Yerevan/Mediamax/. Hürriyet newspaper published an article on Sunday (May 1st) about the studies of archives related to the Armenian Genocide of 1915 in Ottoman Empire.

According to Hürriyet, the Armenian National Archives will begin posting hundreds of thousands of documents online this month. “The biggest reason we are transferring our archive to digital format is to present it to the attention of international researchers,” the newspaper quoted Amatuni Virabyan, National Archives Director, as saying.

Kemal Çiçek, an expert of the Turkish Historical Society, said Turkish historians and researchers were working on the Armenian archives but added that the “documents there contained little information about 1915.”

“It is not important that Armenia has opened its archives. The documents they have are not originals but copies brought from Russia. Let’s open the archives at the Jerusalem Patriarchate and Boston. The mentioned archives will reveal the cooperation Dashnaks had with Great Britain, the United States and other allies during World War I,” he said.

At the same time, Director of London-based Komitas Institute, Ara Safarian, expressed the opinion that the originals of the documents should be looked for in Tbilisi, as the administrative center of the Russian military and civil governments was there at that time. He also suggested that 1915-related materials might be found in Jerusalem.

Ara Safarian suggested Armenian scholars conduct research at important Turkish archives such as the military archives or the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives.

It should be recalled that during recent press conference, Director of Armenian National Archives Amatuni Virabyan said that there are over 10 000 documents on the events of 1914-1915 in the Archives, which contain the memories of inhabitants of 700 settlements in Western Armenia. According to him, complete three-volume collection, based on documents, evidence and memories of villagers, orphaned children and citizens of other countries, will be published by 2015.