“Geghard” Scientific and Analytical Foundation has addressed a recent interview with Hasan Hasanov published in Azerbaijani media, saying that Hasanov’s work presents a distortion of various historical episodes. According to
“Armenpress”, the statement of the Foundation reads:
“Recently, Azerbaijani media published an interview with “diplomat, historian, and doctor of historical sciences” Hasan Hasanov, which presents a condensed distortion of various historical episodes.
“Hasanov claims that “the Azerbaijani people were called Atropatene-Azerbaijani in Greco-Roman sources 2300 years before Stalin.”
“The statements in the interview are not only pseudo-scientific and full of lies, but also contradict logic. There is no need to argue that the state created by Atropates in the fourth century BC cannot have anything to do with the modern state of Azerbaijan. Furthermore, Hasanov pushes the creation of Atropatene back three centuries, dating it to the destruction of the Assyrian empire in 612 BC.
“Moreover, in order to “give weight” to his claim, the author quotes Roman and Assyrian sources from a later period, which do not even hint that Atropatene dates to the seventh century BC or has any relation to present-day Azerbaijan,” the statement reads.
“To the question of why, during the Tsarist period and the early Soviet period, the current Azerbaijanis were referred to as Tatars, Hasanov has a “genius” answer: he claims that the name “Azerbaijani” was banned.
“The reality is that Azerbaijanis residing in the territory of modern Azerbaijan began to be called Azerbaijanis according to the policies implemented by the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1937, the term “Azerbaijani people” was mentioned in the constitution of Soviet Azerbaijan, and in 1939, representatives of the titular people of Azerbaijan (as well as the Turkic-speaking Muslims of Soviet Armenia and Soviet Georgia) were designated as “Azerbaijani” in the All-Union Census. Although Hasanov notes that Stalin had nothing to do with the creation of the ethnonym “Azerbaijani,” it was during Stalin’s leadership that this name became established for the current Azerbaijanis,” the statement by “Geghard” SAF reads.
Other articles by “Geghard” regarding this issue are:
Historiographical falsifications regarding the history of Azerbaijan
There is no toponym Azerbaijan in any mediaeval map, Ruben Galichian
