President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Tuesday commemorated the Khojaly massacre during his visit to the Azerbaijani capital Baku.

“Tomorrow, we will commemorate the 28th anniversary of the Khojaly massacre. In front of humanity, one of the biggest savageries of the 20th century was committed in Khojaly without discriminating between the innocent, elderly, women and children. A total of 613 brothers and sisters, including 106 women and 63 children, were brutally martyred. We did not forget the Khojaly massacre, which was recorded in history as ‘dark night,’ and we will not forget," Erdoğan said during a news conference with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev.

The Armenian occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh – a disputed territory between Azerbaijan and Armenia – led to the closing of the frontier with Turkey, which sides with Baku in the drawn-out dispute.

The Khojaly Massacre is commemorated every year in Turkey and regarded as one of the bloodiest and most controversial incidents of the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan for control of the now-occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region between 1988 and 1994.