YEREVAN. - Hayatsk daily presented Jerusalem St. Hagopiants College’s former teacher Mehruzhan Babajanian’s conversation with Christianity Professor Apraham Derian, who said the following: 

“During my university lectures I established a very close acquaintance with a professor from the Department of Turkology. He was an American Jew…He…wanted to get familiarized with Turkish literature. But…he learned that Turkish literature is virtually nonexistent. Then he learned that there are Armenian-letter Turkish books. Such books began to be published in 16th to 17th Centuries, up until the end of 19th Century, for nearly half million Turkish-speaking Armenians living in Turkey, who had lost their mother tongue but kept their national traditions and religion…The Jewish professor amicably learned Armenian to be able to read those books. And he came to understand that, from among the nationalities living in that country, it was only the Armenians who have a taste in literature, and later on he showed a great interest toward the culture and literature of the Armenian nation.”

Being familiar with the richness and comparative simplicity of the Armenian language, leading Turkish intellectuals had the idea of replacing the Arabic letters with Armenian letters. This unprecedented project affected the Turks so much that they even sent questionnaires to Armenian intellectuals, so they, too, could express their views. But history made its corrections on this idea, whose consequences are suspicious for us, as World War I began soon, and subsequent Armenian-Turkish clashes and the painful consequences excluded this unprecedented idea.