Ilham Aliyev, President of Azerbaijan, surprised nobody when he successfully secured his fifth consecutive term in office in elections held on the 7th February.
He is the son of Heydar Aliyev who was president of Azerbaijan from 1993 until his death in 2003. The younger Aliyev took over power after his fathers death and has been in power since. He first won re-election in 2008 then in 2009 he implemented a constitutional reform which removed term limits upon presidents effectively clearing the way for Aliyev to make himself president for life. He has subsequently won all elections since and even made his wife Mehriban Aliyeva his vice-president.
He won the election with 92.1% of the vote and his current wave of popularity is in part because of the recent military action taken in the Nagorno-Karabakh region against Armenia in September. This quick and decisive victory in a conflict which has been a decades long quagmire took many by surprise and there is a very complex context surrounding it.
Nagorno-Karabakh is a region running between Azerbaijan and Armenia that has been claimed by both sides for a very long time. It has been internationally recognised as Azerbaijani however the inhabitants were mostly ethnic Armenians and had declared independence from Azerbaijan. The region has changed hands multiple times with the inhabitants generally changing accordingly.
The most recent military action occurred in September 2023 and came off the back of heavy fighting in the region in 2020. On that occasion the Azerbaijanis appeared more powerful and were backed by the Turkish military. However Russia effectively stepped in on behalf of the Armenians who would have been defeated otherwise. As part of an agreed peace Russian troops had been stationed in the region as peacekeepers.
However the situation has clearly altered as it appears that the Azerbaijani met almost no resistance in their recent lightning quick manoeuvre. It is possible that the Russian troops were no longer equipped to resist the Azerbaijani assault due to large numbers of Russian troops now being diverted to the war in Ukraine.
Another possibility exists however. The EU has been courting Armenia for a while now and has been trying to exert influence in the caucasus region in general.
Shortly after the military action was taken Armenia recognised the ICC who have issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin, that technically means he could be arrested on Armenian soil.
The ICC is not really an internationally respected body and is seen more as a tool for western imperialism and is referred jokingly in the global south as “the International Colonial Court” because it only ever seems to prosecute Africans and enemies of western imperialism.
It would seem likely that the Russians were aware that Armenia was about to take this step and position themselves clearly inside the western sphere of influence. From the Russian perspective this is breaking years of traditional closeness between the two nations.
Considering Russia’s prevention of Armenian defeat in the 2020, it would seem that their response to the alliance being broken by Armenia’s move west may have led to the Russians doing very little to stop the Azerbaijanis taking Nagorno-Karabakh this time around.
What this meant for the residents of the region is that over 100,000 ethnically Armenian residents have fled the region and many Azerbaijanis are now moving in.
Going back to the election itself, it was boycotted by the main opposition parties in protest of the unfair environment in which they were held. Limits had been placed on public gatherings and almost all independent media had been suppressed with any of the journalists who had been critical of Aliyev being arrested.
A recent investigation by Forbidden Stories has reported how European money has been used in the suppression and torture of journalists and activists in the region. This is being done to try and protect the interests of big tech companies, the likes of Tesla, Apple and HP who are involved in devastatingly dangerous gold mining explorations in the region. In addition Azerbaijan has also signed contracts to supply Europe with natural gas shortly after the supply from Russia was turned off after the invasion of Ukraine.
Azerbaijan is an incredibly oil-rich state with the state run oil company SOCAR being a part of a global consortium of oil companies including BP, Exxon, Statoil and Total as well as Turkish and Japanese interests too. They have an oil pipeline which runs through Tblisi in Georgia to the Black Sea from where the oil can be shipped abroad, this is the second largest pipeline in the world.
Azerbaijan exports oil globally but its largest partners are Italy, India, Israel and Spain. The countries largest trading partners overall are Turkey, Russia and China.
The country stands at a crossroads of geopolitical affairs. Aliyev wants to connect Azerbaijan to Nakhichevan, an Azerbaijani enclave that borders Turkey. He wants a land corridor which is not subjected to border controls. This would effectively cut Armenia off from its southern neighbour and closest regional ally, Iran.
Turkey favours the scheme because this would allow it direct access to Azerbaijan proper and to Russian and Central Asian markets. Russia is also on board provided that its own forces monitor the corridor.
Armenia’s real concern is that Azerbaijan will use the corridor as a launching pad to invade Syunik, the southern region that separates Nakhichevan from Azerbaijan which would please Israel as it uses Azerbaijan soil to spy on Iran. In exchange, Israel provided weapons in the last two Nagorno-Karabakh wars. Iran has declared any such move cause for war.
Anyone confused yet?
There is a state run investment firm known as SOFAZ which is ostensibly used to invest the profits the nation receives from its oil reserves for the benefit of the Azeri people however in reality most believe it to be a private wealth fund for the Aliyev family.
Aliyevs personal net worth is estimated to be $900 million dollars.
It seems that the country is getting richer with GDP per capital salaries rising. It also seems that Azerbaijan is happy to do business with all comers and all comers are happy to do business with Azerbaijan.
Lastly COP29 is due to be held in Baku in 2024, which surely shreds any last modicum or respectability that the already mightily tarnished summit may have still held.