(MENAFN- AzerNews) By Abdul Kerimkhanov
During the time of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, the first democratic republic in the Muslim East, the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan were created on June 26, 1918.
The national army is one of the most important attributes of Azerbaijan as an independent state.
By decree of the national leader Heydar Aliyev dated May 22, 1998, every year on June 26 Azerbaijan celebrates the Day of the Armed Forces.
The first military parade in the history of independent Azerbaijan was held on October 9, 1992. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan, as well as the 100th anniversary of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, a large-scale military parade was held on Azadlig square in Baku in 2018.
About 4,000 servicemen of the Defense, Interior, and Emergency Situations Ministries, the State Security Service, the State Border Service and the Special State Protection Service, as well as the staff of the Turkish Armed Forces took part in the parade.
The parade featured over 240 units of military equipment, more than 70 aircraft, the latest and most advanced types of weapons and equipment, armored vehicles, rocket and artillery installations, air defense systems, helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles, etc.
Up to 100 high representatives from Turkey, Pakistan, Belarus, Bahrain, the UAE, Georgia, Iran, Israel, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Ukraine also took part in last year's parade.
Today, the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan experience the period of rapid development and improvement. The country has created conditions for the formation of the military-industrial complex, the manufacture of defense products.
The Azerbaijani Army has weapons of local production and also has the latest foreign weapons.
In general, the development of the Armed Forces is utterly important for Azerbaijan, since 20 percent of the country's internationally recognized territory Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions are under Armenian occupation since the 1990s.
Over the years, the national army has gone through numerous improvements, which resulted in the present Azerbaijani Armed Forces being one of the strongest and most highly disciplined armies in the world and the leading one in the region. In its latest report, the Global Firepower survey center, which conducts the constant monitoring of the armies worldwide, put Azerbaijan among the first 52 strongest armies of the world.
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Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews' staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94
Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
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