Turkish president encourages new academic studies on the Armenian issue
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has spoken on the Armenian Genocide in Malaysia, where he attended the Kuala Lumpur Summit. At a briefing with reporters the president was asked what were the steps Turkey planned to solve the Armenian issue, in particular through the study of the archives. Erdogan insisted that the matter had been seriously challenged during his Prime Ministry, while there has not been any serious answer regarding the issue from the other side.
“They can't present something that is not there. They have small, symbolic archives at Harvard and a small archive in France. Even in Armenia itself, there are not any serious archives. You know that our Armed Forces currently has an archive of over 1 million documents. “You are welcome to come and study.” We have said this to every academic many times. But they never accepted this challenge. This is because they know and see that when it comes to that stage, it will be against them,” the president said.
Erdogan next expressed hope that the matter will be examined and if the international community also participated in it, they would gladly include them.
“We will further strengthen our work with documentaries by making the Turkish Historical Society more active in this regard. We wish to make this work much more powerful by encouraging some academic studies once again.” the president said.