“The issue of secession from the Council of Europe was touched upon here. You are well acquainted with our media, because I do not have information that this or that official Azerbaijani person expressed such an opinion. However, the media are free and can write whatever they want. We, of course, react to the mood of the public, and any government, first of all, must take public opinion into account. Unfortunately, public opinion related to the Council of Europe is not so positive,” said Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev at a meeting with a delegation of the Political and Security Committee of the Council of the European Union.

The Head of State noted that there are several reasons for this: “Firstly, when we joined this organization, our expectations were related to the fact that it will help us in the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. However, the Council of Europe did not succeed in this matter, this case did not work, and it will not work. Secondly, at the beginning of our membership I was the first head of our delegation. At that time, I was a member of the Azerbaijani parliament and in 2001-2003 led the Azerbaijani delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. That is, I know what this organization is and how it relates to Azerbaijan. The attitude was extremely negative. We joined this organization on the same day as Armenia and compared the extremely negative attitude towards Azerbaijan with a positive attitude towards Armenia. Armenia, where elections are constantly falsified, kill politicians in the parliament, where terrorism can be said to have been adopted at the level of official policy, which occupied the territory of another state and caused suffering to millions of people as a result of war crimes, was always cared for by lobby groups in PACE, but Azerbaijan was constantly attacked. ”