Karabakh victory removed black spot from Türkiye's history, says Erdogan

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that the meeting of the Turkic states in Ankara earlier this year was the manifestation of Türkiye's sensitivity towards its relations with the Turkic world.

Erdogan particularly outlined his meetings with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev as an obvious example of this sensitivity.

In the meantime, Erdogan also severely criticized the candidate from the National Union, the chairman of the opposition Republican People's Party, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who will compete with him in the runoff elections on May 28.

“Kilicdaroglu wants Türkiye to endure the shame of the events at the Boraltan Bridge. They [Azerbaijanis] appealed to us to be killed not by Russians, not by Armenians, but by us. Now, after the liberation of Karabakh, we got rid of this black spot. From the very beginning, we have taken a position on this issue based on humanism, Islam, and justice,” Erdogan said.

The "Boraltan Tragedy" occurred in 1944 on the border of Türkiye and Soviet Azerbaijan, when the Republican People's Party was in power in the fraternal country.

Official Ankara surrendered more than 100 Azerbaijanis to the Soviet troops despite their call to kill them before the seizure by the Soviet army. As a result, they were shot by the communist regime on the Boraltan bridge on the Azerbaijani-Turkish border.