INTERVIEW WITH TURKISH PRIME MINISTER RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN

The Charlie Rose Show
28th September 2007

[Excerpt from Charlie Rose interview with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The final five minutes of the broadcast are given below]

Charlie Rose: Thank you for this time. It's very good to see you again and I look forward to...

PM Erdogan: One more thing I want to say if you'll let me. We don't always have this opportunity to appear on television so i would like to take this opportunity to say the following: Most recently, there has been a lot of discussion about this so-called Armenian genocide issue. There is a wrong approach here. This issue is not first and foremost an issue for us, the politicians, to deal with. It must first be discussed by historians. I wrote a letter to President Kocharian to ask him to come together with us and establish a commission - a joint commission - that would include archaelogists, political scientists, legal experts, historians, and others, and I said that we should put all our archives at each other's disposal. We opened our archives and I asked him to open theirs if they had archives, and the third countries can also do the same and avail their archives. So this joint commission could then work in these archives and we could then look at the reports and once we get those reports we could then reach a decision because if there has been a crime we are ready to settle our accounts with our history. But we know that that is not the case. So it would be wrong to misrepresent this situation. We should not give the opportunity to those who want to somehow make use of the situation. I have Armenian citizens in my country and everyone knows how freely they live in Turkey. And I just want to say that it would be wrong to generalize certain individual issues...cases. The generalization should not be made victim of individual cases. Ever since we came to government we have now direct flights between the two countries. On the eastern part of Turkey there is an island called Akhtamar on Lake Van and on that island there is an Armenian church and we restored that church by using our money, government treasury money, and it has been opened, the church is open. So there is no problem with their lives in Turkey.

Charlie Rose: I'm glad you brought that up and obviously that was what...it's an important issue raised by the Armenians and whether there was a genocide in the early 20th century. It's an [inaudible]. You seem to be saying that you're prepared to see a thorough investigation of this issue and look at all the facts and then to characterize it for what it was. And if in fact it was a genocide you're prepared to recognize it, but you firmly believe it wasn't.

PM Erdogan: That is absolutely right. And we're saying that nevertheless it should be researched. It should be looked at. And we did already open our archives for that research. More than one million documents are available now. And if Yerevan did the same, why not? If there are third countries, if they have any documentation, they should make them available. Why not? Let's move forward with this. Why should we be afraid? Why should anyone be afraid? Why are they afraid? Where are the documents? Because you cannot have this accusation without facts. The lobbies and the discussions, those cannot be sufficient to judge a country like Turkey.

Charlie Rose: I hear you saying, or at least feeling, that Turkey has to resolve this issue.

PM Erdogan: Yes, this is what I'm trying to do.