Armenian News... A Topalian... Is Turkey lining its own pocket again!...

I would like to know what stake Turkey has in Azerbaijan to be able to make such a statement? Is Turkey befriending Azerbaijan for an alteria motive?...E.g. using Azerbaijan to enter Armenia via her back door to gain access!??? One can only use an analogy that of sodomy. Turkey does best!!!...

Seta

Daily Sabah, Turkey
Dec 30 2016
Azerbaijani lawmakers warn Iran to look after its own business
Azerbaijani lawmaker Kudret Hesenguliyev said on Friday that Iran
cannot warn or threaten Azerbaijan over Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Azerbaijan.

Netanyahu's visit to Azerbaijan on Dec. 13 bolstered ties between
Israel and Azerbaijan, and a number of agreements were signed between
both countries.

But Netanyahu's visit angered Iran at the time, with various Iranian
diplomats, lawmakers and even clerics protesting the burgeoning ties
between Israel and Azerbaijan, even going so far as to threaten the
latter.

The Defense ministry of Iran announced that Iran could not accept a
rapprochement between Israel and Azerbaijan.

Iranian interference and protests over Netanyahu's visit raised the
ire of Azerbaijani lawmakers.

Hesenguliyev said on Friday, during his speech in the parliamentary
session of the Azerbaijan National Assembly, that Azerbaijan must
react to the Iranian threats.

He also stressed that an Iranian stance turning increasingly more
aggressive against Azerbaijan will have more serious consequences in
the future.

''Should Iran dare to attack Azerbaijan, it would be wiped off the
map. Iran would break apart and would be replaced by five states,''
Hesenguliyev added.

Following Hesenguliyev's speech, Chair of the Azerbaijan National
Assembly Oktay Esedov said Iran will never be able to interfere into
the affairs of Azerbaijan.

Esedov also stressed that Azerbaijan had not shown any negative
reaction to the Iranian Prime Minister's visit to Armenia, which is
currently occupying Azerbaijani territories.

He urged every country to show respect to each other. 
[excluding Azerbaijan towards Armenia]

RFE/RL Report
Azerbaijan Confirms Combat Death On Armenian Border
December 30, 2016
The Azerbaijani military confirmed on Friday that at least one of its
soldiers was shot and killed in Armenian territory in Thursday's
fighting with Armenian troops.

Three Armenian soldiers also died in what the Defense Ministry in
Yerevan called an Azerbaijani commando attack on their military post
in the northern Tavush province bordering western Azerbaijan. The
ministry said its forces killed several of the attackers and that one
of their bodies was left lying just outside the border post. It
described this fact as "irrefutable evidence" of the Azerbaijani
attack.

Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry denied launching an incursion in the
mountainous area, claiming that an Armenian "reconnaissance squad" was
ambushed by its forces while trying to cross into Azerbaijan. It said
on Thursday one Azerbaijani soldier went missing as a result.

The ministry said the following day that the soldier, Chingiz
Qurbanov, died "in territory controlled by the enemy." [so who was penetrating whose territory? ] According to a
ministry statement cited by the APA news agency, Azerbaijani
authorities have asked the International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC) as well as the OSCE to help repatriate Qurbanov's body.

The statement went on to accuse the Armenian side of "trying to use
that event to achieve its dirty objectives."

An ICRC spokeswoman in Baku told APA that the Red Cross is ready to
arrange the handover. She said it is already "in contact with
government bodies of the conflicting sides regarding the return of the
killed soldier's border."

The Armenian Defense Ministry said, meanwhile, that it is trying to
establish the identity of the "fatally wounded person dressed in an
Azerbaijani army uniform."

The ministry spokesman, Artsrun Hovannisian, claimed separately that
Armenian troops killed at least four more Azerbaijani soldiers
overnight in what he called "punitive actions" taken in retaliation
against the deaths of Lieutenant Shavarsh Melikian and Privates Edgar
Narayan and Erik Abovian. The Azerbaijani army denied suffering more
casualties, however.

Forbes
Dec 30 2016
One Little Country Blocks Moscow's Domination Of The Entire Middle
East: Azerbaijan
Melik Kaylan ,  Contributor

A dangerously lazy habit has taken hold in Western countries of
drifting in and out of geostrategic imperatives around the world,
letting regional balances shift willy-nilly without the West's
collective input. To be sure, after the interminable disasters of Iraq
and Libya, anything that smacks of intervention terrifies our leaders.
The loud defiance of nationalist demagogues – Sisi, Erdogan, Duterte,
Maduro et al - amplified by Russia's media psy-ops hasn't made the
process any easier. While we watch paralyzed, our own internal sense
of alignment is shifting so we're not sure what side to take, let
alone how to intercede. The advent of Donald Trump illustrates – and
exacerbates – the chaos.

Let us focus on one oft-overlooked, highly critical strategic zone to
get a sense of the stakes, and the consequences of abstaining from the
balance altogether. Consider the Caucasus. During the Soviet era,
Moscow's sway extended down to the border of Iran, taking in Georgia,
Azerbaijan and Armenia. One could argue, like Trump and other
pro-Putin leaders, that for stability's sake the region should return
to Moscow's sphere of influence as of old. Here's a precise example of
lazy airy fantasizing founded on our own emotional exhaustion at
global miscues – that will only lead to worse.

In the old days, Iran wasn't with Moscow, not during the Shah or
Khomeinist era. It now is. So the restoration of Russia's sphere of
influence would, today, extend her sway down through the Caucasus,
through Iran, into the Middle East via the Shiite Crescent – Iran,
Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon. And let's not forget Iran's client,
Hamas. You'd have a solid bloc of power, of anti-Western power,
projected deep into the world's critical oil supplying region. Add
Erdogan's Turkey to the realignment and you've got the Eastern
Mediterannean under Putin's hand too. Add to that Bulgaria and Greece,
both countries historically sympathetic to Russia and increasingly
hostile to European unity. So you can wave good bye to Nato and the EU
within a few short years.

You might argue, as some leaders have begun to do in the UK, Hungary,
France, Turkey and elsewhere that those pacts no longer serve any
purpose anyway. Nato and the EU haven't stopped terror and the rest is
mere shadow-play. So let us play out this shake-up of the old alliance
structures. What do we lose? Leave aside the aspirations for
independence of Ukraine, the Baltics, the Caucasus countries – would
we go to war to protect them from Moscow, so the refrain goes. Leave
aside also the oil-leverage that goes with the Middle East. Leave
aside the Atlantic alliance and indeed European unity. What is left?
There's the rub, for after all that abstention, you've got chaotic
nationalism across the atlas partly dominated by Putin and partly
checked by new bilateral deals (yet to be born) with no coherence.

What's preventing the chaos? Believe it or not, at the moment the
entire strategic balance outlined above pivots around crucial
alignments now unfolding in the Caucasus. To wit, Israel is making
friends with Azerbaijan, while Armenia falls more deeply under Moscow
and Tehran's wing  Meanwhile Georgia hovers undecided. The pipeline
that offers Europe the only significant source of oil outside of
Russia and the troubled Mideast hangs in the balance, namely the
Baku-Ceyhan pipeline that takes oil from Azerbaijan via Georgia and
Turkey out into the world.

The West has virtually no say in these developments, least of all the
U.S. despite President Obama's last minute changes. With Turkey
gradually lapsing into Moscow's orbit, Azerbaijan's hitherto biggest
regional ally goes soft and along with it the pro-Western alignment
that kept firm the counter-weight to Moscow in the region. President
Trump will only add to the trend with his incoherent policy of
favoring Putin but not the mullahs. He will soon find that he cannot
invent his own arbitrary preferences in a vacuum – reality will stymie
him. The reality here is that Russia's entire mideast strategy pivots
on solidarity with Iran. Nothing he does will shake that central
alliance. He will have to chose – friendship with Putin or hostility
to Iran. He can't have both. Similarly, Israel will push him to
reimpose pressure on Iran as the only remaining regional threat to
itself. As things stand, Moscow is backing Iran's hegemony over the
region deep into Israel's safety zone via Hezbollah and Hamas. While
Trump takes his time figuring it all out, the West (what's left of it)
must be grateful to Israel and Azerbaijan for upholding the global
balance.