Spokesman Report

BAKU: Azerbaijan has faced information, hybrid and psychological wars from the first days of its independence, Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan – Head of the Foreign Policy Department of the Presidential Administration Hikmat Hajiyev said at the opening of the International Strategic Communication Summit (Stratcom Summit’ 21) held in Istanbul.

“Azerbaijan faced this at a time when the world didn’t yet realize, didn’t understand meaning of disinformation. At that time, we weren’t ready for this war, and therefore, while Armenia occupied our lands every day, the world condemned Azerbaijan, and killing our people by Armenian armed forces was misrepresented to the world as killing Armenians by Azerbaijanis. This propaganda was carried out under the name of a fictitious “Armenian genocide,” Hajiyev said.

He noted that against the background of all this, Azerbaijan waged its just struggle and sought to convey the truth to the world.

“However, we realized that this wasn’t enough. There was a huge need for even more activity to convey the truth to the world, and to present it in the format of strategic communication. As a result, we decided to strategically combine our military, diplomatic and information policies, implementing it against Armenia and the Armenian lobby pursuing a policy against Azerbaijan around the world. All this happened amid the silence of the rest of the world, which didn’t want to hear about what was happening,” added the official.