He taught courses on Middle East/Ottoman history, with an interest in labor, social and economics, during the early and modern periods.
In 2006, he published an article reviewing Donald Bloxham's book The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians.
[3][4][5] Weeks later, Quataert resigned from the position of the chairman of the board of directors of the Institute of Turkish Studies, which he had held since 2001.
Mervat Hatem, the director of Middle East Studies Association, sent a letter to the Prime Minister of Turkey Erdogan, criticizing the threats of Turkish officials to stop funding the Institute if Quataert did not retract his statements.
Hatem stated that such threats went against academic freedom and that "the resignations are in contradiction with those many requests to leave the discussion and the assessment of the Armenian Genocide to the academia that Turkey has been making.