"We want to see more active role of Turkey", S. Abiyev says

"Today, Azerbaijan is the center of the Caucasus and those pursuing their strategic objectives here apart from Azerbaijan are making a mistake. They must work together with Azerbaijan in the Caucasus as this is necessitated by the economic, political and other potentialities of Azerbaijan", Defense Minister Colonel-General Safar Abiyev told a visiting director of the strategic department of Turkish armed forces general staff Lieutenant-General Nusret Tasdeler.

The distinguished guest voiced a hope for a successful development of military cooperation with Azerbaijan and pointed out that development of bilateral relations and collaboration within the NATO “Partnership for Peace” program meets national interests of both countries. Mr. Tasdeler stated that Turkish-Azeri political cooperation was progressing in parallel. He said, “If the Azeri-Armenian conflict is not resolved on the basis of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, stability in South Caucasus is out of the question. Being one nation in two states, we are capable of achieving this”.

Touching upon the fact that the so-called Armenian genocide issue has been raised by a number of European parliaments, General Tasdeler stated that Armenians concoct these fables in order to make the world community forget the atrocities they themselves unleashed on Azerbaijanis in recent years.

Expressing his solidarity with the Turkish guest, Gen. Abiyev said, “Caucasus is currently the center of conflicting strategic interests of many countries. We want to see Turkey play a more active role in the region. If Turkey shows what it is capable of, Armenians will drop their genocide claims. Today, Armenia must be shown its place and the world must realize that Armenia is an aggressor state.”

The Azeri minister highlighted that Turkish and Azeri armed forces are two armies of one nation. “We must forge all our relations together and fight against enemies together. This is an axiom”, he said.

In conclusion, S. Abiyev stated, “Azerbaijan and Turkey must be in close touch, because we believe that the day of unity of the Turkic world is not too far off”.*