Azerbaijan includes fictitious names in military allies’ list

Azerbaijan has included fictitious names in a big list of states with which it ever concluded military partnership agreements, according to the coordinator of the Armenian military website Razminfo.am.

Speaking to Tert.am, Karen Vartanesyan said he knows that the list includes countries other than Turkey, Palestine and Israel, which are  known to be Azerbaijan’s allies. “I am practically sure that those figures are published for creating a propaganda effect in an attempt to flaunt that so many countries support Azerbaijan in the fight against Armenia. But the reality is that Armenia also can have similar agreements with those countries. What’s even more, agreements and treaties of the kind very often have no significance at all,” he said, describing such efforts as diplomatic compliments.

The website earlier reported that Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Defense has cooperation agreements and memorandums of understanding with 34 countries and cited an Azerbaijani source as saying that negotiations are now underway for signing deals with 26 more states.  

Commenting on the report, Vrtanesyan said he thinks that Azerbaijan may be really cooperating with some of the states mentioned. “Let us try to make out, for instance, what aid Turkmenistan can offer to Azerbaijan given that it has a territorial dispute with the latter. That country is unlikely to render serious assistance to Azerbaijan. The same goes for Kyrgyzstan and so on and so forth,” the expert said.

He added that such scary figures could be nothing more than an attempt to show that the world sides with Azerbaijan.

According to Sargis Asatryan, an expert in Azerbaijani studies, other states’ agreements with Azerbaijan are basically anchored on economic cooperation stemming from the country’s oil and natural gas resources and energy carriers.

“As for agreements with other countries' defense agencies, it applies to technical military cooperation. And Azerbaijan is trying to more diversify its arms market, i.e. - to acquire modern weapons of most different kinds from different countries. Those are the questions that should trouble us much,” he said, agreeing that the list is intended for propaganda purposes.

Commenting on the report, the political analyst Robert Mehrabyan sees nothing strange about the kind of list. “Any state maintains relations, both diplomatic and technical-military,” he said, considering the publication of fictitious names a regular practice for states.

“And in the press releases of our Ministry of Defense too, it is possible to provide such reports indicating double-digit figures,” he noted.

As for possible hazards, Mehrabyan said he doesn’t think that Azerbaijan’s armament policies should be perceived as something new. He cited Russia as Azerbaijan’s number one ally enriching its arms supplies.