Aliyev: Lake Sevan doesn’t exist, it’s Lake Goychа

President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, speaking at a session of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, declared that “there is no Lake Sevan, there is Lake Goycha.”

He further stated that Azerbaijanis have never embraced separatism, and thus, “the return of Azerbaijanis to their historical lands, i.e, the present-day Armenia, should not frighten the Armenian people,” Haqqin.az reports.

“As I have already said, we must return there not with tanks, but with cars,” he added, stressing that this process should involve state institutions, non-governmental organizations, and scientists.

Aliyev also claimed that “in the early 20th-century imperial Russian maps, almost all place names of present-day Armenia are of Azerbaijani origin, and there is no Lake Sevan, there is Lake Goycha.

We didn’t create those maps; they were drawn up by Tsarist Russia, which at the time resettled Armenians from Iran and Eastern Anatolia into Karabakh to change the region’s ethnic composition. These maps must be studied and made public,” Aliyev said.