Media reports about Turkey's alleged plans to establish a military base in Azerbaijan are political speculation, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in an interview with VGTRK and RIA Novosti.
"In short, it is not needed. There is no need for this".
"Today it is practically impossible to hide any military base anywhere in the world", the president said, calling the emergence of such plans "political speculation".
The Shusha Declaration on Allied Relations between Azerbaijan and Turkey contains a clause that provides for mutual military assistance in the event of threat and aggression, he recalled.
„It is the duty of both Azerbaijan and Turkey to come to the aid if one or the other side is faced with an external threat, external aggression. "Therefore, this point of the declaration essentially makes the creation of permanent military infrastructures in one or the other territory absolutely unnecessary," the president explained.
Aliev pointed out that over more than 30 years of military cooperation between the countries, Turkey and its military structures have played an important role in modernizing the Azerbaijani army and bringing it to high standards in combat readiness, operational planning, situation analysis and military intelligence. He stressed that Baku, thanks to Ankara, has achieved a "high level of operational capability in military operations."
“We are very grateful to our Turkish friends for this assistance”, the president concluded.
Baku expects Russian investments in the reconstruction of Karabakh and will be glad to see Russian companies come there, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in an interview with VGTRK and RIA Novosti.
“The first investment project was implemented by Tatarstan. This is the Kamaz service center in the Jabrail region. We are waiting for investments," Aliyev said.
Nagorno-Karabakh declared unilateral secession from the Azerbaijan SSR 36 years ago. After the collapse of the USSR and the armed conflict with Azerbaijan (1992-1994), the region existed for many years as an unrecognized republic populated by Armenians.
In September 2020, fighting there resumed. On the night of November 10, the parties agreed on a ceasefire. The Armenian side lost all the regions around Nagorno-Karabakh and several territories that were part of the Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous region during the Soviet era. Russian peacekeepers are deployed in the region.
Almost three years after the second war in the region, Baku launched a military operation in Karabakh on September 19, which lasted one day. As a result, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced that the country had restored its territorial integrity, and the de facto authorities in the region announced the “self-dissolution” of the unrecognized republic as of January 1, 2024.