Turkey, Azerbaijan ready for first sitting of strategic council

[Babur Han]

Turkey, Azerbaijan ready for first sitting of strategic council

Friday, March 11, 2011
FULYA ÖZERKAN
ANKARA – Hürriyet Daily News
The strategic council established between Turkey and Azerbaijan in September comes on the heels of different mechanisms Ankara has established with some of its neighbors. 'I would not say that we have been repeating someone’s experience,' Azerbaijan's Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov tells the Daily News



Araz Azimov is the deputy foreign minister of Azerbaijan. DAILY NEWS photo, Selahattin SÖNMEZ

Turkey and Azerbaijan have rolled up their sleeves for the first ministerial meeting of a high-level strategic council aimed at fostering flourishing ties that is set for next month.

Foreign ministers Ahmet Davutoğlu and Elmar Mammadyarov are expected to meet in April as a preparation session for the top-level meeting between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The timing of the final meeting is not yet fixed, but it will most probably take place after the June 12 parliamentary elections in Turkey.

Aliyev and Erdoğan concluded an agreement on the establishment of the high-level strategic council in September.

“This very sound accord actually is responding to the level of the relationship between the two countries and at the same time taking it one level up,” Araz Azimov, deputy foreign minister of Azerbaijan since 1994, told the Hürriyet Daily News in an interview in Ankara. Azimov met with Davutoğlu on Friday.

“This agreement is dedicated to many issues of strategic importance and also takes the two countries to the level of mutual assistance and help in times of emergencies or in times of crisis. Both countries have taken commitments in supporting each other especially in time of trouble in the case of direct threat to the security of one of the two states,” he stated.

The council will involve dozens of ministers from Turkey and Azerbaijan. For each special sitting of the council there will be different compositions. The plan now is that the two countries’ deputy foreign ministers will meet very soon to develop an agenda for the consideration of the foreign ministers, Azimov said.

“The system is quite well elaborated. Two states will be represented in a strategic council co-chaired by President Aliyev and Prime Minister Erdoğan.”

“Within the structure, there shall be commissions dealing with different items of the agenda like military and security cooperation, economic developments, cultural ties and energy. It will work at the ministerial level, which will prepare proposals for consideration at the top level,” he said.

Turkey has so far established strategic mechanisms with its neighbors Syria, Iraq and Greece as well as Russia.

“I would not say that we have been repeating someone’s experience,” said Azimov when asked if the Turkish-Azeri mechanism would be similar to the one Turkey established with some of its neighbors.

“It seems to me that Azerbaijan and Turkey have a unique relationship. Those relationship puts them at a different level and is different from what Turkey may have with Syria or with any other country because again Azerbaijan and Turkey are building upon brotherly relations and commonalities.”

The Azerbaijani official said the two nations are very close to each other and, “Therefore this council is a demand of time and quite a natural step.”

The existing mechanism between Turkey and Azerbaijan, the intergovernmental commission of economic affairs, will be maintained as part of the strategic council.

Turkey, Azerbaijan ready for first sitting of strategic council - Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review