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.
Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan are at it again, feuding over a lucrative patch of the Caspian Sea. Russia would likely be the chief beneficiary of Caspian discord, if it continues.
When it comes to Azerbaijan and music, Eurovision – and, now, Jennifer Lopez – have largely hogged the outside world’s attention. But practitioners of mugam, an ancient Azerbaijani form of musical poetry set to percussion and strings, feel no sense of threat. Western pop music and mugam – the one about glamour, the other about ghazals – can peacefully coexist, they say.
Recent legislative efforts in Azerbaijan to protect the privacy of President Ilham Aliyev and his family are coming at the expense of investors, both foreign and domestic.
Did Armenia and Azerbaijan make war in early June to promote peace? Some analysts believe the recent sharp escalation of violence along the Nagorno-Karabakh contact line was specifically intended to get international mediators’ attention.
Azerbaijan has hosted the Eurovision Song Contest and has obtained a seat on the United Nations Security Council. Now officials in Baku seem intent on raising the country’s profile as an international donor.
Like any exacting stage manager, the Azerbaijani government has labored hard to adjust the lights and perk up the props for Baku’s international debut as the host of Eurovision 2012. But the painstaking preparations did not just involve the Azerbaijani capital’s buildings and infrastructure. They also involved the distribution of Eurovision tickets.
