Strictly speaking, the President of brotherly Türkiye Recep Tayyip Erdoğan came to Azerbaijan for the victory parade and the celebrations to mark the centenary of the establishment of the National Army of Azerbaijan and the liberation of Baku from the Bolsheviks and Dashnaks, and attended the inauguration of the airports in Fizuli and Zangilan, in the lands liberated from Armenian occupation, and the TeknoFest.
The current visit has a somewhat different political connotation. On May 28, Erdoğan won the presidential election in Türkiye. Theoretically, one could recall that the leader of the Republic of Türkiye has largely renewed his team, replaced the defense and foreign ministers and the leadership of the security services, and now it is time for Baku and Ankara to compare notes and discuss new realities and new challenges. “Today, we have summed up the work done together and also had an exchange on a wide range of issues related to what needs to be done in the coming years. Both during the one-on-one meeting and in the negotiations with the participation of the delegations, we once again expressed our common intention. In other words, the fraternal relations between Türkiye and Azerbaijan are the foundation of all the successes achieved,” President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said. For his part, the President of Türkiye stressed: “Türkiye and Azerbaijan are two brotherly countries. We have come to this day with the idea of ‘One nation, two states’, and we will resolutely continue along this path.”
But more importantly, experts remind us that immediately after taking office Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. And then on the same day he arrived in Azerbaijan—with a state visit.
A clarification is in order here. Professional diplomats remind us that there are official, business, guest, and private visits… State visits hold a special place among them. It is not only about special protocol details. The very fact of such a visit emphasizes that the relations between the two countries, their friendship and cooperation are at the highest level. There were many such confirmations during the visit, up to joint participation in the BSEC forum of the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Türkiye via video link.
The range of topics discussed in the course of the meeting of the two presidents, both one-on-one and in an expanded format, was also quite extensive: TAP, TANAP, the Turkish-Azerbaijani University, the Zangezur corridor…
But the main sensation of the visit was something else. The Turkish President visited Azerbaijan on the eve of the first anniversary of the signing of the Shusha Declaration that cemented the military alliance between Azerbaijan and Türkiye. Ilham Aliyev said: “The Shusha Declaration is a historic agreement. As a result of this agreement, Türkiye and Azerbaijan officially became allies. We had been acting as allies de facto for many years, but the Shusha Declaration made it an official document. The signing of this document in Shusha is, of course, quite symbolic because Shusha is the crown jewel of Karabakh, and the liberation of Shusha from occupation put an end to the Second Karabakh War.”
Today, the military alliance between Azerbaijan and Türkiye is rising to a new level. The participation of the two heads of states in the opening of the new Air Force Central Command Post has once again confirmed this. Especially since the Air Force today is not only aircrafts, but also UAVs, including Bayraktars, and very soon, Kızılelma unmanned fighters. At the expanded meeting Erdoğan made a very important announcement: “We are ready to open our Consulate General in Shusha at your convenience. If our Consulate General in Shusha can be opened at any moment without any delay, this will of course be a separate message to the whole world, especially Armenia.” And this is certainly a message no one should ignore.
