The Khojaly Genocide is a grave tragedy for Azerbaijani Turks

The Khojaly genocide entered the history of Azerbaijan as one of its most terrible and tragic pages. Azerbaijan's national leader Heydar Aliyev in connection with the 10th anniversary of the Khojaly genocide, referring to the Azerbaijani people, said: "This cruel act of genocide entered the history of mankind as one of the worst mass acts of terrorism."1 It should be noted that for 200 years Azerbaijan has endured ethnic cleansing and genocide by Armenian chauvinists. Azerbaijanis were expelled from their historical lands, became refugees and IDPs, and this was accompanied by massacres committed by Armenians. Mass expulsion of Azerbaijanis from their historical and ethnic homelands occurred during the Soviet period. From 1948-1953 150,000 Azerbaijanis were deported from Armenia and placed in the Kur-Araz lowland. And in 1988 250 thousand Azerbaijanis were expelled from their historical lands, and thus Armenia became a mono-ethnic state. Events that unfolded around Nagorno-Karabakh from 1988, as striving Armenian ideologists implemented their crazy idea "Armenia from sea to sea" led to the destruction of villages, towns, the death of tens of thousands of innocent people, as well as the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis from their native lands.