Israel and Turkey Rearming Azerbaijan With Attack Drones - Armenian Defence Ministry

Amid ongoing hostilities with neighbouring Azerbaijan over a territorial dispute concerning the Nagorno-Karabakh region, Armenian officials have accused Israel and Turkey of providing extensive military assistance including new combat drones to support the Azeri effort to capture the contested territory. Although the Azeri Air Force fields no modern manned combat aircraft, relying on a small number of fourth generation jets inherited from the Soviet Union which are far inferior to the modern fighters in Armenian service, it has relied heavily on Turkish and Israeli drones - with the two countries considered its closest foreign partners. Azerbaijan has denied these allegations, which have yet to be decisively proven. Armenia has also accused Turkey of carrying out minor attacks on its forces using American-supplied F-16 fighters, and threatened to use its own Iskander hypersonic ballistic missiles should the Turkish military directly intervene in support of Azerbaijan. 

Despite often hostile rhetoric between them, Turkey and Israel have maintained strong defence and economic ties and have cooperated closely against common adversaries in Syria, including the internationally recognised Syrian government and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. This was clearest in March 2020 when both countries simultaneously carried out air strikes on Syrian territory from opposite directions, which stretched Syrian air defences thinly. The two have been leading defence partners of the United States since the early years of the Cold War, and aside from Syria both have significant common interests both in supporting Azerbaijan and in countering Iran. Azerbaijan is heavily depended on as an oil supplier to Israel, and is also the second largest client in the world for Israeli armaments after India. Turkey, meanwhile, has been accused of facilitating the transfer of Al Qaeda linked jihadists to Azerbaijan to support offensives into Armenian controlled territory, after sponsoring several such groups to further its interests in both Libya and Syria.