Turkey’s Baku Embassy commemorated the 19th anniversary of Khojaly massacre on Saturday, along with a series of events Azerbaijanis organized in the capital Baku to pay tribute to those who were brutally killed in the worst massacre of the Karabakh war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Speaking at the event in the embassy, Ankara University Professor Hikmet Özdemir urged Turkish nationals to take the lead to turn the world’s attention to the massacre.
Armenian armed forces attacked the small Khojaly city in Nagorno-Karabakh in 1992, predominantly populated by ethnic Azeris, killing in total of 613 civilians in a few hours of the night between Feb. 25 and Feb. 26. Among those killed, 106 were women and 83 were children. Fifty-six people were killed with outrageous brutality. Eight families were completely exterminated, and 25 children lost both parents while 130 children lost at least one parent.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, ministers, civil society organizations, along with opposition politicians visited the Khojaly monument in the capital city and urged the international community to heed to the grievances of Azerbaijanis with respect to the Armenian assault.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Saturday, at the anniversary of Khojaly massacre, that the relations between Turkey and Azerbaijan are not a love affair but stands by deep historic roots and strategic alliance. Erdoğan’s remarks came during the premiere of the documentary called “Caucasus Islamic Army” at TRT Radio House. Erdoğan said speaking the same language, “our nations [Turks and Azerbaijanis] were together in each step of the history. We are the countries doing everything the brotherhood ties demanded alongside the history.” “Throughout the history, we were together, our heart beat together with Azerbaijan”, Erdoğan said.
Khojaly massacre was also commemorated in different parts of the world and across Turkey. A group of Azerbaijani youth protested the Armenian brutality in Khojaly in a freezing winter of 1992 by wearing masks, symbolizing the Khojaly martyrs and lying down on the ground in downtown Taksim. More than 100 young men and women lied down at the same time under the rain and kept their positions for a long time.
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