ERZURUM - Commemoration ceremony took place in Alaca village in Eastern Erzurum province to commemorate 278 Turkish citizens who had been massacred by Armenians on March 10, 1918.
Ataturk University Turkish-Armenian Relations Research Center Deputy Director Erol Kurkcuoglu said the Turkish army, who had to fight with the Russian army in Eastern front in the 1st World War, also had to fight with the Armenian gangs behind the front.
Kurkcuoglu said, ''because we failed to convey the fact that genocide had been committed on Turks between 1915 and 1919, the imaginary Armenian scenarios had started to be accepted as if they were real in the world public. As the Turkish nation, we have to face attacks toward our history in a way which we did not deserve. There are 185 mass graves belonging to Moslem Turks in the East who had been massacred by the Armenian gangs, and there are thousands of documents in the archives about the massacres. As the Turkish historians, basing on the historical documents, we say there had been a massacre on Turkish people in Eastern Anatolia, Caucasia, Nakhechevan and Azerbaijan.''
(AY-AÖ) 10.03.2003