Massacre of Turks by Armenians

Grandchildren of the victims living in the village watched the excavation, conducted under the supervision of Van Yuzuncu Yil University’s Professor Abdulselam Ulucam and the Turkish History Foundation. Yusuf Halacoglu, chairman of the foundation, said they had found nearly 100 mass graves of people massacred by the Armenians during their research and that they planned to open up all of the mass graves in order to disprove Armenian allegations of genocide. Noting that nearly 150 people had lost their lives in the massacre at Gedikli, Halacoglu said some of them had been buried by their relatives and that 96 bodies were found in the mass grave.

Halacoglu stated that the Armenians had been waging a worldwide campaign in support of their genocide allegations for years, while Turkey to date had done nothing to shed light on the realities of the situation. Adding that the Armenians had launched 41,000 Internet sites alleging that the Turks had "committed genocide," Halacoglu commented: "We have proved by these mass graves that the Armenians massacred the Turks. If they have this kind of proof, they should reveal it. They should say, ‘They massacred there; there is a mass grave here,’ so that we can open it up and have a look."

Habib Guler, Emin Oztop / Igdir / TURKEY