17 November 2015

Armenians were settled in that area in the middle of the 19th century. If you look at the maps of the Tsarist Russia of the beginning of the 20th century you will see that the absolute majority of the names of the cities and villages of all the toponymes of today’s territory of Armenia have Azerbaijani origin. In 1918, when after the collapse of the Russian Empire the first Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan was established, one of the first decrees of that republic was to transfer Iravan from Azerbaijan to Armenia. Today’s capital of Armenia is our historic city of Iravan, population of which in the beginning of the 20th century was 80 percent of Azerbaijani origin. Today, it is completely ethnically cleansed. So history and international law supports our position. As you can imagine this issue is number one for Azerbaijan, for every citizen of Azerbaijan. Despite these tragic events and occupation which continues until now, Azerbaijan managed to achieve great success in transformation.