The Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin has responded to the false statements by the chairman of the Caucasus Muslims' Board, Allahshukur Pashazade.

The Mother See stated as follows:

“At the recent session of the Council of Ghazis held in Baku [the capital of Azerbaijan], the chairman of the Caucasus Muslims' Board, Sheikh-ul-Islam Allahshukur Pashazade, assuming the role of spreading the lies of the Azerbaijani propaganda machine, once again targeted the Armenian people and the Armenian Church with hatred and hostility.

Outdoing himself in spreading falsehood, Pashazade has declared that as if Armenian holy sites functioning in Armenia and the region for dozens of centuries, even the 1700-year-old Mother Cathedral of Holy Etchmiadzin, are located on ‘historical Azerbaijani lands’ and Armenians have ‘appropriated’ these territories. Pashazade concludes the series of absurd claims by presenting the Armenian Apostolic Church as a threat to the countries of the region.

It seems ridiculous that the spiritual leader of the people, who received the ethnonym ‘Azerbaijani’ in the second half of the 1930s as a result of the nation-building efforts of the Soviet authorities, is attempting to dispute the historicity of the Armenian people, the value and affiliation of whose millennia-old creative life and spiritual and cultural heritage are universally recognized realities. It is even more surprising that the accusations directed at the Armenian nation of appropriating the values ​​of others are made by a representative of a country [i.e. Azerbaijan] whose very name of whose state is appropriated from another country and people.

The same cheap style of work also underlies Pashazade’s speculation about the name of Russia and the New Nakhichevan Diocese [of the Armenian Apostolic Church]. It should be taken as a note that the settlements near Rostov-on-Don [city of Russia] were named ‘New Nakhichevan’ by the decision of the authorities of Tsarist Russia itself, as an expression of respect for the Armenians who moved to that area from historically Armenian Nakhichevan.

Such reprehensible manifestations of hostility and falsification, which are constantly present in the public speech by the spiritual leader of Azerbaijan, are in themselves evidence of the reality that Azerbaijan itself is, in Pashazade’s words, a threat to neighboring countries in the region.

And finally, it is necessary to state once and for all that lies and falsehood can never turn into truth, no matter how often and enthusiastically they are repeated.”