Hilmy Ozkek: “Armenia’s economic lag will promote regulation of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict”

We believe that this fact will promote Azerbaijan’s political force, establish favor conditions for the regulation of the conflict,” Hilmi Ozkek, head of the General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces, said during the meeting with Safar Abiyev, the Azerbaijani Defense Minister.

As Trend reports, in his turn, Abiyev underlined that Azerbaijan seek for peaceful regulation of the conflict.

“But if the efforts do not give a result, our Armed Forces are able to liberate the occupied territories,” he added.

The sides held exchange of opinions on the current military-political situation in the South Caucasus and the Middle East, prospective of the Azerbaijani-Turkish military cooperation. Safar Abiyev noted that the bilateral cooperation between the Armed Forces was expanded as a result of the desires and the strategic interests of the two nations.

“Azerbaijani-Turkish military cooperation covers training and education, defense industry the NATO program ‘Partnership for peace’, integration into the Euro-Atlantic organizations and ensuring of safety of energy carriers. We adopted Action plan of individual partnership in 2005 and believe that Turkey will assist us with implementation of it.

Today we are satisfied with expansion level of the Azerbaijnai-Turkish military relations,” Abiyev stressed. Ozkek stated that Turkey was also satisfied with the state of the military cooperation with Azerbaijan. “We must continue our cooperation, taking into consideration unity and community of our historic background,” he added.