'Turkey to continue protecting rights of Azerbaijan'

By Emin Avundukluoglu

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey has always protected the rights of Azerbaijan in every platform and it will continue to do so, Turkey's parliament speaker said on Thursday.

"Armenia should give up its aggressive and expansionist attitude, and accept Upper Karabakh as an eternal Turkish territory," Mustafa Sentop said in an opening ceremony of an exhibition on the 1992 Khojaly massacre.

Sentop called on the international community to have the same attitude with Turkey against the Upper Karabakh issue.

"Armenia should retreat from the territories in Caucasus where it has occupied," he said.

Azerbaijan and Armenia, two former Soviet republics, fought a war over the disputed region of Upper Karabakh in 1988-1994. The two signed a cease-fire in 1994, but never agreed on a peace settlement. Upper Karabakh, which is in essence independent, remains unrecognized internationally as a separate state.

Turkey maintains that any resolution of the Upper Karabakh conflict should take into account Azerbaijan's territorial integrity.

Turkey and Armenia have no diplomatic relations.

The responsible ones have got away with the Khojaly massacre, Sentop also said.

He added that sooner or later, these murderers -- with blood on their hands -- will pay for what they did.

The 1992 Khojaly massacre is considered one of the bloodiest incidents committed by Armenian forces against Azerbaijani civilians for control of the now-occupied Upper Karabakh region.

The two-hour Armenian offensive killed 613 Azerbaijani citizens -- including 106 women, 63 children and 70 elderly -- and critically injured 487 others, according to Azerbaijani figures.

Also, 150 of the 1,275 Azerbaijanis that the Armenians captured during the massacre remain missing. In the massacre, eight families were completely wiped out, while 130 children lost one parent, and 25 children lost both.