Genocide. In a sharp departure from the cautious language used in his first edition, Dr. Quataert in the 2005 edition of his book points out the organized nature of the killings: "The patterns of killings were chillingly similar in the various areas, powerfully suggesting the presence of a coordinated program." He further states: "On the evidence presented, it seems plausible that high-ranking officials of the Ottoman state, utilizing the Special Organization, directed a concerted, centrally orchestrated program that murdered massive numbers of Ottoman Armenians."

Finally, Dr. Quataert comes to the conclusion in his 2006 book review that what had happened to the Armenians in 1915 was indeed a Genocide.
The Turkish government now has a new scandal on its hands, thanks to the
reckless behavior of its Ambassador in Washington, who clearly violated the
academic freedom of a prominent American scholar. The Ambassador's actions should embarrass the Turkish government in front of not only the public at large but also the academic community worldwide. This scandal may also cause the Internal Revenue Service to look into possible violations of U.S. laws by ITS in view of the improper control of an American non-profit organization by a foreign government. Georgetown University officials may also review their association with ITS, given the latter's blatant violation of academic freedom.

Once again, the Turkish government has been caught trying to export its gag
rule on the Armenian Genocide beyond its borders to Washington, D.C. Indeed, as the MESA President pointed out in her letter, Prof. Quataert's dismissal exposes the Turkish government's lack of sincerity in suggesting that scholars rather than politicians should deal with the Armenian Genocide issue.

[Joseph]

Letter from Roger Smith to MESA

Dear All,

You have all heard by now of the forced resignation of Prof. Donald Quataert as chair of the Institute for Turkish Studies, now based at Georgetown University, for his refusal to retract his comments in his review of Donald Bloxham's book on the Armenian Genocide. MESA is pursuing various avenues of criticism and action, but I want to suggest some courses of action that can be even more effective. First, ITS has a tax exempt status under US law: the institute falls within section 501 ©3 of the Internal Revenue Filing Status:

"Charitable organization; educational organization; literary organization; organization to prevent cruelty to children; organization for public safety testing; religious organization; or scientific organization."
Given its tax filing status, the Institute for Turkish Studies is exempt from taxation. Contributions to the Institute are tax deductible.

But given this latest event, in which the Turkish ambassador and the Turkish government have forced the resignation of the chair of the Institute because he refused to deny the reality of the Armenian Genocide, there are strong grounds for the IRS to revoke the tax status of the Institute. There are other grounds, of long standing: Robert Lifton, Eric Markusen, and I exposed the then executive director of ITS, Heath Lowry, for his collaboration with the Turkish ambassador to the U.S. to intimidate academics in the U.S. from writing about the Armenian Genocide as historical reality. Lowry wrote the memos and draft letters for the ambassador: for examples of this see, "Professional Responsibility and the Denial of the Armenian Genocide," HOLOCAUST AND GENOCIDE STUDIES, Spring 1995; the actual documents are presented with analysis by Smith, Markusen, Lifton. The IRS status of the Institute should have been challenged then.

But now we have the Turkish ambassador being directly involved in forcing the resignation of the ITS chair for failure to follow the State's position on the genocide, which, is political, not as it pretends, historical. This suggests that the Institute, or some of those closely associated with it, are undeclared, unregistered, lobbyists for a foreign government. This is a violation of Federal criminal law. Such persons could be prosecuted, but it is also further evidence that the tax status of ITS should be revoked.

Ann Lousin and others should look into these issues and how to proceed. But those of us who are concerned about the issues of academic freedom, foreign meddling in scholarship in the U.S. (and elsewhere), and the broad issue of denial of genocide, should also write to the president of Georgetown University, which houses ITS, and demand that the Institute should no longer be associated with the University. I don't mean to say that the Institute has not done some good and worthy things, but it is contaminated with politics and, appears to lack the independence that we associate with academic life.

How all of this is to be done is important. Could the good lawyers look into the case for ending the tax status of ITS; others organize to send a strong message to the President and governing board of Georgetown University; and get the publicity out there in the Chronicle of Higher Education, New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times? A concerted effort, rather than a message here and there, is what is required.

Thanks to MESA for its efforts; maybe some of those involved there can join in support of the suggestions I have put forward. For a government to say that it will withhold funds from its portion of the endowment for ITS unless ITS adheres to the Turkish government's position is outrageous: it is also grounds for denying the tax free status of ITS.

Please work together, see what you can do, get in touch with me if you wish. I'm wiling to help in any way that I can.


Respectfully submitted,

Roger W. Smith

[Joseph]

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2008/06/06/institute-of-turkish-studies-chair-forced-out-for-rebuking-genocide-deniers/

Institute of Turkish Studies Chair Forced Out For Rebuking Genocide Deniers
Posted in Academic Racism, Armenian Genocide by David Holthouse on June 6, 2008


The new issue of the Intelligence Report exposes a network of U.S. scholars, many of them paid by the Turkish government, who promote denial of the Armenian genocide.

One of the damning pieces of evidence examined in the Report is a letter denying the Armenian genocide that was signed in 1985 by 69 American scholars and published in full-page advertisements in major newspapers paid for by the Turkish government. All 69 of the signers, including Donald Quataert, then an associate professor of history at the University of Houston, had received funding that year from the government of Turkey, mostly from the Institute of Turkish Studies (ITS), a nonprofit organization housed at Georgetown University that was founded in 1982 with a $3 million grant from Turkey to promote a pro-Turkey agenda, including denial of the Armenian genocide.

Quataert later served as chairman of the ITS board of governors from 2001 until Dec. 13, 2006. Although the circumstances of his leaving that post were unclear at the time, last week it was revealed that he was forced to resign by Turkish Ambassador Nabi Sensoy after he refused to retract a scholarly book review in which Quataert said “what happened to the Armenians readily satisfies the U.N. definition of genocide.”

In his review of Donald Bloxham’s book, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians, which was published in the Fall 2006 issue of the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Quataert further wrote that “[a]lthough it may provoke anger among some of my Ottomanist colleagues,” avoiding the term genocide “runs the risk of suggesting denial of the massive and systematic atrocities that the Ottoman state and some of its military and general populace committed against the Armenians.”

As Harut Sassounian described it June 3 on The Huffington Post, “Prof. Quataert boldly criticized Turkish scholars’ work on the Armenian Genocide by stating that ‘they were not writing critical history but polemics. … Many of their works were directly sponsored and published by the Turkish government.’”

Quataert’s forced resignation finally came to light last week in a scathing open letter to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan from Mervat Hatem, president of the Middle East Studies Association, the preeminent organization promoting scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa.

“We are enormously concerned that unnamed high officials in Ankara felt it was inappropriate for Professor Quataert to continue as chairman of the board of governors and threatened to revoke the funding for the ITS if he did not publicly retract statements made in his review or separate himself from the Chairmanship of the ITS,” Hatem wrote in the letter dated May 27.

Hatem further pointed out to Prime Minister Erdogan that the circumstances of Quataert’s forced resignation “sharply contrasts with your government’s recent call to leave the debate regarding the events of 1915 to the independent judgment and study of scholars.”

[Joseph]

More related to Quataert; Turkish Gov't caught red-handed

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/07/01/turkey

Is Turkey Muzzling U.S. Scholars?


Scholars of the Armenian genocide have long accused Turkey of using its financial support to promote the idea that a genocide didn’t take place or that the jury is still out — views that have little credibility among historians of genocide.


An incident in 2006, only recently being talked about publicly, has some scholars concerned that Turkey and its supporters may be interfering in American scholarship. The chair of the board of the Institute of Turkish Studies, which is based at Georgetown University, resigned at the end of 2006, and he says he was given a choice by Turkish officials of either quitting or seeing the funding for the institute go away.

At least one scholarly group that has investigated the matter recently issued a report backing the ousted chair, and at least one other board member has resigned while another has called for more discussion of the accusations. The executive director of the institute, while flatly saying that the ousted chair is wrong, confirmed that he was asked by Turkish Embassy officials to have the scholar talk with the Turkish ambassador to the United States about an article where he used the word “genocide” in reference to what happened to the Armenians. It was after that talk that the chair — Donald Quataert — quit.

The fact that Quataert is at the center of the controversy is significant. A historian at the State University of New York at Binghamton, Quataert is an expert on the Ottoman Empire. In the 1980s, when the scholarly consensus about the Armenian genocide was not as broad as it is today, he signed a statement calling for more research on whether a genocide took place. Quataert says today he never thought the statement would be used as it was by Turkish supporters to question claims of a genocide, but he notes that as a result of his having signed at the time, he was viewed favorably by the Turkish government and with considerable skepticism by Armenians. And it is Quataert who used the word “genocide” in a journal and who says he was given a choice by the Turkish ambassador, Nabi Sensoy, of quitting as the institute’s chair or seeing its financing disappear.

The Institute of Turkish Studies, founded with funds from Turkey, supports research, publications and language training at many American colleges and universities. Most of the work is not controversial. This year the institute is providing library grants to Kennesaw State University and the University of Mississippi, supporting doctoral students’ work at New York University ("The Specter of Pan-Islamism: Pilgrims, Sufis and Revolutionaries and the Construction of Ottoman-Central Asian Relations, 1865-1914″) and the University of Texas at Austin ("Gender, Education, and Modernization: Women Schoolteachers in the Late Ottoman Empire, 1871-1922″); undergraduate exchange programs at the University of Nevada at Reno and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and seed money to create new faculty positions at Boston University and the University of Minnesota.

The institute is led by a board, primarily made up of scholars of Turkey, only a few of whom have focused on issues related to what happened to the Armenians. Even those who question the way Turkey has responded to the genocide issue say that much of the work supported by the institute is important and meets high standards.

Quataert led institute’s board from 2001 until his controversial departure at the end of 2006.

The dispute started when he published a book review in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History in the fall of 2006. The review, which included both praise and criticism, was of Donald Bloxham’s The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford University Press). In the review, Quataert talks about how when he entered graduate studies in Ottoman history in the late 1960s, “there was an elephant in the room of Ottoman studies — the slaughter of the Ottoman Armenians in 1915.” He writes that “a heavy aura of self-censorship hung over Ottoman history writing,” excluding not only work on Armenians, but also on religious identity, the Kurds and labor issues. Only in recent years, he continues, has the “Ottomanist wall of silence” started to crumble.

Quataert notes concerns about the use of the word “genocide,” namely that discussions of its use or non-use can “degenerate into semantics and deflect scholars from the real task at hand, to understand better the nature of the 1915 events.” But despite those concerns, he writes that there is no question today that what took place meets United Nations and other definitions of genocide, and that failure to acknowledge as much is wrong.

Of using the term, he writes: “Although it may provoke anger among some of my Ottomanist colleagues, to do otherwise in this essay runs the risk of suggesting denial of the massive and systematic atrocities that the Ottoman state and some of its military and general populace committed against the Armenians.”

That sort of analysis is not exceptional for historians writing about the period. Most leading scholars of genocide have said that it is beyond question that what took place was a genocide. In 2005, for example, the International Association of Genocide Scholars issued a letter that said in part: “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.”

While calling the Armenian genocide a genocide isn’t controversial among historians, it is unusual for the board of the Institute of Turkish Studies. Its board hasn’t been known for taking stands on the issue and one of its members is Justin McCarthy, a professor at the University of Louisville who describes what happened not as genocide, but a period of civil war in which many people died, more of them Muslims than Armenians.

In an interview, Quataert said that after his review was published, he was told by David C. Cuthell, director of the institute, that people in Turkey were upset about his use of the word genocide and that he should call the Turkish ambassador. “He told me the embassy was unhappy and was getting a lot of pressure and maybe I should speak to the ambassador.”

Quataert said that he then called Ambassador Sensoy and had a “very cordial and polite” discussion, and that the ambassador “made it clear that if I did not separate myself as chairman of the board that funding for the institute would be withdrawn by the Turkish government and the institute would be destroyed.”

After thinking about it for a few days, Quataert said he decided to resign. “It was clear to me that there was a genuine danger that the funding would be withdrawn by these powerful elements in Ankara and all the good I have seen would vanish, and money that young scholars need to learn language and travel would dry up,” he said. “I still feel that the institute over the decades has done a lot of good work. It was not for Turkish propaganda. That’s why I agreed to be the chairman of the board.”

Based on his experience, Quataert said that it is “a very difficult question” to consider whether the institute at this point has credibility as a source of financing for research and education. “By forcing my resignation, the Turkish government has made very clear that there are bounds beyond which people cannot go,” he said.

Others share those concerns.

Birol Yesilada, a professor of political science and international relations at Portland State University, where he focuses on contemporary Turkish studies, said he quit the institute’s board for two reasons: health (he is recovering from a heart attack) and concern over what happened to Quataert. Yesilada said he didn’t know all the facts, and has heard differing accounts of what happened, but that “it does not look good.” Further, he said he was troubled by “the silence” of the institute director and many board members about Quataert’s departure.

One board member who sent a series of e-mail messages to other board members was Fatma Müge Göçek, a sociologist at the University of Michigan. She wrote that Quataert was within his rights as a scholar to write the review as he did.

“[T]he only activities that ITS has any control or say over in relation to Donald’s activities are only limited to his service as the board chairman, not as a research scholar,” she wrote. “If ITS in any way intervenes in Donald’s research activities, however, that would indeed be a violation of his academic freedom because Donald’s research does not fall within the purview of ITS’s domain of activities. In addition, of course, I should not have to point out that the funding agencies that provide money to ITS should not do so with strings attached with respect to the research the scholars do. That too is considered unethical.

The Academic Freedom Committee of the Middle East Studies Association also recently reviewed the case, and weighed in with a letter to Turkish officials expressing anger over “the Turkish government’s interference in the academic freedom of one of our most respected academic colleagues.”

The letter goes on to say that the association is “enormously concerned” that Quataert was pressured to either “publicly retract” parts of his review or to leave the chairmanship of the institute. “The reputation and integrity of the ITS as a non-political institution funding scholarly projects that meet stringent academic criteria is blackened when there is government interference in an blatant disregard for the principle of academic freedom.”

The press office of the Turkish embassy did not respond to phone or e-mail messages seeking comment. Cuthell, the director of the institute, said he did not think the embassy would want to comment because the embassy “is livid and rightly so. The ambassador’s reputation has been impugned.”

Cuthell said that there is a “lack of logical consistency” in what Quataert says that shows it to be incorrect. Cuthell said that if Quataert really cared about the institute, he would not have described events as he did to the Middle East Studies Association or for this article. “He resigns to protect the institute and then criticizes the institute,” said Cuthell.

Suggestions that the institute does not uphold academic freedom are false, Cuthell said. “Has the Turkish government ever once ever tried to change any of our grants or activities? I can tell you flat out — they have not. They have never interfered in our grants or programs.”

Asked if the institute has ever supported any research that calls what happened to the Armenians genocide, Cuthell said he couldn’t be sure, but “I doubt it.”

But he said that wasn’t because of censorship or pressure but because “the jury is out” on whether genocide took place. “There are a lot of people who are not qualified to do the work because they can’t read the archival material,” he said. “There is no archival material the Armenians can produce. There is no smoking gun,” he said. (In fact, many historians say that one of the notable developments of recent years has been the emergence of such smoking guns as some scholars have been able to use Ottoman archives to document the role of various leaders in orchestrating the mass killings of Armenians. Notable among these works is A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, by Taner Akcam of the University of Minnesota, and based largely on Ottoman documents.)

While Cuthell repeatedly said that Quataert and the Middle East Studies Association were all wrong about what had happened, he also indirectly confirmed some of what they have said. For example, Cuthell said that he did in fact tell Quataert that the ambassador wanted to talk to him about his article. Cuthell also confirmed that funding for the institute comes almost entirely from an endowment created by the Turkish government. Cuthell said that there was no threat that the funds could be taken away, so there was no way that Quataert could have feared for the center’s survival. But Cuthell also confirmed that the endowment had been moved from the United States to Turkey — a move he said had led to growth in the funds.

None of this, he said, was proof that Quataert was pressured to leave. “Obviously there was concern” about the article Quataert wrote, Cuthell said. But all this was about was that “these are diplomats who wanted to have a conversation with Don.”

— Scott Jaschik

[Joseph]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/04/AR2008070402408.html

INSTITUTE OF TURKISH STUDIES
Board Members Resign to Protest Chair's Ousting
Leader in Georgetown-Based Agency Encouraged Scholars to Research Mass Killing of Armenians

By Susan Kinzie
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 5, 2008; Page B05


The issue that has roiled U.S.-Turkish relations in recent months -- how to characterize the mass killing 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 an Armenian genocide.

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.

In the fall, when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) championed a bill that would characterize the events of 1915 to 1917 as genocide, the Bush administration fought it and several former defense secretaries warned that Turkish leaders would limit U.S. access to a military base needed for the war in Iraq.

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.

A few years ago, Quataert said, members of the board checked on what they thought was an irrevocable blind trust "and to our surprise it turned out to be a gift that could be revoked by the Turkish government."

Quataert, a professor of history, said the institute has funded good scholarship without political influence. The selection of which studies to support is done by a committee of academics on the associate board, he said, and approved by the board, which includes business and political leaders. Never once, he said, did he think a grant application was judged on anything other than its academic merits.

He also noted that during his time there, no one applied for grants that would have been controversial in Turkey. Asked if any of the research characterized the events as genocide, Cuthell said, "My gut is no. It's that third rail."

Roger Smith, professor emeritus of government at the College of William and Mary, questioned whether the nonprofit institute deserves its tax-exempt status if there is political influence -- and whether it is an undeclared lobbying arm for the Turkish government.

Cuthell said none of the institute's critics ever bothered to check the truth of Quataert's account with the institute: It does not lobby, Cuthell said, and "the allegations of academic freedom simply don't hold up."

The controversy began quietly in late 2006 with a review of historian Donald Bloxham's book, "The Great Game of Genocide." Quataert wrote that the slaughter of Armenians has been the elephant in the room of Ottoman studies. Despite his belief that the term "genocide" had become a distraction, he said the events met the United Nations definition of the word.



He sent a letter of resignation to members of the institute in December 2006, and one board member resigned.

But in the fall, around the same time that Congress was debating the Armenian question, Quataert was asked to speak at a conference about what had happened at the institute. He told members of the Middle Eastern Studies Association that the ambassador told him he must issue a retraction of his book review or step down -- or put funding for the institute in jeopardy.

His colleagues were shocked, said Laurie Brand, director of the school of international relations at the University of Southern California.

Ambassador Sensoy, who is honorary chairman of the institute's board, said in a statement this week, "Neither the Turkish Government nor I have ever placed any pressure upon the ITS, for such interference would have violated the principle of the academic freedom, which we uphold the most. The Turkish Government and I will be the first to defend ITS from any such pressure."

Since the May 27 letter from the scholars association was sent, several associate and full members of the board have left. Marcie Patton, Resat Kasaba and Kemal Silay resigned; Fatma Muge Gocek said she would resign, and Birol Yesilada said his primary reason for stepping down at this time is his health, but that he is concerned about the conflicting accounts of what had happened. "It's a very difficult line that scholars walk," Patton said, "especially post-9/11, especially because of the Iraq war."

[Joseph]

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=960

Genocide Denial
Scholar Claims Pressure to Deny Genocide
Intelligence Report
Fall 2008




"A perfect storm of silly allegations," is how Institute of Turkish Studies Executive Director David Cuthell describes the barrage of media coverage ITS received early this summer regarding concerns that ITS, a nonprofit organization funded by the government of Turkey, is promoting denial of the Armenian genocide.


Recep Tayyip Erdogan
It began June 3 with the release of the Summer 2008 issue of the Intelligence Report, which exposed a network of U.S. scholars and lobbyists who deny the Armenian genocide and also happen to receive money from the Turkish government, either in the form of research grants, travel reimbursements or speaker's fees. The money was often channeled through ITS; in the case of the lobbyists, it came in direct payments from Turkey.

That same day, the Huffington Post publicized an open letter to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan from the president of the Middle East Studies Association. The letter protested the alleged forced resignation of former ITS board of governors chairman Donald Quataert, who said he resigned in late 2006 under pressure from Turkish Ambassador Nabi Sensoy after refusing to retract his affirmation in a scholarly book review that "what happened to the Armenians readily satisfies the U.N. definition of genocide."

Sensoy denied pressuring Quataert to resign or threatening to withhold ITS funding if Quataert didn't retract his affirmation of the Armenian genocide, as the former board chair alleged. Nevertheless, the media storm intensified further in early July when The Washington Post reported that four ITS board members had resigned in protest after learning of Quataert's situation.

Quataert told the Post that a few years ago, he and other board members were surprised to learn upon looking into the source of the institute's funding that what they had been led to believe was an irrevocable blind trust was in fact "a gift that could be revoked by the Turkish government."

Defending the integrity of the ITS, Cuthell told the Intelligence Report that while the ITS funding is currently held in the form of a sovereign bond by the government of Turkey, "one of my goals is to move it [the funding] back into the U.S. so that no one is under any false impressions as to the nature of our funding."

"I can categorically state that the Turkish government has never interfered with any of our funding decisions," Cuthell said. "We've been slimed."