NTV MSNBC, Turkey
Sept 23 2005

Deans to challenge court ruling on conference

The deans said that the ban threatened the autonomy of Turkey’s
universities and harmed scientific freedoms.

Güncelleme: 11:23 TSI 23 Eylül 2005 CumaISTANBUL – The deans of two
of Turkey’s leading universities said they would challenge a court
ruling Thursday banning a conference that was to discuss allegations
that the Ottoman Empire massacred large numbers of its Armenian
community.

Speaking after a meeting of University deans in Istanbul Thursday
evening Bosphorus University Dean Professor Dr Ayse Soysal said that
although they would abide by the court’s ruling forbidding the
conference to take place, they would pursue their legal right to
protect scientific freedoms and the autonomy of the country’s
universities.

The Dean of Sabanci University, Professor Tosun Terzioglu, warned
that Turkey was loosing prestige due to such decisions and also
stressed the threat to the autonomy at universities.

On Thursday, an Istanbul court banned the staging of the conference,
entitled `Ottoman Armenians of an Empire in Decline’ on the grounds
that permission had not been granted for it to be held.

The conference, which was to have started on Friday at Istanbul’s
Bosphorus University, had already been postponed from May due to
public and official pressure.

Delegates at the conference were to discuss claims that the Ottoman
Empire had committed acts of genocide against its Armenian citizens
during the years of the First World War. Turkey denies that there was
any genocide but concedes that as many as 300,000 Ottoman Armenians
died during the war years, a result of civil unrest, famine and
disease.