The Turkish intellectuals who visited Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) in September habe denied recently published reports that they are facing a criminal proceeding, Agos reports.

In recent comments to the publication, Sait Cetinoglu, Ufuk Uras, Ali Bayramoglu and Erol Katırcioglu said they only responded to Turkey’s Justice Ministry as part of an investigation launched by the Azerbaijani law enforcement authorities. “They haven’t instituted any criminal case against us; neither have we been interrogated for the visit to Artsakh,” they said.

The intellectuals added that they explained the reasons of the visit in a separate letter sent to Azerbaijani top leaders. “But we didn’t apologize to the country’s leadership. We only stated that we frequently visit conflict zones for first-hand information on the ground. We didn’t use such words as ‘our apologies’ or ‘forgive us’. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Chavushoglu asked us to do that but we refused to,” they said.

All the three, who visited Artsakh on September 22 as part of a trip to Armenia, are accused of ‘illegally crossing Azerbaijan’s state border’. They were later included on the international wanted list.