Michael Gunter

Michael M. Gunter is a professor of political science at Tennessee Technological University^[1] in Cookeville, Tennessee and considered an authority on the Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran.  Brendan O’Leary referred to Gunter as, "The doyen of Kurdish political studies in the United States,”^[2] while Martin van Bruinessen wrote that Gunter is "probably the most prolific of today’s scholars of Kurdish politics.”^[3]  Gunter has written or edited more than 15 books on the Kurdish struggle and 2 more on the Turkish-Armenian issue. Two of those books on the Kurds were among the first analyses in English in modern times of the Kurdish unrest in the Middle East. In writing his analyses, Gunter has worked directly with top Kurdish and other Middle Eastern political leaders. He received the Kurdish Human Rights Watch’s “Service to the Kurds Award” in 1998.^[4] "Gunter’s analyses and writings sometimes strike readers as controversial, but he says his views are often based on information that hasn't yet been made public."^[5]  He has served as the Secretary-General of the EU Turkey Civic Commission (EUTCC), an NGO in Brussels that lobbies the EU parliament on behalf of the Kurds since 2009. He is a member of the Board of Advisory Editors of The Middle East Journal, The Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and The International Journal of Turkish Studies, among others.

Education[]

Gunter earned his B.A. in American history in 1964 from Columbia University, his M.I.A. from Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs in 1966, and his Ph.D. in international relations from Kent State University in 1972.^[6][7]

Teaching experience[]

Gunter taught at Kent State from 1967 to 1971. Since 1972, Gunter has taught political science at Tennessee Tech University. He was an assistant professor from 1972 to 1976, an associate professor from 1976 to 1981, and a professor since 1981. He won the university’s Caplenor Faculty Research Award in 1995-1996 and the Outstanding Teaching Award in 1999-2000. He is only the second faculty member in Tennessee Tech’s history to win both of these awards.^[6][7]

He was also a Senior Fulbright-Hays Lecturer in international relations at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey from 1978 to 1979. He was an instructor of ESL and American Culture at Shanghai Xuhui Education College in Shanghai, China during the summer of 2001. He was an adjunct professor for Fisk University in the fall of 2002. He was a visiting professor for The International University in Vienna, Austria during the summers of 2002 and 2003, where he won the Distinguished Visiting Professor Award in 2003.^[6] He also taught courses on Kurdish and Middle Eastern politics, among others, for the U.S. Government Areas Studies Program and U.S. Department of State Foreign Service Institute in Washington, D.C. Since 2018, he has been a “Distinguished Professor of the Centre for Turkish Studies of Shaanxi Normal University” in Xi’an China.

Recent publications[]

• The Kurds in the Middle East: Enduring Problems and New Dynamics, co-ed., 2020^[8]
• Kurdish Autonomy and U.S. Foreign Policy, co-ed., 2020^[9]
• The Kurds: A Divided Nation in Search of a State, 3rd ed., 2019^[10]
• Routledge Handbook on the Kurds, ed., 2019^[11]
• Historical Dictionary of the Kurds, 3rd ed., 2018^[12]
• The Kurds, a Modern History, 2016^[13]
• Kurdish Issues: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Olson, ed., 2016^[14]
• Out of Nowhere, The Kurds of Syria in Peace and War, 2014^[15]
• Earlier, Gunter published many other books and over 200 scholarly journal articles and book chapters.

Controversies[]

Gunter has been criticized for his non-mainstream position denying the Armenian genocide on the grounds that Armenians are responsible for "provoking" their own persecution.^[16] His book Armenian History and the Question of Genocide was described as "a very badly written and poorly argued volume" by historian Richard Hovannisian.^[17] The book was partially funded by Turkish Coalition of America.^[17] He published a positive review of Guenter Lewy's book The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey after having blurbed it, raising criticism of professional integrity.^[18][19]

Gunter responds that he does not deny that hundreds of thousands of Armenians tragically died, but questions if the term “genocide” is appropriate since the Genocide Treaty (1951) requires proof of intent to murder and there is no legitimate document that proves that the Ottoman Empire intended to wipe out the Armenians. In addition, hundreds of thousands of Muslims also died from the violence involving Armenians both before and after the Armenian massacres in 1915. Furthermore, the  concept of genocide was only defined many years later, so legally to apply it to the Armenian situation constitutes an ex post facto law. Gunter explains all this in his book, which Dr. Edward J. Erickson, a retired US marine Lt. Colonel and professor at the US Marine Corps University, reviewed in the prestigious Middle East Journal and concluded “to be one of the best expositions of the issues in print today.”^[20] As for reviewing a book for another journal which he had previously blurbed, Dr. John Calabrese, the longtime book review editor of the Middle East Journal has emailed Gunter that he is not aware of any such rule. Calabrese wrote, “I don't think there is a "rule" per se. I think the editor and potential reviewer have to come to an understanding that s/he (reviewer) commits to writing a review that is as fair and objective as possible, identifying flaws / shortcomings and not just the positive aspects of a work.”^[21] Finally, Gunter denies that his book was partially funded by any Turkish organization. He has long suggested that the Turks and the Armenians create some type of truth commission to examine these tragic events in an attempt to agree upon how to refer to them.

References[]