Nobel Laureates Urge Turkish-Armenian Dialogue

More than fifty Nobel laureates from around the world appealed to Armenia and Turkey on Monday to unconditionally establish diplomatic relations, open their border, and step up contacts between their civil societies. In an open letter, they also implicitly urged the Turkish government to acknowledge that the 1915-1918 mass killings and deportations of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire constituted a genocide. They endorsed a 2003 independent study which concluded that the slaughter of an estimated 1.5 Ottoman Armenians fits into the internationally accepted definition of genocide. “An open border would greatly improve the economic conditions for communities on both sides of the border and enable human interaction, which is essential for mutual understanding,” read the joint appeal signed by 53 prominent academics, writers, economists, and scientists who have won a Nobel Prize in their respective fields in the last three decades. Among them is Elie Wiesel, a world-famous Holocaust survivor, and Frederik de Klerk, a former South African president who presided over the collapse of apartheid in his country. The signatories said the Turkish and Armenian governments should ease their lingering tensions “through additional treaty arrangements and full diplomatic relations” which they believe would facilitate bilateral academic links and student exchanges. They also called for the abolition of an article of the Turkish Penal Code which makes it a crime to “denigrate Turkishness” and has been used against dissident intellectuals questioning the official denial of the Armenian genocide. “Armenia also should reverse its own authoritarian course, allow free and fair elections, and respect human rights,” the laureates added.