Serbia and Turkey will sign a cooperation protocol next year to be able to make researches on Ottoman archives as well as Serbian archives.
The protocol envisages opening some Turkish documents in Serbian archives to Turkish researchers as well as to help Serbian researchers benefit from the documents in Ottoman archives, Director General of State Archives of Serbia Miroslav Perisic told AA on Monday.
The protocol will be singed in the beginning of next year.
Perisic said that Ottoman archives, which possessed more than 90 million documents, were one of the most important archives for the history of Balkans.
"Around 15,000 of those documents are related to Belgrade only. It indicates how important is that treasure for our culture and science," said Perisic, expressing the satisfaction for establishing such cooperation.
After signing the protocol, Serbian researchers who are fluent in Turkish language will have access to the Ottoman archives to study everything related to Serbia, primarily for the period before 1804.
"We know little about that period, historians call it "beheaded world". The most documents about Serbia and Serbs from that period are found in Ottoman archives," he said, adding that the protocol was of a great significance for Serbia and Serbian culture.
"Ottoman Empire had a very precise administration, not oriental and apathetic as we think. There are the most diverse documents in the archives," said Perisic.
He also said that Serbian archives possessed documents in Turkish language, adding that Turkish archivists were very interested in them.
A delegation from State Archives of Serbia visited Istanbul between December 24 and 27, and was received by director general of the State Archives of Turkey Ugur Unal. During the talks, parties agreed on the cooperation and signing the protocol scheduled for the beginning of 2014.
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