Turkish and Armenian Archives

Claims the Turkish Archives are closed is common. For this is another of the lies told by Armenains to help rally support for their cause.
On the contrary, the Ottoman Imperial Archives is one of the richest in the world and, naturally, the most frequently consulted collection of written sources with regard to the 1915 events. Any research that failed to consult the Turkish State Archives in matters relating to the common histories of Middle and Near East, Balkans, Mediterranean, North Africa, Arabic countries, Caucasus, and beyond, would simply be incomplete. It would be like trying to solve a dispute bwteen two parties by hearing only one of those parties. It would be unfair, incorrect, unscholarly, and unethical.

Turkish State Archives have been brought in line with European Union regulations, which means relevant laws have been amended to enable the same-day-issuance of the research permits. A comprehensive web page (www.devletarsivleri.gov.tr) has been created to include digital copies of classified documents and their translation into contemporary Turkish. Inclusion of English translations of the authentic documents is underway. These initiatives have already resulted in scholars from 80 countries to engage themselves in the archives since 2003. In recent years, everybody from Armenian researchers, to German, Italian and Austrian Historians, to the BBC cameras have had access to research what they liked.
There are approximately 150 million documents that span every period and region of the Ottoman realm in the stacks and vaults of the Ottoman Archives. Each day, new collections in these Ottoman archives are opened to researchers. All these extensive records are well preserved and organized.

Armenians still claim however the archives remain closed...

Prof Dr Stefano Trinchese
Chieti University
Italy
"There is no truth to the claims the Turkish Archives are difficult to access. I went to Istanbul and visited the Turkish Archives. It is true that I faced basic issues initially , but I face similar issues in Italy. In Armenia, I was denied access to the Archives. I wrote a letter but didn’t even get a reply. I tried but never got anywhere."

Prof. Laurenti Barsegian
Genocide Museum Director
Erivan/Armenia
"I have never seen any work by historians, based on the Turkish Archives."

Aras Arafyan
Armenian Historian
England
Has taken copies of thousands of documents both hardcopy and microfilm from the Turkish Archives in Istanbul. (3000 photocopies on the “Armenian Genocide” were taken throughout a 2 year research period.) This fact is documented in the Archive activity logbooks.

Hilmar Keizar
German-American Pro Armenian Historian.
Kaiser has conducted research in more than 60 archives including the Turkish-Ottoman Archives in Istanbul. He has taken photocopies of 5900 documents during his research.

Gegham Manukian
Dashnaktsutyun Party Media Relations
"Why doesn’t Turkey open its archives? We have opened our archives. (???) I have applied many times to no avail and I don’t know of anybody who has accessed the Turkish Archives."

Dr Alexander Safarian
Erivan University
When we refer to archives, we generally mean Historical Archives. I was unable to go to any libraries or Archives in Turkey. I didn’t really want to. I have access to all the documents I need right here in Armenia. I don’t have the will or the want to view Turkish Archives.

TURKEY URGES OPENING OF ARMENIAN ARCHIVE* Turkey, May 21, 2008 (UPI)

-- Turkey has offered $20 million to open an Armenian archive in the United States, claiming documents there will support its version of the 1915 massacre. Yusuf Halacoglu, head of the state-funded Turkish Historical Society, told Hurriyet the archive in Boston includes important documents on the events of 1915. Halacoglu said he had been told the archives cannot be opened because they need proper cataloging. "This would directly open a debate over the genocide claims," he said. "Armenians are aware of this and therefore they are doing their best not to sit at the table." Armenians and most non-Turkish scholars of the period say 1.5 million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Empire in 1915 and generally label the deaths genocide -- a term the Turkish government disputes. The official Turkish version is that about 300,000 Armenians and 300,000 Turks were killed in an Armenian bid for independence.


The first published catalog of Ottoman archival holdings appeared in 1955 and consisted of ninety pages of archival inventory and commentary. Archivist Attila Çetin followed in 1979 with a more extensive catalog, which is also available in Italian. As the classifying and organizing of the archives continued, the catalog grew. The 1992 edition is 634 pages long. The expanded 1995 compilation provides access to even more documents. Revised editions are to be forthcoming from time to time, as more detailed descriptions become available for the various fonds or individual record groups.
Ottoman archival documentation constitutes an unequaled trove of information about how people lived from the fifteenth through the early twentieth centuries in a territory now comprised of twenty-two nations. İlber Ortaylı, director of the Topkapı Palace Museum at Istanbul, argues that the history of the Ottoman Empire should not be written without Ottoman sources. He is not alone in this. His position is buttressed by a number of specialists in the study of the Ottoman state and society. Albert Hourani, for example, the late British scholar of Middle Eastern affairs, argued that his best advice to history students considering Middle East specialization would be to "learn Ottoman Turkish well and learn also how to use Ottoman documents, since the exploitation of Ottoman archives, located in Istanbul and in smaller cities and towns, is perhaps the most important task of the next generation."

The Archives and the Armenians
There are few comprehensive sources about Armenian life in Anatolia outside of Ottoman archival sources. Diplomatic records, such as those cited by Armenian historian Vahakn Dadrian, as the basis for discussions among genocide scholars are spotty and intertwined with wartime politics. The Ottoman Ministry of the Interior (Dahiliye Nezareti) was the government department directing and supervising the relocation and resettlement of the Armenian population. The collection of the ministry documents covers the period from 1866 to 1922 and consists of 4,598 registers or notebooks. It is classified according to twenty-one subcollections, according to office of origin. Among the available documents in the Ottoman archives are several dozen registers containing the records of the deliberations and actions of the Council of Ministers, which set policies, received reports, and discussed problems that arose regarding the relocations and other wartime events. The minutes of its meetings, deliberations, resolutions, and decisions are bound in 224 volumes covering the years 1885 through 1922. These registers include each and every decree pertaining to the decision to relocate the Ottoman Armenians away from the war zones during World War I. The Records Office of the Sublime Porte (Babıali Evrak Odası) also contains substantial documentation, including the correspondence between the grand vizier and the ministries, as well as the central government and the provinces that can illuminate the events of 1915.
It is ironic, therefore, as politicians seek to deliberate on questions of history, that few historians investigating Armenian issues have actually consulted the Ottoman archives. As Australian historian Jeremy Salt has explained,
The Ottoman archives remain largely unconsulted. When so much is missing from the fundamental source material, no historical narrative can be called complete and no conclusions can be balanced. If the Ottoman sources are properly utilized, the way in which the Armenian question is understood is bound to change.
There is little explanation as to why more historians do not consult the Ottoman archives. They are open to all scholars. Bernard Lewis, Cleveland Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, who has worked extensively in the Ottoman archives since 1949, has argued that "the Ottoman archives are in the care of a competent and devoted staff who are always willing to place their time and knowledge at the disposal of the visiting scholar, with a personal helpfulness and courtesy that will surprise those with purely Western experience. [These records] are open to all who can read them." The late Stanford Shaw, Professor Emeritus of Turkish and Judeo-Turkish History at the University of California, Los Angeles, also spoke highly of the helpfulness of the archivists. He argued that the sheer amount of new material available removed any excuse for any scholar investigating various nationalist revolts not to spend time examining the new sources.
Even Taner Akçam of University of Minnesota, one of the most vocal proponents of Armenian genocide claims, noted the improvement in the working conditions of the archives. In a recent article, he thanked the staff and especially the deputy director-general of state archives for their help and openness during his last visit. The archivists are now helpful to all researchers, not only those pursuing research which supports the Turkish government's line.

Turkish Military Archives
The archives of the Turkish General Staff Military History and Strategic Studies Directorate in Ankara (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Genelkurmay Askeri Tarih ve Stratejik Etüt Başkanlığı Arşivleri) provide a military perspective. Indeed, more than the Ottoman Archives in the Prime Minister's Office, this repository provides a rich trove of information about internal conditions in the empire, operations of the Ottoman army, and the Special Organization (Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa), somewhat equivalent to the Ottoman special forces, for the period 1914-22.
The World War I and War of Independence archives alone number over five and a half million documents spread among Turkish General Staff Division reports and War Ministry files. Division 1 (Operations) contains military operations plans and orders, operations and situation reports, maps and overlays, general staff orders, mobilization instructions and orders, organizational orders, training and exercise instructions, spot combat reports. Division 2 (Intelligence) contains intelligence estimates and reports and orders of battle. Divisions 3 and 4 (Logistics) contain files concerning procurement, animals, munitions, transportation, rations, and accounting. The Ministry of War files contain the General Command's ciphered cables to military units as well as the papers of the infantry, fortress artillery, and other divisions. Vehip Pasha's Third Army (Erzurum), Jemal Pasha's Fourth Army (Damascus), and Ali İhsan Pasha's Sixth Army (Baghdad) are included among the staff files. These also include the Lightning Armies and Caucasian Armies groups.

Armenian Archives
A full study of the Armenians during World War I should consider material from all sides in a conflict. The Armenian community maintains a number of archives. The archives in Watertown, Massachusetts, contain repositories from the Dashnak Party (Dashnaksutiun, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation) and the First Republic of Armenia. The above, together with the archives of the Armenian patriarchate in Jerusalem and the Catholicosate, the seat of the supreme religious leader of the Armenian people, in Echmiadzin, Armenia, remain closed to non-Armenian researchers. Tatul Sonentz-Papazian, Dashnakist archivist, for example, denied İnönü University scholar Göknur Akçadağ access to the Watertown archives in a June 20, 2008 letter.

Dashnaksutiun archives are also not available to those Armenians who do not tow the party line. Historian Ara Sarafian, director of the Gomidas Institute in London, complained that "some Armenian archives in the diaspora are not open to researchers for a variety of reasons. The most important ones are the Jerusalem Patriarchate archives. I have tried to access them twice and [been] turned away. The other archives are the Zoryan Institute archives, composed of the private papers of Armenian survivors, whose families deposited their records with the Zoryan Institute in the 1980s. As far as I know, these materials are still not cataloged and accessible to scholars."

Beyond the closure of Armenian archives to non-Armenian and even to some Armenian scholars, few of these allow the public to access catalogs detailing their holdings.
Many scholars writing on the Armenian question utilize Britain's National Archives (formerly the Public Record Office) in Kew Gardens. While the British government has made available many of their diplomats' reports for study, much material from the British occupation of Istanbul (1919-22) and elsewhere in Anatolia following World War I remains closed to researchers under the Official Secrets Act and are only partially available in the archives of the government of India in Delhi.

British authorities say they remain sealed for national security reasons. Their release should be important to historians as they will include evidence regarding returning Armenian refugees and other related matters. Files of the British Eastern Mediterranean Special Intelligence Bureau also remain closed, perhaps because the British government does not wish to expose those who may have committed espionage on behalf of Britain. These are important because they should enable historians to research British espionage and sabotage, demoralizing propaganda, and attempts to provoke treason and desertion from Ottoman ranks during and immediately after 1914-18.

The documents of the Secret Office of War Propaganda, which under the direction of Lord James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee developed propaganda used against the Central Powers during World War I, also remain sealed. Their opening will allow historians to assess whether British officials in the heat of war created or exaggerated accounts of deliberate atrocities.