YEREVAN. - The documents preserved in the Armenian National Archive are open not only to citizens of Armenia but foreigners as well, said archive’s director Amatuni Virabyan.

According to him, the archive contains 350 million documents related to history of Armenia. The first is dated to 1607.

After Armenia’s joining the Council of Europe in 2001, archive is open to all CoE members, as well as other countries’ archives, for instance the Turkish one is open to Armenians.

“I have talked to the heads of the Turkish archives and they are ready to cooperatie. However, necessary documents are kept  in military archive which is closed even to the Turkish citizens,” he said.

According to the expert, the difficulty is that Ottoman Turkish language was a native language of Turkey before 1928. It is a mixture of Arabic, Persian and Turkish language. At present there are not enough of experts of Ottoman Turkish in Armenia.   

However, Turkish historians freely use the National Archives of Armenia. Virabyan noted that  one of them used materials of the Armenian archives in 2005, while another Turkish historian was studying and history of Kars province in 2009.

The expert stressed important materials about the Armenian Genocide are preserved in Germany, Austria, and Georgia.