Donald George Quataert (September 10, 1941 – February 10, 2011) was a historian at
Binghamton University
The State University of New York at Binghamton (Binghamton University or SUNY Binghamton) is a public university, public research university with campuses in Binghamton, New York, Binghamton, Vestal, New York, Vestal, and Johnson City, New Yor ...
. He taught courses on Middle East/Ottoman history, with an interest in labor, social and economics, during the early and modern periods. He also provided training in the reading of Ottoman archival sources.
In 2006, he published an article reviewing
Donald Bloxham
Donald Bloxham FRHistS is a Professor of Modern History, specialising in genocide, war crimes and other mass atrocities studies. He is the editor of the ''Journal of Holocaust Education''.
He completed his undergraduate studies at Keele and post ...
's book ''
The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians''. In his review, Quataert stated that he used the word ''genocide'' because "to do otherwise... runs the risk of suggesting denial of the massive and systematic atrocities" and that "accumulating evidence is indicating that the killings were centrally planned by Ottoman government officials and systematically carried out by their underlings". The review article challenged what Quataert termed "the Ottomanist wall of silence"
on the issue.
Weeks later, Quataert resigned from the position of the chairman of the board of directors of the Institute of Turkish Studies, which he had held since 2001. Quataert stated that he was forced to resign due to the pressure of the Turkish ambassador
Nabi Şensoy
Nabi Sensoy (25 May 1945, Istanbul – 7 February 2018, İzmir, Turkey) was the ambassador of Turkey to the United States. He held that office beginning in January 2006. He was recalled to Turkey in October 2007 after the United States House Comm ...
, and a number of other board members resigned shortly thereafter.
Mervat Hatem, the director of
Middle East Studies Association
Middle East Studies Association (often referred to as MESA) is a learned society, and according to its website, "a non-profit association that fosters the study of the Middle East, promotes high standards of scholarship and teaching, and encoura ...
, sent a letter to the Prime Minister of Turkey
Erdogan, criticizing the threats of Turkish officials to stop funding the Institute if Quataert did not retract his statements. Hatem stated that such threats went against
academic freedom
Academic freedom is a moral and legal concept expressing the conviction that the freedom of inquiry by faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy as well as the principles of academia, and that scholars should have freedom to teac ...
and that "the resignations are in contradiction with those many requests to leave the discussion and the assessment of the Armenian Genocide to the academia that Turkey has been making."
[''Susan Kinzie''. Board Members Resign to Protest Chair's Ousting. The Washington Post. 5 July 2008]
Books
* ''The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922'', Cambridge University Press, 2000.
* ''Ottoman Manufacturing in the Age of the Industrial Revolution'', Cambridge University Press, 2002.
* ''Miners and the State in the Ottoman Empire: The Zonguldak Coalfield, 1822-1920'', Berghahn Books, 2006.
See also
*
Armenian genocide denial
Armenian genocide denial is the claim that the Ottoman Empire and its ruling party, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), did not commit genocide against its Armenian citizens during World War I—a crime documented in a large body of ...
References
1941 births
2011 deaths
Scholars of Ottoman history
Binghamton University faculty
American people of Dutch descent
{{US-historian-stub