YEREVAN. – In order to resist Azerbaijan’s anti-Armenian propaganda in terms of historical monuments, Armenia needs to inform the European community about it viewpoint.     

Ruben Ghalichyan, who is an expert on medieval maps, stated the aforesaid during a press conference on Wednesday. 

In his words, Azerbaijan claims that Armenia is a “territory of Azerbaijan” and all Armenian cultural monuments are Azerbaijani.  

“Sadly, the response of our scholars and historians were in Russian and in Armenian, for domestic use,” the expert stressed. 

As per Ghalichyan, the Azerbaijanis also claim that all Christian temples located in Karabakh belonged to the Albanians, who in turn were the ancestors of the Azerbaijanis.    

“According to Azerbaijani historians, the Armenian monuments were built by the Muslim Albanians. But they had become Muslims in the 7th-8th centuries, whereas our monuments were built in the 6th-18th centuries; that is, they could not have built Christian temples while already being Muslims,” he stated.    

Ghalichyan added that the Azerbaijanis are convinced that there were no Armenians in the Caucasus before 1826 to 1828.    

“If Armenians did not live here, how was it that Shah Abbas had exiled 400,000 Armenians [here]?” the scholar asked.   

Ruben Ghalichyan also stressed that the Azerbaijanis are destroying the Armenian monuments at a national level.