="justify">Since 2001, the Institute of Armenian Research has made many studies on Armenian question, the relations between Turkey and Armenia as well as between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Armenian Diasporas in several countries. øe most extensive of which is the Armenian Research Turkey Congresses, and participated in the organization of many others.

The ‘daily bulletin’, issued by the Institute in the weekdays since June 2004, exceeds 2000 pages. The total number of pages of the ‘Armenian Studies’ journal, which has been published quarterly since May 2001, and whose nineteenth issue is currently being prepared, reaches 3350. The English journal of the Institute, ‘Review of the Armenian Studies’, the first issue of which was published at the end of 2001, and whose ninth issue is on the way, outnumbers 950 pages. Here, it should be noted that both the ‘daily bulletin’ and two journals of the Institute are unique in the sense that there are no equivalent studies in Turkey about the Armenian question and other related issues.

It should also be particularly stressed that the Institute especially avoids demagogy and chauvinistic approaches, pays attention to be totally scientific and to address its readers within this framework.

The Governing Board of the Eurasian Center for Strategic Studies, to which Armenian Research Institute is affiliated, recently decided to enlarge the scope of Institute’s activities.

With the start of the disintegration process of the Ottoman Empire, some of the Turkish and Muslim population, living in the lost territories, was either massacred or deported. Many of them were forced to immigrate and subjected to imprisonment, atrocities and rape. Therefore millions of people left their homes and took refuge in contemporary lands of Turkey. Although having significant implications both socially and economically, these massacres and deportations have been sufficiently studied neither in Turkey nor in other countries. Contrarily, they have been treated as if they had not happened. For example, Ottoman suppression of the Greek revolts has been perceived as a great atrocity and lamented by the prominent authors and poets of the time such as Victor Hugo and Lord Byron. However, no one paid attention to the 20,000 Turks and Muslims, massacred by the Greeks in Tripolitza, in 1821. Later, during Ottoman-Russian Wars, Balkan Wars and the War of Liberation, Turkish and Muslim communities became victims off mass murder and atrocities. These sorrowful events and sources regarding them have been hidden as much as possible by the Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, Armenian and Russian historians. Turkish historians have a limited interest in this issue as well.

Considering that the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court accepts mass murder and atrocity as crimes against humanity, those massacres and deportations committed against Turkish and Muslim communities in our recent history and their socio-economic implications should be scholarly studied.

Genocide is a concept not only peculiar to the Jewish Holocaust; there are many genocides in history. Today, Rwanda and Bosnia cases show that this crime is still committed. In our country the genocide law and cases are under-researched. However, in order to reach a more compact understanding of even only Armenian genocide claims, these issues should be properly studied.

Henceforth, our Institute will not only analyze the Armenian question and related issues but also crimes against humanity, genocide law and genocide cases; and it will present these researches to the public opinion through its publications and conferences.

Because of this new mission, the Institute has been renamed as the ‘Research Institute for Crimes against Humanity’ (in short IKSAREN).

It is obvious that the Institute will be successful to the extent that it is supported by its readers who are interested in these issues.

Best Regards