Simon Krbec (photo by RFE/RL)

PRAGUE (Combined Sources)—The Turkish Embassy in the Czech Republic said it was “unhappy” that a prominent seminar was taking place its capital city focusing on the Armenian Genocide.

In his opening remarks, Armenia’s Ambassador to Prague, Tigran Seyranian, welcomed the seminar organized by the Research Center for Archeology of Evil and cited Franz Werfel’s “Forty Days of Musa Dagh” and commended the Czech Republic for commemorating April 24 every year, reported News.am

The seminar, which was held from June 18 to 20, was designed to highlight issues of racism, xenophobia and crimes against humanity and focused on the self-defense efforts in Musa Dagh, as well as Turkey’s continued policy of denial. Andrew Goldberg’s documentary entitled “The Armenian Genocide” was also screened.

But the center’s director Simon Krbec told RFE/RL that the Turkish Embassy in Prague was “unhappy” with the center for hosting the seminar and invited him and his colleagues to a meeting the day after the conference ended.

“We were asked why we chose, as they put it, a controversial issue such as the Armenian genocide for the conference,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian service. “They tried to explain that they are not happy with this content of the conference, especially considering the fact that from their point of view we did not invite some Turkish researchers to that conference.”

“We replied that we are not dividing historical research into some national or opposite sides, that we follow the mainstream of research on genocide studies in the world,” Krbec told RFE/RL. “We said that, for example, the International Association of Genocide Scholars recognized the Armenian genocide as genocide. So we don’t see a reason to invite some Turkish researchers.”

“They provided us with books about their version of what happened in the Ottoman Empire and they invited us to Istanbul to study their archives,” he added.