Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev said, “The attitude to Georgia’s internal process in the European Commission is absolutely unacceptable.”

For Aliyev, this is a behavior of colonialists.”

“They try to look at the will of Georgian people from the prism of the colonial past. This is absolutely unacceptable. And people of Georgia know that we are with them and the government of Georgia knows and internal issues of Georgia must be resolved by the Georgian people, not by bureaucrats from Brussels,” he stated at the 7th ADA University Policy Forum titled “Facing The New World Order.”

“Frankly speaking, I was surprised when I was informed about the comments of President of European Commission, Madam Ursula von der Leyen, which she made in Uzbekistan at the summit of Central Asian leaders with the leaders of the European Commission when she was talking about opening the border between Azerbaijan and Armenia and Armenia and Turkey in order to facilitate the Middle corridor as they call it in Europe, global gateway.

That was very strange because this corridor exists and Armenia plays no role in that. We can understand the feelings of European bureaucrats towards Armenia, but you cannot ignore the map. And we, in Georgia and Azerbaijan, we provided all those facilities which today help Europeans to communicate with Central Asia: Georgian seaports, Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railroad, Azerbaijani seaport, Caspian shipping, which is instrumental in transportation, all that is ignored. How much money we invested, all that is ignored, only opens the border between Turkey and Armenia, opens the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

What Europe has to do with that? It’s none of their business – relations between Turkey and Armenia and Azerbaijan and Armenia. The longer distance between the European Union and these issues is the better for everyone.

But there was not a single word about Georgia as if Georgia does not exist. This is unfair, and the attitude to Georgia’s internal process in the European Commission is absolutely unacceptable. And this is a behavior of colonialists. They try to look at the will of Georgian people from the prism of the colonial past. This is absolutely unacceptable. And people of Georgia know that we are with them and the government of Georgia knows and internal issues of Georgia must be resolved by the Georgian people, not by bureaucrats from Brussels.

So with respect to all that, we need to strengthen our partnership between Georgia and Azerbaijan. And as we already discussed during the previous questions, to look at opportunities of the South Caucasus to establish ties without any facilitator.

We are fed up with these facilitators. We had those facilitators for 28 years. This notorious OSCE Minsk group, which only goal was to seal the occupation and to transfer Karabakh to Armenia. And now, when we hear about someone who wants to facilitate, we are a little bit concerned. So let us do it ourselves. We live here in the region. We, as Azerbaijan, want to have good neighbourhood relations with European institutions, primarily European Commission, but not at the expense of our interest, not at the expense of their continuous attempts to interfere into our internal affairs, finance different segments of our society, brainwash our young generation, and to poison the brains of some people in our region.

So this is how we want to see the South Caucasus – as leading countries of the South Caucasus, Azerbaijan and Georgia, of course, should take the main burden for cooperation. But of course, Armenia, when and if it agrees to amend its Constitution with respect to territorial claims against Azerbaijan, can join the process and we can think about future long-term, predictable situation in our region,” Ilham Aliyev stated.