The World - News from June 29, 1988

Turkey will open its archives next year to permit historians to judge the facts about the massacre of Armenians by the Turkish government during World War I. Turkish President Kenan Evren, whose government does not acknowledge the deliberate slaughter of Armenians, made the announcement in Washington. “I believe we should leave the Armenian problem to the historians,” Evren said of the 70-year-old controversy, which he said has cost the lives of 40 Turkish diplomats assassinated by vengeful Armenians. He explained that under the Ottoman Empire overthrown by Kemal Ataturk in 1922, records were kept in Arabic script and can be translated into modern Turkish only by specially trained scholars.