Mənim və Azərbaycanın axırıncı şansı

Dear participants of this meeting, we are meeting today to discuss the state of affairs in Azerbaijan. I want to note, one more time, Azerbaijan has earned its independence now 26 years ago. Or more appropriately, Azerbaijan was given independence 26 years ago.
In this time, Azerbaijan’s population has risen from 7 million people and reached 9.7 million people. Statistical analysis shows that in 26 years in independent Azerbaijan, 4 million people have been born. If we take into account that, in 1991, the number of people in Azerbaijan having reached the age of 18 was 2.7 million, that means that the number of people either born in, or having began being politically active in independent Azerbaijan reaches 6.7 million.

So, only about 3 million people today constitute the number of people who were already born and had reached the age of 18 before 1991; these are the people who can still retain a place for the Soviet Union in their imaginations. Now because the 6.7 million people most probably have known no regime other than the current one, only those remaining 3 million remember very well and will agree with me, that in terms of people in Azerbaijan being independent, free, having the ability to speak up, justice prevailing (relatively speaking), the period between 1986 and 1991 was much better than the present day. For example, in the prosecutorial organs, or generally administrative bodies, and in the court system, at least up to about 50% of the people were conscientious, in the real sense of the word, and would look at everything within the framework of the law. But now, as you know, there is not even 1% of people like this remaining. So, people of Azerbaijan, practically speaking, by obtaining independence have lost all their personal independence. And this is a fact. And it is impossible to not to admit this fact.

In the last 150 years, Azerbaijan has first lost its historical empire. I mean, shall we say, in the last two and a half thousand years, Azerbaijan has been a part of the Iranian empire, what was once called the Median empire, and later Persian empire, and so the Iranian empire. And so in that empire azerbaijanis were an essential part of its people. They [azerbaijanis] have lost that, and in these 150 years, Azerbaijan which was at least 200,000 sq. kms, now, after being repeatedly invaded, remains at about 60,000 sq. kms.

You imagine for yourself, from Makhachkala to Tebriz, from Makhachkala to Ardabil, from western part of Tbilisi, so not just Zaqatala and Balakan but also the provinces beyond which were part of Azerbijan, it has lost of all this step by step. And most importantly in the 20th century azerbaijanis lost territory to armenians who had never before lived in Azerbaijan, and when it’s all added up, armenians now have territory equivalent to ours [in land area]. If you just add our occupied regions to Armenia itself, armenians have 60 sq kms. and so do we. So this is the state of affairs we find ourselves in.

And I want to note for you that in 1994, we were very close to, or actually just at the verge of, just a step away from, freeing our occupied regions. But, we could have freed were regions as we discussed the status of Nagorno Karabakh. And the conditions for this were right, becauses in the Russian Federation, Yeltsin was in power, in the Russian Federation someone like Kozyrev was the foreign minister, and they, without a doubt, were not showing any pro-Armenian attitudes. Only because the government there was weak, the military was simply trying to stir things up, but as a whole, we could have done this by negotiating with them [the russians]. Unfortunately, this was not done. And today, in 2017, Azerbaijan has no chance of liberating even an inch of those territories.

And when will this [the retaking of the territories] happen? If you were to ask me, I would say, with this regime the liberation of those territories will never happen. So the people of Azerbaijan need to admit this, the people of Azerbaijan need to understand that armenians have now turned Shusha into Armenia’s tourism destination. They have built a university in Shusha. On Agdam’s soil, or generally on Karabakh soil, they are farming. All of this, of course it's not possible to accept all of this for a normal person, but all of this is the reality, and these are facts. In April of 2016, the Azerbaijani military’s preparation and execution of the 3-day military operations showed that even in terms of military action, despite the fact that they spend about 10-15 more than Armenia on the military budget, even in terms of military action they are not prepared to do anything.

Видео Mənim və Azərbaycanın axırıncı şansı канала RASUL GULIYEV