On December 29, 2022, by the decision of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, 3 departments dedicated to "Western Azerbaijan" were opened. At the Institute of History named after A.A. Bakikhanov, the Department of the History of Western Azerbaijan was created, at the Institute of Folklore - the Ddepartment of Folklore of Western Azerbaijan, and at the Institute of Linguistics named after Nasimi - the Department of toponyms of Western Azerbaijan. It should be noted that all this was preceded by the meeting of the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev with a group of intellectuals from the "Community of Western Azerbaijan", which took place on December 18, 2022. The so-called "Community of Western Azerbaijan" is the public organization "Union of Refugees of Azerbaijan" renamed in August 2022. In his interview, Aliyev told: “I am sure that the day will come when both the refugees of Karabakh and our compatriots from Western Azerbaijan, their relatives, sons, grandchildren, will return to their historical territory, to Western Azerbaijan. Present-day Armenia (Aliyev calls the territory of the Republic of Armenia the place of birth, homeland, etc.) is our historical land, which is confirmed by many documents and historical maps” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvs2TU7tg_w

Continuing to build a chain of unfounded accusations against Armenians, Ilham Aliyev notes that Armenians both in Karabakh and in “Western Azerbaijan” destroyed Azerbaijani historical and religious monuments, in particular, 65 out of 67 mosques in Zangezur. In his speech, Aliyev presents the Armenians of Armenia (according to him - "Western Azerbaijan") and Karabakh as an alien people and says that Armenians never had a state in the South Caucasus: "In 1918, one of the first criminal decisions against the newly created Azerbaijan People's Republic was the donation of Yerevan, its historic city to Armenia. Where is the historical center of Yerevan? The historical center was Azerbaijani, so it was destroyed. Moreover, Zangezur, one of the historical lands of Azerbaijan, was separated from Azerbaijan and annexed to Armenia.”

Aliyev ends his speech with the following statement: “With the implementation of hostilities on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, the cities of Western Azerbaijan are visible to our eyes. We see Sevan without binoculars. We want to peacefully return to our homeland, and we have historical, political and legal grounds for this. We have a concept for the return of Western Azerbaijanis, including holding international conferences, working with international institutions and the media, etc.”

The Azerbaijani authorities are trying to continue their criminal policy in a new direction - showing territorial, historical and cultural ambitions regarding the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia, the historical homeland and cultural heritage of the Armenian people.