Speaker of Turkish parliament: Karabakh will forever remain Azerbaijani territory

Numan Kurtulmus, the Speaker of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, said on Thursday in a a conference in Dublin that "Armenia will remain Azerbaijani territory till Doomsday."

In response to remarks by Annita Demetriou, the President of Cypriot House of Representatives, who reportedly said in her speech that "Turkey is the occupying country in Cyprus, and Azerbaijan is the occupying country in Nagorno-Karabakh," Kurtulmus said in the Conference of Speakers of European Union Parliaments:

"There is indeed an occupation in Cyprus, that's true. The occupier is not Turkey though, but the Greek Cypriot side who destroyed the legal entity of the Republic of Cyprus that was founded in 1960, and who occupied the Republic. Turkey, as a guarantor country, could not have remained silent and just watched the destruction of the Republic of Cyprus by groups seeking Enosis, and it did not."

Also claiming that the takeover of Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijan was not an "occupation" but "the act of a people liberating their own land," Kurtulmus added:

"Karabakh will remain Azerbaijani territory and will be held by Azerbaijani people till Doomsday."