Rich historical traditions of our country and our diplomacy have entrusted us with treasures of knowledge. Our diplomatic archives include archival richness that is more comprehensive than multitude of countries. The archives were called the Treasury of Documents during the Ottoman Empire. Thus, aware of the significance of these treasures today, we are undertaking concrete steps to enable worldwide recognition of our archives.

With this understanding, we have a new and modern archive building which enables us to preserve our archives in the best physical conditions. We have also initiated the Digital Archives Project in 2014, aiming to digitize our documents to enable quick and easy access to documents in our archives. At the end of the third phase of the project in 2018 we have so far digitized 51 million pages of documents dated between 1919 to 2000. The project will continue into the fourth phase.

Furthermore, we are continuing our endeavours for the transfer of digital copies of our archive documents to the Document Search System of the State Archives. Through these works, historians and academicians from Türkiye and worldwide will have easy and quick access to documents regarding our history, in digital format.

With all these works, we will also gladly contribute to the objective evaluations of our history based on first-hand documents.

I would like to wish all researchers best of success in their endeavours.

Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu

  Minister of Foreign Affairs