Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize for literature last year, did not sign the appeal.

"We thought it would be important for Nobel laureates to join their voices in support of Turkish-Armenian reconciliation," Elie Wiesel Foundation official David Phillips said.

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.

"Armenia also should reverse its own authoritarian course, allow free and fair elections, and respect human rights," the laureates added.

"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 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 Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and Frederik de Klerk, the former South African president who presided over the collapse of apartheid in his country. 

Their letter, addressed to "the peoples of Turkey and Armenia," was initiated and drafted by David Phillips, a U.S. scholar who runs the New York-based Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. He is also known as the former chairman of the U.S.-backed Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission that operated in 2001-04.

Speaking to RFE/RL from New York, Phillips said the open letter was prompted by what he sees as an anti-Armenian nationalist backlash in Turkey that followed the January 19 murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

Dink was killed by an underage from the northern Trabzon province where unemployment rate is considerable high whilst nationalist sentiments are abound. However it is claimed that the gunman was just a pawn in an either international or domestic plot for a yet unknown settlement.

The timing of the killing led to several commentators to underscore international dimension of the murder since Dink was gunned down amid rising tension due to a resolution to be debated in the U.S. House of Representatives. The resolution was watered down due to intense pressure from Turkey.

"Whereas initially there was an overwhelming popular response in support of Turkish-Armenian rapprochement, the blowback from ultranationalists gives rise to really serious concern about political trends in Turkey," Phillips said. "So we thought it would be important for Nobel laureates to join their voices in support of Turkish-Armenian reconciliation, to acknowledge that the events [of 1915-18] constitute genocide, and to suggest steps that the governments of Turkey and Armenia can take to improve their bilateral relations."

Turkey strongly opposes the claims that its predecessor state, the Ottoman government, caused the Armenian deaths in a planned genocide. The Turkish government has said the toll is wildly inflated and that Armenians were killed or displaced in civil unrest during the empire's collapse and conditions of World War I. The Bush administration supports the view that the term "Armenian genocide" must be removed from the House text.