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Inside Higher Ed
July 1

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

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