IGDIR, Turkey
For two Azerbaijani Turks the latest war of words over the deaths of Armenians in 1915 in the Ottoman Empire bring back memories of their own flight from Armenia in the 1930s.
Bayram Budanur and Emir Gunes were children when their families had to escape Soviet-ruled Armenia in 1936 following atrocities carried out against the Azerbaijani minority by Armenian gangs.
The families fled the same Azerbaijani district of Yerevan, crossing the border to settle in the Turkish province of Igdir nearly 80 years ago. They were among around 100,000 ethnic Azerbaijanis who left Yerevan in the early 20th century.
Last week, Pope Francis and the European Parliament backed Armenian claims that the Ottoman troops committed genocide against Armenians in 1915 as fighting waged between Russia and the Ottoman Empire on the latter’s eastern borders.
The 1915 events took place during World War I when a portion of the Armenian population living in the Ottoman Empire sided with the invading Russians and revolted against the empire.
The Ottoman Empire relocated Armenians in eastern Anatolia following the revolts and there were Armenian casualties during the process.
Armenia has demanded an apology and compensation, while Turkey has officially refuted Armenian allegations over the incidents saying that, although Armenians died during the relocations, many Turks also lost their lives in attacks carried out by Armenian gangs in Anatolia.
"We were seven siblings but Armenians killed my five brothers," Bayram, 85, told The Anadolu Agency. "My father took my mum, my uncle, my brother and me and fled to Turkey."
Emir, 84, said his family decided to escape after an Armenian gang armed with machine guns arrived in their neighborhood.
"One day they came to our village and huddled us together," he said. "They had put us in the village’s biggest barn and killed us with machine guns.
"My mother was killed at the scene and I was beside her, but the Armenian fighters assumed that I was dead."
According to Erol Kurkcuoglu, a professor at the Turkey-Armenia Relations Research Center based at Ataturk University in Erzurum, more than 500,000 Turks were killed by Armenians in the early 20th century.
