Azerbaijan Celebrates Armed Forces Day

Azerbaijan celebrates Armed Forces Day on Sunday, marking the 99th anniversary of the creation of the country’s first national army, upon the proclamation of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR) in 1918.

Under a decree signed by late President Heydar Aliyev on May 22, 1998, Azerbaijan marks June 26 annually as Armed Forces Day, one of the country’s 13 public holidays.

Azerbaijan first saw independence in 1918, following the fall of the Russian Empire and before the USSR’s Bolshevik 11th Soviet Red Army invaded in 1920. The ADR’s Declaration of Independence, which ushered in a short-lived but independent state centered on Azerbaijani nationalism, called for a freestanding army to protect the country from foreign aggression and internal enemies.

On June 26, 1918, the ADR, considered the first democratic republic in the Muslim world, announced the army’s creation. The government proposed to recruit 25,000 soldiers and spend 24 percent of the state budget for military purposes. By August 1 of the same year, a Military Ministry was established, while the first solemn military parade of the armed forces took place in 1919.

The Azerbaijani Armed Forces today consists of three branches:  Land Forces, the Air and Air Defence Force, and Navy. Associated forces include the National Guard; the State Border Service; and the Internal Troops of Azerbaijan, which deal with internal emergencies like natural disasters, restoring public order, and internal armed conflicts.

According to the independent website Global Firepower, which provides rankings of national militaries around the world, the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan is the strongest in the South Caucasus region. In its 2017 ranking, Global Firepower put Azerbaijan at 59 amongst 132 countries, with a budget of almost $3.2 billion appropriated for defense purposes. The military boasts 370,000 Active Duty and Reserve personnel, 135 aircraft, 520 combat tanks, 1,590 armored fighting vehicles and 31 navy vessels.

“For its combat abilities [and] military supplies, the army of Azerbaijan is not only one of the strongest in the region, but in the world,” Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev said in 2016.

The country’s military arsenal includes assault and sniper rifles, machine guns, pistols, grenade launchers, anti-tank missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) procured from countries including the United States, Turkey, Israel, Germany, China and Russia. The country also manufactures its own arms, including the Istiglal and Mubariz-12.7 anti-materiel rifles, YIRTIJI-7.62 and Yalguzag sniper rifles, and vehicles such as the Tufan mine resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicle.

The most recent extensive use of military equipment by the armed forces took place during the April War, or Four Day War, from April 1-4, 2016. The war, which erupted as a result of a midnight attack by Armenian forces on Azerbaijani positions in the Nagorniy-Karabakh region, included the use of the Harop kamikaze drone, a killer UAV produced by Israel. Armenia’s Defense Ministry reported seven of its military volunteers killed as a result of Harop’s attack on a bus carrying them to the battlefield. 

Azerbaijan, a predominantly Muslim country in the South Caucasus and Caspian regions, was pushed into a bloody war with its western neighbor Armenia over the Nagorniy- Karabakh region, following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. As a result of the war, which technically spanned from 1988-94, Armenia took control of the region, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, and seven surrounding districts.

Despite a Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement signed in 1994 and four UN Security Council Resolutions calling for Armenia to withdraw all its forces, Armenia has occupied the areas ever since, and heated confrontations between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces persist.

“Azerbaijan’s army would be well-equipped and ready for a war even if there was not the Nagorniy Karabakh conflict,” Shair Ramaldanov, a military expert based in Baku, told Caspian News. “Armament is one of the armed forces’ tasks, to defend the country’s borders against foreign invasions. The army is the guarantor of any country’s independence and security.”