Document 4: Declaration by the Turkish Grand Assembly, 13 April, 2005

To this aim, the Ruling and Opposition Parties in Turkey together advanced a proposal with the aim of shedding light on historical facts through scientific research and relieving both nations from the burden of history. This proposal envisages that Turkey and Armenia set up a join commission made up of their own historians, that they open their national archives without imposing any restrictions upon them, that they reveal findings and results of those studies that will be conducted in the archives of other relevant countries as well, to the world public opinion and that both countries are to decide about the setting up and working methods of the abovementioned commission. 

The Turkish Parliament entirely adopts and supports this proposal of the historic nature.

To implement this initiative, an active cooperation is required with the Armenian Government on the matter. In this respect, if Turkey and Armenia do no succeed in perceiving the history from a common perspective, they will have nothing to leave but the hard feelings of prejudice, hostility and revenge for their children and posterity as legacy.

Reason and logic dictate that Turkey and Armenia need not to fear to destroy taboos with a common initiative and that they ready themselves for settling accounts with their history by exposing all aspects of human tragedy that they experienced together. It is the only way to prevent our past from obscuring our today and tomorrow.

The Turkish Parliament needs to underline that, in the appraisal of this proposal of the Turkish Republic, this move, in principle, should be considered as a peace initiative. If Armenia wants to establish good relation and to develop cooperation with Turkey, it should not hesitate to accept Turkey’s proposal for joint appraisal of historical facts. 

Another point that the Turkish Parliament wants to emphasize is that all statesmen and all countries that are well-intentioned and want to contribute to world peace and stability need to approach affirmatively to Turkey’s proposal, which is based on compromise and common sense, by leaving aside their domestic policy concerns. Therefore, it is expected that those countries, which sincerely wish that the relation between Turkey and Armenia improves and which desire that peace and stability establish in the Caucasus region, support as well this initiative and especially avoid activities that may undermine this enterprise.

In this subject, the responsibility, before all else, lays upon the countries that passed resolutions regarding Armenian allegations on so-called Armenian Genocide in their Parliaments. If those countries attach importance to the development of relations between Turkey and Armenia as they claim, they need to prove their goodwill and to support our proposal to set up a joint commission on history between two countries.

The Turkish Parliament considers it as improper, meaningless, arbitrary and unjust and therefore condemns it strongly that foreign parliaments pass resolutions with a political aim in the subject regarding some chapters of the history of the Ottoman Armenians, which are still a subject of debate among world historians, and decide, through acts of parliament, about the outcome or aspects of an historical problem, on which the light has not yet been shed.

The Turkish Parliament declares that the international circles, which think and make their calculation accordingly that they can, through an intensive international lobbying effort, impose on Turkey to rebuild its history on the basis of one-sided and misleading appraisals based on some propaganda documents, are greatly mistaken and that their wish will never materialize under any condition.