Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey Team Up For Military Exercises

Special Forces platoons from Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey have teamed up for a trilateral exercise on Sunday, dubbed “Caucasian Eagle,” near Georgia’s capital Tbilisi in an aim to strengthen compatibility and coordination between the Special Forces units of three neighboring countries, according to the Defense Ministry of Georgia.

The ten day-long exercise, which wraps up on June 14, involve hundreds of Special Forces soldiers from the three countries, two multi-purpose helicopters and one transport aircraft. Turkey played host to previous "Caucasian Eagle" drills in November 2012, the first of which happened in 2009.

"We agreed to expand this scale [of exercises] in the future, since this type of cooperation is of particular importance from the standpoint of ensuring the security of our people,” Georgian Defense Minister Levan Izoria said at a ministerial meeting in Tbilisi on May 23.

Security in the South Caucasus is volatile due to frozen territorial disputes, including the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Azerbaijan’s Nagorniy-Karabakh region, and the Georgia-Russo conflict over breakaway regions in Georgia, namely South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Giorgi Badridze, Senior Fellow at the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies in Tbilisi believes the cooperation with Turkey plays a vital role for Georgia and Azerbaijan in terms of their independence and self-defense capabilities. 

“I cannot even imagine the real independence of Azerbaijan and Georgia without cooperating very closely with each other and also with Turkey,” Badridze told Caspian News. “The defense capabilities of Azerbaijan and Georgia have been affected positively with Turkey’s support.”

Georgia Special Forces Brigade, with an operational center in Tbilisi, is the elite military branch of the Georgian Armed Forces. In Azerbaijan special covert military operations are carried out by its Special Forces, known as the “Yashma,” which report to the Defense Ministry’s Chief of Staff. Turkey is home to the “Maroon Berets,” its elite, multi-purpose team, which is included among the world’s top ten Special Forces units.