International Association of Genocide Scholars

The IAGS unites over 500 mostly Western scholars and has been openly urging more nations to recognize the Armenian genocide since 2007. “The historical record on the Armenian Genocide is unambiguous and documented by overwhelming evidence,” it said in a 2007 letter to members of the U.S. Congress.

A Letter from The International Association of Genocide Scholars

President	First Vice-President	Second Vice-President	Secretary-Treasurer
Israel Charny (Israel)	Gregory H. Stanton (USA)	Linda Melvern (UK)	Steven Jacobs (USA)

To Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

TC Easbakanlik

Bakanlikir

Ankara, Turkey

FAX: 90 312 417 0476

June 13, 2005

Dear Prime Minister Erdogan,

We are writing you this open letter in response to your call for an "impartial study by historians" concerning the fate of the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

We represent the major body of scholars who study genocide in North America and Europe. We are concerned that in calling for an impartial study of the Armenian Genocide you may not be fully aware of the extent of the scholarly and intellectual record on the Armenian Genocide and how this event conforms to the definition of the United Nations Genocide Convention. 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. The scholarly evidence reveals the following:

On April 24, 1915, under cover of World War I, the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire began a systematic genocide of its Armenian citizens — an unarmed Christian minority population. More than a million Armenians were exterminated through direct killing, starvation, torture, and forced death marches. The rest of the Armenian population fled into permanent exile. Thus an ancient civilization was expunged from its homeland of 2,500 years.

The Armenian Genocide was the most well-known human rights issue of its time and was reported regularly in newspapers across the United States and Europe. The Armenian Genocide is abundantly documented by thousands of official records of the United States and nations around the world including Turkey’s wartime allies Germany, Austria and Hungary, by Ottoman court-martial records, by eyewitness accounts of missionaries and diplomats, by the testimony of survivors, and by decades of historical scholarship.

The Armenian Genocide is corroborated by the international scholarly, legal, and human rights community:

1. Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin, when he coined the term genocide in 1944, cited the Turkish extermination of the Armenians and the Nazi extermination of the Jews as defining examples of what he meant by genocide.
2. The killings of the Armenians is genocide as defined by the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
3. In 1997 the International Association of Genocide Scholars, an organization of the world’s foremost experts on genocide, unanimously passed a formal resolution affirming the Armenian Genocide.
4. 126 leading scholars of the Holocaust including Elie Wiesel and Yehuda Bauer placed a statement in the New York Times in June 2000 declaring the "incontestable fact of the Armenian Genocide" and urging western democracies to acknowledge it.
5. The Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide (Jerusalem), and the Institute for the Study of Genocide (NYC) have affirmed the historical fact of the Armenian Genocide.
6. Leading texts in the international law of genocide such as William A. Schabas's Genocide in International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2000) cite the Armenian Genocide as a precursor to the Holocaust and as a precedent for the law on crimes against humanity.

We note that there may be differing interpretations of genocide—how and why the Armenian Genocide happened, but to deny its factual and moral reality as genocide is not to engage in scholarship but in propaganda and efforts to absolve the perpetrator, blame the victims, and erase the ethical meaning of this history.

We would also note that scholars who advise your government and who are affiliated in other ways with your state-controlled institutions are not impartial. Such so-called "scholars" work to serve the agenda of historical and moral obfuscation when they advise you and the Turkish Parliament on how to deny the Armenian Genocide. In preventing a conference on the Armenian Genocide from taking place at Bogacizi University in Istanbul on May 25, your government revealed its aversion to academic and intellectual freedom—a fundamental condition of democratic society.

We believe that it is clearly in the interest of the Turkish people and their future as a proud and equal participants in international, democratic discourse to acknowledge the responsibility of a previous government for the genocide of the Armenian people, just as the German government and people have done in the case of the Holocaust.

Approved Unanimously at the Sixth biennial meeting of

THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF GENOCIDE SCHOLARS (IAGS)

June 7, 2005, Boca Raton, Florida

Contacts: Israel Charny, IAGS President; Executive Director, Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, Jerusalem, Editor-in-Chief, Encyclopedia of Genocide, 972-2-672-0424; [1]

Gregory H. Stanton, IAGS Vice President; President, Genocide Watch [2], James Farmer, Visiting Professor of Human Rights, University of Mary Washington; 703-448-0222; [3]

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20070104190149/http://www.genocidewatch.org/TurkishPMIAGSOpenLetterreArmenia6-13-05.htm

International Genocide Scholars Meet In Armenia

08.07.2015

The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) began a conference of its members in Yerevan on Wednesday, underscoring its strong support for greater international recognition ofthe 1915 Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey.

The five-day forum titled “Comparative Analysis of 20th Century Genocides” is attended by some 180 scholars from around the world specializing in research of crimes against humanity and seeking the prevention of more such atrocities.

“2015 is an important year for all Armenians worldwide in terms of commemoration of the centennial of the beginning of the Armenian genocide,” the IAGS said last year in a statement announcing the venue of its 12th meeting.

“The Armenian genocide is sometimes considered as the first genocide of the 20th century and in many ways served as a template for subsequent genocidal crimes,” it said. “2015 is also is the year of 70th anniversary of the end of World War II and the Holocaust.”

“Therefore, it is a significant time to analyze both crimes and all genocides of the 20th century in global and comparative perspectives,” added the association founded in 1994.

The IAGS conference is taking place under the auspices of the Armenian Genocide Museum- Institute in Yerevan. President Serzh Sarkisian underlined its significance for the Armenian government with a speech at the opening session of the forum.

“One hundred years have passed since the Armenian genocide but nothing has been forgotten,” said Sarkisian. “We have also not forgotten those intellectuals, scholars and humanists who … have shed light on the crime committed 100 years ago, making sure that it is not veiled by time.”

Sarkisian went on to thank Pope Francis, other world leaders and foreign states who publicly described the 1915 slaughter of some 1.5 million Armenians as genocide shortly before or after the April 24 ceremonies in Armenia that marked its centenary. “It is in this context that I regard your decision to hold your conference in Armenia in this important year of commemoration,” he said.

The IAGS, which unites over 500 mostly Western scholars, has been openly urging more nations to recognize the Armenian genocide since 2007. “The historical record on the Armenian Genocide is unambiguous and documented by overwhelming evidence,” it said in a 2007 letter to members of the U.S. Congress.

2024 IAGS Resolution on Nagorno-Karabakh Genocide

Recognising the killing and other violence, including torture, against Armenian civilians;

Recognising the of political leaders of Nagorno-Karabakh;

Acknowledging the expulsion under threat of mass violence of the remaining 100,000 ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023;

Acknowledging the history of anti-Armenian hate speech and expressions of genocidal intent from Azerbaijani media, political and military leadership, religious leaders and other sources;

Recognising that Azerbaijan has taken ethnic Armenian soldiers and civilians prisoner, some of whose whereabouts remain unknown;

Recognising the destruction of Armenian cultural heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijan;

Acknowledging the multiple representative and referendum votes from 1988 to 1992 to join Armenian Republic or become an independent state, which have never been respected internationally;

Recognising that the closure by Azerbaijan of the Lachin Corridor from December 2022 to September 2023 prevented essential goods including food, fuel, and medicine from reaching the residents of Nagorno-Karabakh, and prevented residents from accessing external medical treatment and separated families including children from parents, creating a humanitarian crisis resulting in malnutrition, death from starvation, illness, and psychological harm;

Acknowledging the International Court of Justice’s preliminary measures order of February 2023 that declared Azerbaijan’s blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh including the closure of the Lachin Corridor ‘may have a serious deterrent impact on the health and lives of individuals’ and ordered Azerbaijan to ‘take all measures at its disposal to ensure unimpeded movement of persons, vehicles and cargo along the Lachin Corridor in both directions’;

Acknowledging the International Court of Justice’s preliminary measures order of February 2023 that ordered Azerbaijan to cease incitement and promotion of racial hatred and discrimination targeted at national or ethnic Armenians; and to prevent and punish destruction of Armenian cultural heritage;

Acknowledging the International Court of Justice’s preliminary measures order of November 2023 that ordered Azerbaijan, inter alia, to ensure the safe, unimpeded and expeditious return of those who wish to return to Nagorno-Karabakh; and the protection of persons in Nagorno-Karabakh;

Acknowledging Azerbaijan’s lack of compliance with the International Court of Justice’s preliminary measures orders of February (supported by a follow-up statement of 6 July 2023) and November 2023;

Recognising that Azerbaijan bombed Nagorno-Karabakh including civilians areas on 19-20 September 2023, resulting in the deaths of over 200 people and over 400 injured including civilians, and the above-referenced forced displacement of over 100,000 people from Nagorno-Karabakh into Armenia;

Recognising international concern over a possible Azerbaijan invasion of Armenia and that Azerbaijan’s leadership continues to threaten Armenia with possible future military attacks;

Recognising the statements of legal experts, current UN officials, former UN officials, non-governmental organisations and scholars of the risk of genocide and the declaration of the blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh as genocide;

Recognising that Azerbaijan is a state party to the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide;

Recognising that Azerbaijan is a state party to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949; the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property; and the 2006 Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance;

Recognising that Azerbaijan is a state party to the 1984 Convention Against Torture; the 1965 Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination, and a number of other international human rights law treaties;

Recognising that, in November 2023 Armenia deposited its ratification of the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which came into effect 1 February 2024, including a declaration on the acceptance of retroactive application of the ICC’s jurisdiction to 10 May 2021;

Therefore, the International Association of Genocide Scholars:

1. Declares the blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh from December 2022 to September 2023, including the closure of the Lachin Corridor, was characteristic of actions considered imposing conditions of life designed to bring about the physical destruction of the ethnic Armenians in the territory and caused serious mental and bodily harm to the Armenians in the territory, which are recognized as genocidal crimes under the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide;
2. Declares the forced removal of ethnic Armenians in September and October 2023 through siege and bombing as ethnic cleansing and the crime against humanity of deportation or forcible transfer of population (forced displacement);
3. Declares the bombing of civilian areas to be a violation of international humanitarian law;
4. Declares the torture and killing of ethnic Armenian prisoners of war and civilians to be a violation of international humanitarian law;
5. Calls upon the government of Azerbaijan to free all ethnic Armenians in Azerbaijani detention in unlawful circumstances;
6. Urges Azerbaijan to comply with orders and judgments of the International Court of Justice, and other obligations of international law including international human rights law and international humanitarian law;
7. Calls upon the government of Azerbaijan to prevent future violations of human rights and international law being perpetrated against the Armenians of the South Caucasus;
8. Calls upon Azerbaijan to prevent further displacement of Armenians from their homeland by respecting the Republic of Armenia’s territorial sovereignty;
9. Call upon Azerbaijan to respect, protect and prevent the destruction of any Armenian cultural property in Nagorno-Karabakh;
10. Calls upon the international community to protect Nagorno-Karabakh’s right to self-determination;
11. Calls upon the international community to take appropriate measures to guarantee the right to return and security of Armenians forcibly displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh, as confirmed by the International Court of Justice in its 17 November 2023 Provisional Measures Order;
12. Calls upon the international community, including national governments and international organisations, to recognise the atrocities perpetrated against the ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh as constituting gross violations of human rights, war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, as applicable, and to take appropriate measures in response to prevent further violations and crimes.
13. Recommends appropriate transitional justice measures including but not limited to: sanctions against those who are responsible; referral of the situation to the International Criminal Court to ensure justice for victims; commencement of proceedings against Azerbaijan in the International Court of Justice under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the Convention Against Torture; the creation of an international fact-finding mission to gather evidence of human rights abuses and crimes; the creation of a missing persons search process; and the use by state courts of universal jurisdiction to commence proceedings against individuals involved in the crimes.
14. Calls upon the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to use Armenian ratification of the Rome Statute to investigate and prosecute the transboundary crime against humanity of deportation from Nagorno-Karabakh into Armenian territory.
15. Calls upon Azerbaijan to remove its soldiers from the territory of the Armenian Republic and to respect the right of self-determination of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh as guaranteed under the United Nations Charter (Chapter I, Article 2).

Resolution passed September 2, 2024.

https://genocidescholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/IAGS-Resolution-on-Nagorno-Karabakh.pdf