ERZURUM - Associate Prof. Erol Kurkcuoglu, director of the Ataturk University Turkish-Armenian Relations Study Center, said on Saturday that historians' recording Khojaly massacre as a crime against humanity would be the best answer to the allegations of so-called Armenian genocide.
Releasing a statement on the 13th anniversary of the massacre, Kurkcuoglu recalled, ''Azerbaijani town of Khojaly (Xocali) became a symbol of unprecedented brutality against peaceful civilians and crimes against humanity. On February 26th, 1992, Armenian armed forces massacred 613 civilians including 106 women and 63 children and destroyed the town in what the Human Rights Watch called 'the largest massacre to date in the conflict'. They also took 1,275 Azerbaijani people hostage.''
''Three days after the massacre, Chingiz Mustafayev, the cameraman of K-25 Studio, filmed the aftermath of what happened in Khojaly together with foreign journalists. The film revealed that those who were massacred by Armenians, were innocent civilians,'' he said.
Kurkcuoglu added that historians' recording Khojaly massacre as a crime against humanity would be the best answer to the allegations of so-called Armenian genocide.