Azerbaijan adopts new military doctrine

At a special meeting on June 8th, Azerbaijan's parliament adopted a new military doctrine. Its contents have aroused active discussion both in Azerbaijan and abroad.

The most moot issue in the doctrine is the possibility of foreign military bases being deployed in the territory of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan also reserves the right to free all the occupied Azerbaijanian territories and restore Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and sovereignty resorting to any means necessary (including military force). According to some observers, correspondence of these two clauses to the Azerbaijanian Constitution is arguable.
According to the observers, this clause does not correspond to the ninth article of Azerbaijani Constitution, stating that Azerbaijan rejects war as a means of violation of other states’ independence and as a means of international conflict settlement.

However, there is an important detail. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is not an international conflict, because no country in the world recognizes the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh. This region is a part of Azerbaijan, as well as the occupied territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh. Therefore Azerbaijan is has the right to consider the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as internal.

However, the present-day condition of frozen conflict does not satisfy Azerbaijan, which is making substantial efforts in order to promote negotiations.

However, Armenia does not display enthusiasm in settling the conflict. For example, Yerevan has not expressed its position concerning the updated Madrid principles, despite repeated attempts made by the negotiators to get the process off the ground, whereas Baku has
adopted the document as a basis for the negotiation process immediately.

Elmira Tariverdiev, Baku. Exclusive for VK