July 9 marks the professional day of Azerbaijani diplomats.
According to EDnews, 107 years have passed since the establishment of the diplomatic service.
Taking into account the role of national diplomacy in the creation of the first democratic republic in the Muslim East and in the process of building an independent Azerbaijani state in modern times, and based on the adoption of a temporary instruction on the Secretariat of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic on July 9, 1919, President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on August 24, 2007, declaring July 9 of each year as the professional day of employees of Azerbaijani diplomatic service bodies.
Several proposals regarding the determination of Diplomacy Day were considered, including the day of the first agreement signed by the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic with a foreign state, the agreement with the Ottoman Empire, the day when the Entente states de facto recognized Azerbaijan's independence at the Paris Peace Conference, and others.
However, it was ultimately decided that since the first official document found in the archives belonging to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was the temporary instruction on the Secretariat of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs dated July 9, 1919, this date should form the basis of Diplomacy Day.
When Azerbaijani diplomacy was taking its first steps in 1919, diplomatic missions of 16 foreign countries operated in Baku, including the US, the UK, France, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Iran, Poland, and Ukraine.
In a situation where Azerbaijan's independence could be lost and the bitter fate of the Democratic Republic could be repeated, the national leader Heydar Aliyev's foreign policy strategy, formulated after deeply analyzing the country's recent and distant historical past and its geopolitical reality, primarily included clearly defining Azerbaijan's national interests, establishing friendly relations with neighboring states and the world community based on principles of equality, non-interference in internal affairs and mutually beneficial cooperation, and most importantly, internationalizing Armenia's aggression against Azerbaijan beyond the local level, strengthening international political pressure against Armenia to eliminate the consequences of the occupation, and ultimately ensuring Azerbaijan's sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability of its borders.
The national leader's foreign policy line is successfully continued today by President Ilham Aliyev.
Diplomacy also played a major role in Azerbaijan's victory in the Patriotic War that began on September 27, 2020. That's because this victory, written in golden letters in world military history, was won both on the battlefield and at the negotiating table. In other words, Azerbaijan, which won on the battlefield, also inflicted a bitter defeat on the enemy in the field of diplomacy.
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