Ara Sarafian

Ara Sarafian (Armenian: Արա Սարաֆեան) is a British historian of Armenian origin. He has an M.A. in history from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor,^[1] received under the tutelage of Ronald Grigor Suny.^[2]

Sarafian is the founding director of the Gomidas Institute in London, which sponsors and carries out research and publishes books and the journal Armenian Forum. Among the institute's publications are English translations of Armenian texts related to the Armenian Genocide.^[3] He edited a "Critical Edition" of the The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916, commonly known as the Blue Book (originally published in 1916 by British historians Lord James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee),^[4] as well as a Turkish edition of the book.

Research

Sarafian conducted research in the Turkish Prime Minister's Ottoman Archives in the 1990s, together with Hilmar Kaiser.^[5]

In February 2007, Sarafian accepted the suggestion of the then-chairman of the Turkish Historical Society, Yusuf Halaçoğlu, to cooperate on a joint project.^[6] Sarafian later proposed a joint case study of "what happened on the Harput Plain" and "how many people died" during the deportations.^[7][8]

A month later, Halaçoğlu announced that Sarafian has declined to carry out the study,^[9] and added that Sarafian "was disturbed by the institute’s initiative to study the archives of Tashnak, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation".^[10] In an interview, Sarafian said Halaçoğlu's "explanation was not true because I had not said any such thing. The case study came to an end when Halacoglu stated that the relevant records, which he had initially agreed to use as the basis of the joint case study, were not available."^[11] Halaçoğlu's choice to withhold archival records and pull out of the project was criticized at the time in the Turkish press.^[12]

References