Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey Agree On Joint Military Exercises

Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey Agree On Joint Military Exercises

Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey are aggressors in the Southern Caucasus – they are attacking the historical nation of the area, the Armenians – they destroy cultural monuments and distort history. They are all three friends of the West, the US and of Israel.

While Turkey deny the genocide on the Armenians, and have closed their borders with Armenia, Azerbaijan threatens Armenia with war. This is because all three of them know inside themselves that their countries exist on Armenian ground. Instead of making peace and development they continue to be aggressors by suppressing the Armenians.

The defense ministers of Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey have now visited an Azerbaijani military unit in Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan, former Armenia. Armenian tradition says that Nakhchivan was founded by Noah.

The oldest material culture artifacts found in the region date back to the Neolithic Age. The region was part of Urartu, corresponding to the biblical Kingdom of Ararat or Kingdom of Van, an Iron Age kingdom centred on Lake Van in the Armenian Highlands.

In the early 6th century BC, the Urartian Kingdom was replaced by the Armenian Orontid dynasty. In the trilingual Behistun inscription, carved in 521 or 520 BC by the order of Darius the Great of Persia, the country referred to as Urartu in Assyrian is called Arminiya in Old Persian and Harminuia in Elamite.

The administrative capital is the city of Nakhchivan, one of the prominent cities of the Armenian Kingdom under the Artaxides, Arshakides and Bagratides dynasties from the 2nd century BC until the 11th century AD. At the beginning of the 12th century Nakhchivan became the capital of Atabek’s state. At the start of the 20th century Nakhchivan was the capital of a district of Erivan Governorate of the Russian Empire.

Traditionally, the king of Armenia, Tigranes I, was said to have be the founder of Jugha. Existing as a village in the early Middle Ages, it grew into a town between the 10th and 13th centuries, with a population that was almost entirely Armenian.

For a time, Jugha was one of the most important settlements in medieval Armenia. It became prosperous during the 15th to the 17th centuries due to the role its Armenian merchants played in international trade: the caravans of those merchants travelled the ancient trade routes from Persia, the overall Middle East, South-East Asia, India, to Russia, the Mediterranean, and North-West Europe.

A khachkar, also known as an Armenian cross-stone is a carved, memorial stele bearing a cross, and often with additional motifs such as rosettes, interlaces, and botanical motifs. Khachkars are characteristic of Medieval Christian Armenian art. The largest collection in the world was formerly located in Julfa in the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan until it was destroyed by their government.

A large portion of khachkars, which were created in historic Armenia and surrounding regions, in modern times have become the possession of Turkey, Azerbaijan, and partly Georgia and Iran. As a result of systematic eradication of khachkars in Turkey, today only a few examples survive. Unfortunately these few survivors are not cataloged and properly photographed. Thus, it is difficult to follow up with the current situation.

After studying and comparing satellite photos of Julfa taken in 2003 and 2009, in December 2010 the American Association for the Advancement of Science came to the conclusion that the cemetery was demolished and leveled.

The nascent alliance between Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey took a big step forward this week when the defense ministers of the three countries met trilaterally for the first time and promised to carry out joint military exercises.

The three ministers, meeting in the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan on August 19, agreed to work on “tripartite exercises to enhance the combat capability of the armed forces of the three countries and the achievement of mutual understanding during joint military operations, including the organization of joint seminars and conferences, cooperation in military education, development of military technology, the exercises for the protection of oil and gas pipelines,” said Azerbaijani Defense Minister Zakir Hasanov after the meeting.

While the specific results of the meeting may have had to do with protecting joint infrastructure like the pipelines and railroad projects that the three countries work on together, the geopolitical import of the meeting was undeniable. With Russia’s new assertiveness and the recent spike in tensions in Nagorno Karabakh, Georgia and Azerbaijan are keen to get support wherever they can.

“Georgia is very fortunate to have such great neighbors and strategic allies like Azerbaijan and Turkey,” said Georgian Defense Minister Irakli Alasania. “And these challenging times from the security standpoint in the wider region we need to cooperate more closely and we need to be very tightly in touch with each other to defend the critical infrastructure that is very integral to our development.”