On October 25-26, Facebook users published a post (1,2,3,4,5,6,7), according to which the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, said that Davit Gareji is part of Georgia. According to the posts, Aliyev made this statement after studying the maps sent by the Prime Minister of Georgia, Irakli Garibashvili. According to the posts, the President of Azerbaijan has promised to remove the checkpoint from the Davit Gareji complex, withdraw the armed men, and renounce all claims related to the ownership of the complex.
The claim that Ilham Aliyev said that “Gareji is Georgia” is false. The actual post was originally published by an anonymous Facebook user on October 24 and is satirical in nature.
It is worth noting that the text of the shared posts is almost identical, which suggests that Facebook users were relying on the same source.
The information about Aliyev’s alleged statement was published by the anonymous Facebook account “Farna Korini” on October 24, and it has satirical content. From the comments on the post, it can be seen that some Facebook users took it seriously. After that, the author of the post noted in the comments that the post was a joke and therefore did not reflect reality.
It should be noted that no recent comments from the President of Azerbaijan regarding the Davit Gareji complex can be found in open sources.
The slogan “Gareji is Georgia” was actively present in the 2020 pre-election campaign and was related to the cartographers’ case. On October 7, 2020, the General Prosecutor’s Office arrested the former members of the Delimitation and Demarcation Government Commission, Iveri Melashvili and Natalia Ilichova, and accused them of violating the territorial integrity of Georgia.
According to 15 different non-governmental organizations, the case of the cartographers is politically motivated for several reasons: the investigation on a sensitive issue for the population of Georgia began in the pre-election period; The leaders of the ruling “Georgian Dream” party made politicized and populist statements on the current case, violating the principle of presumption of innocence, and selective approaches were revealed in the investigation process.
In connection with the case of cartographers, Iveri Melashvili repeatedly became the target of discrediting campaigns, involving far-rights, pro-Kremlin, and pro-government groups. For more information, see Myth Detector articles:
- How Facebook Accounts Distorted Iveri Melashvili’s TV Comments
- Clickbait websites with Russian IP addresses, ultranationalists, pro-Kremlin and government groups against cartographers
- Restoration of River Jakistskali’s riverbed or ceding 6 hectares of land to Turkey?
“Myth Detector” has repeatedly verified satirical stories spread as real information in the past.
About the Source:
Eter Bolkvadze-Jortmenadze, who is a supporter of the “Georgian Dream”, is one of the Facebook users who has disseminated Aliyev’s false statement. In July 2021, she was one of the first to spread the information that the deceased operator of “TV Pirveli”, Lekso Lashkarava, was exposed for committing crimes at various times and may have died as a result of an overdose. Bolkvadze-Jortmenadze shared personal information about Lashkarava before the official briefing of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Eter Bolkvadze-Jortmenadze was also involved in various discrediting campaigns and has spread false information in the past.
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