A series of videos depicting graft inside the halls of power in Azerbaijan could have serious implications for one of the country’s most influential officials, 74-year-old presidential Chief of Staff Ramiz Mehdiyev.
As if there aren’t enough major international athletic competitions already on the calendar, the inaugural European Olympic Games are set to take place in 2015, with Azerbaijan’s capital Baku playing the host.
You might not think that money from oil would be a problem for Azerbaijan, one of the former Soviet Union’s largest energy producers. But when oil production drops, and election-year demands for money increase, the picture changes.
Civil society activists in Azerbaijan are trying to push back against government efforts to restrict space for public debate. And they’re hoping a recent global Internet forum in Baku will expand international support for their cause.
Azerbaijani officials appear to buy into the idea that taxation policy can be an effective way of managing the environment. While environmentalists are generally supportive of a government idea to introduce a “green tax” on companies, some experts voice concern that such a provision would be prone to manipulation.
When Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev pardoned then-Lt. Ramil Safarov last summer for his 2004 slaying of an Armenian junior officer, Baku was initially defiant in the face of international criticism. But defiance has given way to reticence in recent weeks.
The controversy generated by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s pardon of an army officer convicted of killing an Armenian counterpart has sent official relations between Yerevan and Baku into a tailspin.
It may look like just a 27-year-old radar station in a remote stretch of northern Azerbaijan. But, in reality, Gabala is all about Baku’s desire to assert its own weight as a regional power – even against its onetime patron, Russia.
