
Azerbaijan and Turkey have started preparation for the first ministerial meeting of the High-level Strategic Partnership Council, which aims at strengthening the relations. The first meeting will be held next month, Turkish newspaper Hurriyet Daily News writes.
Foreign ministers Ahmet Davutoglu and Elmar Mammadyarov are expected to meet in April as a preparation session for the top-level meeting between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The date of the final meeting is not yet fixed, but it will most probably take place after the June 12 parliamentary elections in Turkey.
President Aliyev and Erdogan concluded an agreement on the establishment of the High-level Strategic Partnership Council in September.
"This important agreement actually is responding to the level of the relationship between the two countries and at the same time taking it one level up," Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov said in an interview with the Hürriyet Daily News in Ankara. Azimov met with Davutoglu in Ankara on Friday.
"This agreement is dedicated to many issues of strategic importance and also takes the two countries to the level of mutual assistance and help in times of emergencies or in times of crisis," Azimov said. "Both countries have taken commitments in supporting each other especially in time of trouble in the case of direct threat to the security of one of the two states," he added.
The council will involve dozens of ministers from Azerbaijan and Turkey. For each special sitting of the council there will be different compositions. The plan now is that the two countries’ deputy foreign ministers will meet very soon to develop an agenda for the consideration of the foreign ministers, he said.
"The system is quite well elaborated. Two states will be represented in the strategic council co-chaired by President Aliyev and Prime Minister Erdogan," Azimov said.
"Within the structure, there shall be commissions dealing with different items of the agenda like military and security cooperation, economic developments, cultural ties and energy. It will work at the ministerial level, which will prepare proposals for consideration at the top level," he said.
Turkey has so far established strategic mechanisms with its neighbors Syria, Iraq and Greece as well as Russia.
"I would not say that we have been repeating someone’s experience," Azimov said when asked if the Turkish-Azerbaijani mechanism would be similar to the one Turkey established with some of its neighbors.
"It seems to me that Azerbaijan and Turkey have a unique relationship," Azimov stressed. "Those relationship puts them at a different level and is different from what Turkey may have with Syria or with any other country because again Azerbaijan and Turkey are building upon brotherly relations and commonalities," he added.
Azimov said the two nations are very close to each other and, "Therefore this council is a demand of time and quite a natural step," he said.
The existing mechanism between Turkey and Azerbaijan, the intergovernmental commission of economic affairs, will be maintained as part of the High-level Strategic Partnership Council.
/Trend/