ISTANBUL -- Though seeking to appease the Armenian community on Friday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan still faces the heat for his threat to expel thousands of Armenian illegal immigrants.

"Turkish Republic's past is full of deportation towards minorities. These words gave so much harm to Armenian migrants, the same harm they would face if they were deported," Markar Esayan, a columnist of local Taraf daily, told Xinhua on Saturday.

Esayan called Erdogan's statement as "gaffe," adding that the number of Armenians living in Turkey is not 170,000 as many as what Erdogan described.

In case of a deportation, the columnist said that the situation would be more complicated for Turkey.

"Turkey maintains that the 1915 events aren't genocide. But she has already lost herself around the world. Immigration issue is a very fragile subject in the world and you choose to sauce this with ethnicity and turn into a power show," Esayan criticized Erdogan.

Columnist Cengiz Candar, one of many in the Turkish media who chided Erdogan for his remarks, said in his column in the Radikal daily that Erdogan should apologize to Armenians.

The Turkish prime minister, in an interview late Tuesday with BBC Turkish service, said there were 100,000 Armenians living in the country illegally alongside Turkey's 70,000-strong Armenian community.

In comments on U.S. and Swedish approvals of resolutions earlier this month branding the massacres of Armenians in the late Ottoman Empire as genocide, Erdogan said the Armenian diaspora was causing harm both to the process of reconciliation with Armenia and to Armenians.

"If necessary, I may have to tell these 100,000 (Armenians) to go back to their country because they are not my citizens. I don't have to keep them in my country," Erdogan said.

Erdogan's remarks have drew ire from Turkish media commentators and rights groups, saying the threat meant Armenian workers, most of whom work for monthly wages of a few hundred liras, were being used as a bargaining chip in foreign policy.

Armenian Migration Agency Director Gagik Yeganyan said that Turkey turned its Armenian citizens into a "political negotiation" issue.

"Official numbers differ from Erdogan's remarks," said Yeganyan to an Armenian news website Panorama.

"The flow to Turkey isn't that much because Armenians had reservations towards Turkey," Yeganyan added.

According to a study by Alin Ozinyan from Eurasia Institution, nearly 6 million Armenians entered Turkey between 2000 and 2007.

The exact number of Armenian workers is unknown, but the Turkish authorities have been aware of the presence of the illegal ones, most of them working as cleaners and baby sitters in Turkish families and mainly in Istanbul.

Artak Shakaryan, Armenia-Turkey Projects Manager of Eurasia Partnership Foundation, told Xinhua that he did not find Turkish prime minister's remarks right.

The Armenian researcher said that Turkey in fact can send some groups of Armenians just to show force, but he did not believe that this would lead to a full scale of deportation of Armenian migrants.

"Because in this case Erdogan would have nothing to threaten. The Armenian migrants in Istanbul now are volunteer hostages to use in foreign policy and Ankara will never give out that trump card," said Shakaryan.

Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisian said on Wednesday that "When the Turkish prime minister allows himself to make such statements, it immediately brings up memories of the events of 1915," according to local media.

In face of criticism, Erdogan has lashed out at the media, claiming that news outlets mis-reported his remarks about deporting Armenian workers.

Erdogan on Friday dismissed the criticism and reassured Turkey' s Armenian community that they are not being targeted.

"We have never had any problems with our Armenian citizens," Erdogan told a meeting of his Justice and Development Party in Ankara. He complained that he was misquoted in the media, which he said misrepresented his remarks to suggest that they are targeting Turkey's Armenian community.

Erdogan said he suggested the "possibility to expel 100,000 Armenian undocumented workers in Turkey" in response to U.S. and Swedish lawmakers passing resolutions recognizing the Armenian " genocide" when he spoke to the BBC Turkish service.

The Turkish prime minister emphasized that "baseless genocide claims" will harm the normalization efforts with Armenia.

Armenians claim that more than 1.5 million Armenians were killed in a systematic genocide in the hands of the Ottomans during World War I, before modern Turkey was created in 1923.

The Turkish government insists the Armenians were victims of widespread chaos and governmental breakdown as the 600-year-old empire collapsed in the years before 1923, and has been trying to normalize relations with Armenia.

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