Davit Jamalyan: The army is not a priority for today’s Turkish-subdued government

Speaking with Alpha News, military expert Davit Jamalyan noted that incidents have always happened in the army; another question is what work is being done to minimize them.

“Unfortunately, there have always been emergency incidents with tragic outcomes in the Armed Forces, and, of course, it is impossible to completely eliminate them under any government. In the past, these tragic incidents had both subjective and objective causes. Objective ones included problems associated with the systemic development of the Armed Forces when the army had already been established as such. However, at the lower tactical level, we still had the task of forming command staff and experienced companies.

Previously, this problem was solved. In particular, under Seyran Ohanyan, much attention was paid to the formation of companies because a company, being the lowest tactical unit, involves direct contact with command staff. If we have experienced commanders, it is obvious that we also have complete control,” the military expert said.

He emphasized that in the past, incidents in the army were always the focus of the country’s leaders.

“Under complete control, the likelihood of emergency incidents is sharply reduced. In the past, everything related to the Armed Forces was the center of attention of the country’s military and political leadership. Although incidents occurred from time to time, systematic efforts were made to resolve the problem and minimize the number of incidents. There were also problems that were not caused solely by the formation of the Armed Forces, for example, street morals in the army, which was inevitable, but the command of the Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defense also fought against these phenomena,” Jamalyan said.

Jamalyan emphasized that now, in parallel with incidents, the number of vacant positions in the Armed Forces has also increased.

“What do we have today? Among many problems, we now have additional factors that contribute to the increase in emergency incidents. As a result of the 44-day war and subsequent hostilities, we lost knowledgeable, accomplished officers; now we have quite a lot of vacant positions in the Armed Forces. There is a serious problem with the outflow of officers from the Armed Forces. This problem also existed before but now it has become more serious and dangerous due to a number of factors. The army, as such, is not a priority for today’s Turkish-subdued, pro-Turkish, Turk-friendly government. The government pretends that it is undertaking some kind of work in the Armed Forces, giving the impression of some kind of reforms,” Jamalyan concluded.