Azerbaijani Armed Forces

The Azerbaijani Armed Forces (Azerbaijani: Azərbaycan Silahlı Qüvvələri) is the military of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

The Emblem of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces

The armed forces have three branches: the Azerbaijani Land Force, the Azerbaijani Air Force, and the Azerbaijani Navy. Related forces which are not part of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces, include the paramilitary Azerbaijani National Guard, the Internal Troops of Azerbaijan, and the State Border Service of Azerbaijan (who patrol Azerbaijan’s borders with Georgia, Russia, Iran, Turkey and Armenia), which can be involved in state defense.

The Commander-in-Chief of the military is the President of Azerbaijan, currently Ilham Aliyev. The Ministry of Defense is in charge of political leadership. It is currently headed by Safar Abiyev. Military command is in the hands of the General Staff, headed by the Chief of Staff, who is Colonel-General Najmaddin Sadigov.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan has been trying to further develop its armed forces into a professional, well trained, and mobile military. Based on 2007 statistics the country has about 66,940 troops, and a paramilitary force of 15,000 troops. There are 300,000 former service personnel who have had military service in the last fifteen years.

Azerbaijan had actually established the Azerbaijani Armed Forces and a Ministry of Defense on June 26, 1918 with the first independence of Azerbaijan, as the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, after the collpase of the Russian Empire in 1918 until it was invaded and annexed by the Soviet Union in 1920 which came after the Russian Empire. The Azerbaijani Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defense were established again in 1991 with the second and final independence of Azerbaijan, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the Azerbaijani Armed Forces were formed out of the former Soviet forces in the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic.

Related pages

• Military history of Azerbaijan
• Azerbaijani Land Force
• Azerbaijani Air Force
• Azerbaijani Navy
• Azerbaijani National Guard
• Internal Troops of Azerbaijan
• State Border Service of Azerbaijan
• 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

Other websites

• Official site of Ministry of Defence Industry of Azerbaijan Republic
• Azerbaijani Army being reformed according to NATO standards Archived 2011-07-22 at the Wayback Machine
• U.S. Army War College Center for Strategic Leadership, Transformation of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces Archived 2010-04-01 at the Wayback Machine, October 2008
• Official YouTube Channel of Azerbaijani Soldier program