President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made a speech at the Symposium on Our Archives' Development, Vision and Contributions to Historical Research held at Beştepe People's Culture and Convention Center in Ankara.

"Archives are the memory of a nation and a state"

"Archives are the memory of a nation and a state," President Erdoğan pointed out during his speech.

"Nations without memories cannot know where they come from, where they are today and where they are headed to. A strong tradition of the archive is also a testimony to a strong state history," he added.

Stating that they have a 2,200-year-old state tradition and a thousand-year history in the region, President Erdoğan went on to say: "The greatest foundations of this very state tradition and our history in the lands we live in are historical works and our rich archive. Particularly the Ottomans were one of the top states that kept records well and protected them."

"Turkiye keeps the memory of a giant geography as well as of itself in its archives"

President Erdoğan stressed that the Ottoman archives are such a treasure that they contain the past of not only our country but also of over 40 states.

"In other words, Turkiye keeps the memory of a giant geography as well as of itself in its archives. Today, if the solution to many international problems in our region is sought in the Ottoman archives, there is a reason for that."

The President continued as follows: "One of the issues about which we proudly proclaim the truth to the whole World thanks to our archives is the Armenian issue. We see that those who attempt to lecture us on democracy and human rights over the Armenian issue themselves have a bloody past."

"The doors of our archives are wide open to all seeking the truth"

President Erdoğan underscored that they must tell the bloody pasts of those who seek to corner Turkiye through the Armenian issue to their faces at every opportunity.

"The relocation of the Armenian gangs and their supporters, who massacred the Muslim people, including women and children, in eastern Anatolia, was the most reasonable action that could be taken in such a period. Relocation is one thing, massacre is another thing."

The President further stressed: "The doors of our archives are wide open to all seeking the truth."

Turkish President highlighted that the people responsible for or the instigators of the massacres and the sufferings that took place in recent centuries are those who put on the masks of advocates of human rights and freedoms.

"We do not and will never forget those who sent millions of Crimean Tatars and Ahiska Turks to death by stuffing them in trains one night. We hear even today and feel in our hearts the innocent people's cries, echoing in the deserts of Libya and Algeria. It was not the Muslims who were responsible for the oppressions and massacres therein."

It is evident who murdered just 25 years ago 800 thousand people in Rwanda during that genocide, and its perpetrators were French. Now, the French attempt to lecture us."

"Drawing attention to the fact that no group or state that has so far raised the Armenian issue has been able to prove its allegations through archive documents, President Erdoğan concluded: "We already know that those, who are stirring up trouble with so-called Armenian genocide allegations, France in particular, do not have an intention of seeking the truth, and we want the entire world to know it, too." (ILKHA)