ERZURUM, Turkey
Excavations in eastern Turkey have shown that thousands of Muslim civilians were killed by Armenian gangs during World War I, Turkish researchers have claimed.
Erol Kurkcuoglu, professor at Ataturk University’s Turkey-Armenia Relations Research Center in Erzurum, said teams from the center had discovered 185 mass graves since 1986.
The bodies of 5,000 Turkish Muslims were found in 15 graves in the eastern provinces of Erzurum, Bitlis, Giresun, Ardahan, Kars and Igdir, Kurkcuoglu told the Anadolu Agency.
“The excavations revealed that defenseless Muslim Turk civilians were massacred by Armenian gangs,” Kurkcuoglu added.
“We carried out excavations in Erzurum’s western town of Alaca and reached the bodies of 278 victims.”
Yasar Kop, assistant professor at Tbilisi’s Caucasus University, claimed that at least 47,000 Turks had been killed by Armenians in Kars province, where bloodstains and scorch marks could still be seen at the site of one massacre near a mosque.
