In an interview with France24, the Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev gave his opinion on the Turkish-made drones and their impact on the course of the Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict.
In the interview came the following:
France’s foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has said that there is Turkish military involvement that risks internationalization of this conflict is he wrong about that?
- Yes, he is wrong about that. Turkish military involvement is another fake news. There is no military involvement of Turkey. We are using Turkish military equipment, this is true, but we are using military equipment of Russia, military equipment of Israel, military equipment of other countries and we buy this military equipment, unlike Armenia which gets it free of charge. Turkish in no way, other than political is present in the process. There is no Turkish forces. Turkish F-16s, they are here, but they were left here after the joint military training. By the way last year, we had the 10 joint military trainings with Turkey, including air force. This year due to pandemic, we had only two and it happened that just after the military training, this outbreak happened, so we decided to keep F-16s on the ground and they are on the ground, they are not in the air.
How many Turkish drones are you deploying?
- We have enough… you know to achieve our targets, I think you can understand this, that is information which I prefer not to disclose.
But, are they making the difference in this conflict for you?
- Of course, they are very… modern, sophisticated weapons and I can tell you; only by the drones which we acquired from Turkey, we destroyed Armenian Military Equipment worth $1B, “Only by the drones”. And of course, we are using other drones as you know from other sources. We are using artillery, we are using a broad range of military equipment, but only the drone made a damage to Armenia worth $1B, and this is a serious damage for them. I wonder where did they get so much money to buy all this equipment? Probably, they got them free of charge.