Prof. Baskin Oran

CEFTUS Online Talk ‘Minorities And Minority Rights In Turkey’

Baskin Oran (b. 1945) is a professor emeritus of international relations who has repeatedly challenged the ideology and practices of Turkish State institutions. As assistant professor at the School of Political Science, Ankara University, he was dismissed four times by ruling military juntas for a total of nine years, in 1971 and 1982.

Oran is the author/editor of twenty-six books (three of which are also published in the U.S, France, and Iran) that deal with Turkey’s international relations, nationalism, minority rights, political satire, and also with oral history (see All Books, https://ankara.academia.edu/BOran).

As a member of the Prime Ministry’s Human Rights Advisory Council, he wrote the controversial Minority and Cultural Rights Report (2004) which set a milestone in Turkey’s debate on minority rights.

In 2008 Oran was one of the four co-launchers of the controversial campaign signed online by 33.000 Turks, Apology from Armenians which called for a collective apology from the Turkish side for the “Great Catastrophe/Metz Yeghern” of 1915 (https://www.ozurdiliyoruz.net/).

Besides publishing weekly on artigercek.com and ahvalnews.com, Oran is a regular columnist at the Armenian-Turkish weekly Agos since 2000, has served as the National Liaison Officer to the CoE’s European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI; 1999-2005), and also in the official Wise People Committee during the abortive Kurdish Peace Process in 2013.