On September 15, Artur Hovhannisyan, the Secretary of Armenia's ruling Civil Contract party, announced that Armenian authorities had decided to remove the image of Mount Ararat (Ağrı Dağı in Turkish) from passport stamps at border crossings to avoid sending dangerous messages to neighboring countries.

During his statement, Hovhannisyan emphasized that there was no conspiracy behind this decision and therefore "there is no need to give it an emotional or sensational background." He suggested that "it is possible that the next step will be the removal of the image of the mountain from all our symbols, as well as from the documents and seals that our country previously used."

Hovhannisyan underlined that Ararat holds symbolic meaning and does not represent any territorial claims against neighboring states, stressing, "I believe that the concepts of 'real' and 'historical' Armenia are artificial."

At the same time, addressing the issue of possibly excluding the mountain’s image from Armenia’s state emblem, he stated that such discussions were not underway.