Azerbaijan: Caucasus Hermit Kingdom

In my last article, I covered the origins of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over the Nagorno Karabakh. In this 2-part article, however, I will - in due process of analysing the modern conflict over the Karabakh - cover the two parties in relative detail as to provide a valuable background to the circumstances that which the modern conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is fought. Here, I will be discussing Azerbaijan and providing an overview of their politics - in the second part, the focus will move to Armenia.

Azerbaijan, as a former Soviet republic, has fallen victim to - like many other states like it - the forces of dictatorship. It can be described as the Caucasus' 'hermit kingdom' (a name attributed to North Korea, owing to its heritage as the Joseon Kingdom long before the North-South split). Why is this? Azerbaijan has managed to silence foreign complaints about the truly concerning state of affairs, already concealed by a false system of 'free' elections. President Ilham Aliyev, a deceptively intelligent fellow, has engaged in a policy of 'caviar diplomacy' in order to shut down the prying eyes of the media. The construction and completion of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline has provided an abundant wealth to the Azeri government - which has only served to develop this policy even further. But what is caviar diplomacy?

Caviar diplomacy is, in its simplest form, a concept where nations - like Azerbaijan - invite other nations' politicians for great and expensive meetings and offer individual gifts to those politicians as to 'honour tradition'.

The European Stability Initiative describes caviar diplomacy as how Azerbaijan shut down the Council of Europe in a flagship article on the matter - 'How Azerbaijan silenced the Council of Europe'. In that article, diplomacy is described as "about winning friends, building alliances [and] cutting deals". Azerbaijan takes this to the extreme in the 'winning friends' department; expensive gifts of caviar worth sometimes tens of thousands of euros is a valid price for Baku to pay in exchange for retaining support from key elements of the Council of Europe. A key aspect of caviar diplomacy, though, is that while gifts are given they will at some point be paid back. The ESI also states that, from their sources, Baku has a network within the Council who all receive caviar at Council meetings but also, in visits to Baku, also receive other expensive gifts like carpets, jewellery and expensive metal trinkets - and in return, he gets to keep European interconnectedness with nigh on no scrutiny from them on the darker side of Azeri affairs.

The Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2020, provided by the United States Department of State and Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour, provides us the scrutiny that the EC otherwise does not. Below are listed a number of the reported human rights violations:

Unlawful or Politically Motivated Killings

- Suspicious death of activist Fakhraddin Abbasov while in custody; ruled as suicide by prison authorities after he had warned his family not to believe claims that he had committed suicide - Murder by Azeri troops of Armenian detainees Benik Hakobyan (age 73) and Yuriy Adamyan (age 25) - At least two (2) ethnic Armenian civilians decapitated by Azeri special operations forces

Torture or Unlawful Punishment

- Niyamaddin Ahmadov, head of the Popular Front Party, was driven from his detention centre with a bag over his head and beaten until confessing to crimes under duress - Fuad Gahramanli, Seymur Ahmadov, Ayaz Maharramli, Ramid Naghiyev, and Baba Suleyman (Popular Front members) arrested and deprived of outside access to both lawyers and family - The families of some 100 citizens arrested in 2017 alleged to have committed treason by means of spying for Armenia claim that the accused were tortured - killing 9 of the detainees

Arbitrary Arrest or Detention

- Citizens posting on social media about the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic were called to their local police stations where they claim to have been coerced to deleting their posts - Rahim Khoyski was called to his local police station for making recommendations to the government on Facebook to 'freeze debts and loans', 'stop collecting taxes from entrepreneurs' and 'provide monetary assistance to citizens who had lost their income'

These are not the only violations and are just a limited number from the 2020 report alone. Further violations are reported in the 2022 edition of the same document.

Azerbaijan, while actively violating all modern conventions on human rights, is not so isolated unlike some former Soviet republics. One would expect such a state to be more reclusive and keep to their own business rather than to cooperate with potentially meddling outsiders. However, Azerbaijan is the 4th former Soviet republic to join the Non-Aligned Movement (the second largest assembly of nations to the UN) formed as a bloc of nations not seeking to align with any major power. Azerbaijan also maintains healthy trade relations with states like Russia and Ukraine, as well as with other states who make up billions of dollars worth in exports like Czechia and Croatia. Exporting oil, chemicals and other commodities vital to most economies worldwide, Azerbaijan's largest industry by far is the oil and petroleum industry, which has accounted for an exponential growth in their GDP - by around 25% in 2005, the second largest growth that year below Equatorial Guinea.

However, relations between Azerbaijan notably with Russia were particularly stiff after the nation gained independence from the USSR. From 1992 to 2008, Azerbaijan's existence was threatened by the prospect of Russian reconquest. However, tensions have been eased between the two as - unlike Ukraine, who after 2014 have adamantly chased EU and NATO membership and Georgia, who after 2008 sought to do the same exposing them both to further pressures from Russia - Azerbaijan has limited its engagement with its western partners to exclusively strategic energy agreements. This has left Azerbaijan without much pressure from Russia in their own affairs - but Russia maintains a solid base of support for Armenia, which keeps an uneasy air of distrust between Moscow and Baku.

After the opening of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, Azerbaijan immediately limited its use of the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline. While this has negatively impacted trade relations between Russia and Azerbaijan, it has demonstrated another frontier for Azeri alliances. That frontier is found in Turkey. As of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Baku found itself with the diplomatic and political support of Ankara. Additionally, in the first half of 2020 alone Turkey imported about 20.4 million cubic meters of natural gas from Azerbaijan - the year before, Turkish gas imports from Russia dropped by about 62%. As an energy provider and a defence partner, Azerbaijan, as a state ethnically and linguistically alike Turkey 9 as Azeris often refer to themselves as Azeri Turks, would go on to participate in a joint military exercise in 2020. Turkey denies any involvement in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh crisis, and denies Armenian claims that Turkish armaments shot down an Armenian fighter jet. Ankara remains committed to protecting Azerbaijan regardless of their staunch denial of involvement in their military affairs.

Azerbaijan also maintains relations with Israel. Pictured in the image on the right (web) are Azerbaijani soldiers handling Israeli Spike missile launchers. Azerbaijani arms imports from Israel likely result from the skirmishes over the Karabakh in 2016 which ended inconclusively owing to Armenia's advantageous geography. Azerbaijan also in 2016 acquired units of the Israeli Iron Dome, in response to Armenia purchasing Russian short-range ballistic missiles - bought and paid for by $200 million in state credit from Russia. The Azerbaijani arsenal is perhaps the largest of any former Soviet republic of comparable size. It maintains a formidable fleet of missiles, tanks and produces some weapons in their own indigenous factory. After the 2020 conflict over the Karabakh, Baku has demonstrated this advantage to the world after Aliyev's massive spending spree on these weapons.