BAKU: Azerbaijan, Turkey and Pakistan will hold joint military drills from Sept 12 to 20 in Baku, Azerbaijan’s defence ministry said on Saturday, the first such drills between the three countries.

The goal of the “Three Brothers - 2021” exercises is to improve cooperation between their special forces and to share knowledge and experience, the ministry said in a statement.

Turkey and Azerbaijan held joint live fire drills in Baku earlier this year.

Ankara last year backed Azerbaijan’s effort to drive ethnic Armenian forces out of swathes of territory they had controlled since the 1990s in and around the Nagorno-Karabakh region.