THE TURKISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY TO RESEARCH TASHNAK ARCHIVES
By Aslihan Aydin

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
March 15 2007

The Turkish Historical Society (TTK) reportedly wants to finance the
opening up of the Tashnak Archives in Boston to Turkish historians.

The president of the TTK, Professor Yusuf Halacoðlu, said that until
now his organization has been denied access to the Tashnak Archives
on the basis of claims that the documents "are not classified and
categorized." As for archives in Jerusalem and Armenia, Professor
Halacoðlu notes that no excuses have been provided in the barring
of Turkish historians from these resources. Refusing to accept the
excuse the Boston-based Tashnak Archives had proffered, Halacoðlu
has offered to finance the cataloguing of the archive with TTK funds.

The TTK has obtained access to documents pertaining to Ottoman
Armenians in the archives of a number of countries, including Russia,
Iran, Azerbaijan, France and England. Two central archives to which
the TTK has not been able to obtain access are the Tashnak Archives
in Boston, which contains pre-1923 documents concerning the Armenians,
and the Patriarchate Archives in Jerusalem.

These archives, he maintains, contain crucial documentation about the
Armenians. Halacoðlu also maintains that despite the fact that a few
well-known defenders of the Armenian genocide have been given access
to the Tashnak Archives, there has never been a Turkish historian or
researcher allowed to use this resource.

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