Sunday, January 16, 2022

Toponymic War: Armenian or Azerbaijani Placenames on the Google Maps?

 link (Armenian viewpoint)    vs.    link (Azerbaijan's viewpoint) 

In the territories controlled by Azerbaijan, a number of Armenian toponyms of Artsakh in the Google Maps application have been replaced by Azerbaijani ones. As RIA Novosti reports, this was stated by the president of the Azerbaijan Space Agency Samedin Asadov. In December, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan, through official diplomatic channels, appealed to Google with a request to abandon the Armenian names of the territories of Artsakh under the control of Baku.









In January 2022, the Artsakh Ombudsman Gegham Stepanyan sent a letter to Google urging not to remove Armenian geographical names from digital maps. The names of the cities and regions of Artsakh under the control of Azerbaijan are indicated in the Google Maps application in Azerbaijani and Armenian. He also expressed confidence that the search engine system will completely remove Armenian geographical names from maps in the future.

In December 2021, Azerbaijan raised a question with "Google" due to the distortion of"Google maps"annex of  geographical names in the Karabakh region of the country. Thus, along with the indication of official names in Azeri the annex also publishes falsified names in the Armenian language. Google was sent a list of the toponyms of Azerbaijan due to the distortion of territorial names of the country, the press service of the Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijasn said.

Besides, a national report drawn up by the Ministry of Ecology of Azerbaijan was sent to the annual session of the UN Expert Group on geographical names. The report contains a list of 4,589 settlements of the country in Azeri, English and Russian languages with official standardized names. Also, the list covers 125 geographic locations whose names were distorted due to the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict.

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