Armenia appropriated hundreds of toponyms in Western Azerbaijan and Karabakh - MP

By Trend

The names of over 700 places in Western Azerbaijan and Karabakh have been changed, Chairman of the Commission on Toponymy under the Azerbaijani Parliament, MP, Vice-President of Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (ANAS), Academician Isa Habibbayli told Trend.

Habibbayli added that each of the places was artificially and violently Armenianized.

“Over 200 of these places are located on the territory of Karabakh. Just like Armenia barbarously plundered the Azerbaijani lands, they illegally renamed the Azerbaijani place names in Nagorno-Karabakh and Western Azerbaijan, giving them new names. This is absolutely unacceptable, there is no such thing in international practice. Even during World War II, the Nazis didn’t rename the names of the places they occupied," said the ANAS vice-president.

"Renaming of Azerbaijani toponyms is one of the factors that openly show that Armenia is terrorist, invader, and falsifier. They destroyed the houses of Azerbaijanis in Karabakh, Azerbaijani cemeteries, historical and cultural monuments, trying to make them forget Azerbaijani place names, thus wishing to erase the traces of Azerbaijani history from these places,” said Habibbayli.

The MP added that the new names that the Armenians used to name places and settlements are generally not connected either with their history or geography.