Turkey's EU minister calls on Germany yo opens its archives on 'genocide'

Turkey's EU Minister and Chief Negotiator Egemen Bagis said yesterday that Germany should open its archives regarding the Armenian genocide allegations in order to help clarify the issue. Speaking to the German Welt Online, Bagis said, "Germany was a strong ally of Armenians in 1915. What is the content of German archives? Germans should open their archives and give documents to historians so that they are examined." Bagis added that all documents he had seen regarding the issue did not define incidents of 1915 as "genocide" and that freedom of thought was among core European values. Bagis reiterated that approximately 2.5 million Muslims and 650,000 Armenians have lost their lives during the World War I, adding that politicians were elected to enact laws not retrospectively, but for the future.