On April 11, the early presidential elections will be held in Azerbaijan. Recall that according to the plan the elections were to be held in October. The government rescheduled the elections due to the fact that many important international and local events will be held in Azerbaijan since this May, including the 100th anniversary of the creation of the Azerbaijani Democratic Republic, the International Humanitarian Forum and others. "Most of these events fall at the end of the year and coincide with the elections. Therefore, such a decision was made,’’ the Presidential Aide on Socio-Political Issues, Ali Hasanov, said in his February statement. In addition, he stressed that in the international practice, it is considered expedient to hold elections at the beginning of the year. "This also allows us to carry out more effectively the social and economic tasks," Ali Hasanov said.
Gasanov's last phrase is especially interesting in the context of the fast-paced renovation process and active reforms aimed at improving the business environment, developing private entrepreneurship, attracting foreign investment and developing tourism. In recent years, Ilham Aliyev has replaced several ministers, some ministries have been merged, and new state agencies have been established. The sharp drop in the world energy prices has become a very unpleasant surprise for the government, which today faces the task of speeding up the diversification of the economy. President Aliyev stated that it is time to ‘forget about oil and gas’ in 2015 and repeated this thesis during his participation at the World Economic Forum in Davos this year. The early elections can become a necessary mandate of confidence to accelerate the economic reforms that will inevitably have painful consequences, including for the most powerful elite.
Possible other causes of early elections
In addition to the official version, there were other assumptions made by the expert community. Thus, Milli Mejlis deputy and political scientist, Rasim Musabekov, believes that the process of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement played a role in the government's decision: Azerbaijan wants to ‘close’ the issue of the presidential elections early, so that Armenia, where the constitutional amendments come in to force in April, has no opportunity to prolong the negotiations until October. Another version is that official Baku played ahead intentionally, anticipating attempts of the foreign forces to intervene in the internal political process, planned for the second half of 2018. To confirm or refute all these assumptions is not possible, but we should not ignore them as speculations either. The fact that Armenia is ready to use the opportunity to postpone the progress in the negotiations, which inevitably implies the extremely ‘uncomfortable’ withdrawal of the Armenian army from the part of the occupied territories, is not the news for the Armenian government. Similarly, in the past, the attempts were made repeatedly by the global and regional players to put pressure on the Azerbaijani authorities in the pre-election stage, who do not want stubbornly to make an unambiguous choice in favor of closer integration with Russia or the West - which, however, is becoming increasingly difficult in the face of the growing opposition on the international arena.
Geopolitical challenges
In fact, it is hard to envy the uncertain geopolitical situation in which official Baku has found itself. The unresolved issue of the occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and the adjacent seven districts, as well as the explosive situation in the conflict region, undermine largely Azerbaijan's immunity to the external challenges. Karabakh is a potential threat to stability within the country and throughout the region, and, undoubtedly, an effective lever of pressure on it by the ‘managers’ of the settlement. At the same time, in recent years, the regional alliances and cooperation axes have been reformatted, which has put Baku in need of adjusting the traditional ‘pendular’ foreign policy between Russia and the West. If ten years ago it was possible to talk about the existence of two axes Moscow-Yerevan-Tehran and Ankara-Baku-Tbilisi with the firm support of Washington, today these formats are so blurred that it is no longer possible to talk about them.
Thus, along with a discharge of the international situation around the Iranian nuclear program, the Azerbaijani-Iranian relations have undergone a transformation in recent years from a cold mutual distrust and barely concealed ideological contradictions to a very pragmatic and regional partnership, which is even reinforced by the concrete projects, which affects even the defense sphere. In recent years, the tone in relations between the two countries has radically changed, the issues of Iran's religious influence on Azerbaijani believers or the issues of Iranian Azerbaijanis are no longer the topics that dominate the Iran-Azerbaijan bilateral agenda. The decision of Azerbaijan to allocate a $ 500 million loan to Iran for the construction of the Resht-Astara railroad testifies to the strengthening of trust between the parties and the long-term partnership. The warming of bilateral relations is also indicated by the fact that in March of this year, Azerbaijan decided to simplify significantly the visa regime for Iranian citizens - they will be able to receive a visa immediately upon arrival at the airport. The experts familiar with the Azerbaijani-Iranian problems note the special significance and symbolism of such a step made by Baku, which for a long time did not dare to make indulgence in the visa issues for Iranians.
Meanwhile, the high risks remain for the full-fledged long-term bilateral cooperation due to the sharply negative attitude of US President Trump towards the ‘nuclear deal’ and the likelihood of the new economic sanctions against Iran, which will limit the ability of other countries to make deals with the country. If the international situation around Tehran is pumped once again, and the tough stance of Washington and Tel Aviv indicates such a probability, then Azerbaijan, like other countries in the region, will have to take into account these factors in its economic and political relations with its southern neighbor due to the strong Azerbaijani-Israeli relations.
Azerbaijan-Turkey: from ‘younger brother’ to equal partner
Turkey, which is the closest ally and important bridge of Azerbaijan to the West, can no longer be regarded as a full member of the Western alliance, even despite its participation in the NATO bloc. Today, this country, in fact, is cut off from the prospect of the European integration, and because of the contradictions over the Kurdish issue and the Syrian conflict, it has the extremely strained relations with the United States. Its NATO-relations with the West are not all smooth as well, as evidenced by Ankara's symptomatic decision to buy Russian S-400 air defense systems, despite the loud protests of its alliance allies. Finally, the ‘West’ itself has disintegrated largely in its classic political interpretation in recent years. The protectionist policy of Donald Trump and his tough EU security requirements created a deep crack in the transatlantic relationship (in this respect, the ‘Russian nuclear threat’ and the Skripal case were very welcome in terms of symbolic solidarization of the Western community). At the same time, the political integration of the national states within the EU itself has significantly weakened after the migration crisis and Brexit. Against this background, Baku's relations with Ankara, although they continue to be a full-fledged strategic alliance, have undergone certain changes.
Azerbaijan is an important gas exporter to Turkey, occupying more than 11% of the market share, and a major investor - Azerbaijan's total investment in this country will amount to $ 20 billion by 2020. Recently after the signing of the Armenian-Turkish protocols, Azerbaijan demonstrated that its role of a ‘younger brother’ in Ankara-Baku union is not at all something self-evident. Thus, the Armenian-Turkish Zurich protocols, concluded in 2008, were tied to progress in the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement, and in the spring of this year, Armenia finally abandoned them - to the great satisfaction of Baku. Today, Azerbaijan and Turkey, on the rights of equal partners, implement jointly initiated energy and transport projects. If earlier Azerbaijan was in the foreign political fairway of Turkey and officially declared ‘European integration’ as the ultimate goal, while maintaining its exclusive relations with Russia and the countries of the former USSR, today, the growth of Azerbaijani foreign policy is observed. Turkey, for known reasons, is no longer a ‘window to Europe’ for Baku, and the European integration in its original sense, due to a number of circumstances, is no longer so attractive for Azerbaijan.
Between Russia and the EU
The initial integration models proposed by Brussels to the Eastern Partnership member countries turned out to be unprofitable and uninteresting for Azerbaijan neither economically, nor politically. At the same time, in recent years, the activities of the most Western institutions of influence on civil society have been curtailed in the country, apparently as measures to prevent the revolutionary sentiments in the country.
This, however, does not mean that Baku refused to pursue a rapprochement with the European Union - the European direction remains a priority for the Azerbaijani policy, the European gas market is a key for Azerbaijan in the context of the TANAP and TAP projects. Today, official Baku in its relations with Brussels focuses on energy partnership, economic cooperation and the introduction of new technological standards. The political support of Brussels in the Karabakh issue is rather restrained, as Europeans, proceeding from their own geopolitical interests, are also actively working with the Armenian side for the long-term prospect of withdrawing this country from the orbit of the Russian influence, and therefore they do not wish to spoil the relations with Yerevan. The price of Europe's greater loyalty could probably be a sharp anti-Russian roll in Baku's policy, but the Azerbaijani government is pragmatic enough to assess the role of Russia's regional hegemon for the stable development of the country's economy and security.
Such a position of Ilham Aliyev's government - "cooperation without interference in domestic politics and not at the expense of deterioration of relations with the third countries" - causes, however, a critical attitude on the part of the Eurocentrist forces. It is no coincidence that such European capitals as Amsterdam and Berlin have become a permanent location for the opposition activists - they receive the status of refugees in Europe without any problems, with little support from Western sources of financing they conduct active anti-government information activities and draw ordinary Azerbaijani migrants to the ‘opposition shop’. It should be borne in mind that many migrants who left the country, as a rule, did this for the reasons of discontent with the certain conditions in their homeland and, consequently, are a priori more critical of the Azerbaijani government.
‘European dream’ of the radical opposition abroad
Faced with the limited opportunities to work actively with the civil society directly on the Azerbaijani territory, Europe has been developing an alternative tool of ‘soft pressure’ on Azerbaijan in the past several years in the form of encouraging the activities of the political emigration and European-based opposition media. This does not characterize European countries with either bad or good side - this is just the political reality and methods of work of the global players around the world. At the same time, Europeans obviously face the problem of the quality of political emigrants - in fact, the of low working qualification leave as ‘refugees’ in the overwhelming majority. The highly qualified migrants tend to find well-paid jobs on a regular work visa, and they have neither time nor desire to run around the city, putting up posters ‘Down the dictatorship’ or posting videos in Youtube with a frenzy towards the government, as is done now, on the eve of the elections.
Many Azerbaijani oppositionists, who settled in the West, prefer revolutionary changes in Azerbaijan, accompanied by a complete breakdown of the entire political system of the state. The history knows examples of the revolutions carried out on foreign money and their consequences - it is appropriate to recall here the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty contradictory to the national interests of Russia, but convenient for Germany, which was defeated in the First World War. It was signed by the Soviet revolutionaries after their coming to power. Of the modern and more relevant examples, we can cite the Euromaidan in Ukraine - regardless of the assessment of the role played by the Russian side in Crimea and Donbas - the ideologists and sponsors of the revolution could not but foresee that its results would hurt the national interests of the country, which ultimately happened.
So what can the potential ‘pro-Western’ (and it cannot be any other, taking into account whose funds the political immigration uses for the ‘web-fight’) revolution in Azerbaijan? The universal prosperity, European democracy, lack of corruption and German wages? Exactly this narrative prevails in the opposition information propaganda, built on the opposition of high living standards in Europe and, undoubtedly, significantly lower in Azerbaijan. The desire for a high ‘European’ standard of living is perfectly normal and understandable, although we should not forget that in Romania or Bulgaria - also the EU countries - these conditions are not much higher than in Azerbaijan, and the same Romanian and Bulgarian citizens go to the Western European countries, working for salaries and positions, which the Germans or the Dutch will never agree to. Of course, the Azerbaijani goods will not become competitive on the European market overnight, and the key Russian market may close in case of deterioration of the relations with Moscow.
Perhaps, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will be resolved on the fair terms in case of hypothetical coming to power of a radical ‘pro-Western’ opposition? The EU will hardly give up an equidistant policy in the conflict since the interest in squeezing out the Russian influence from Armenia will not disappear anywhere. Rather, on the contrary - either the conflict will break out with a new force in the conditions of deteriorating relations with Russia, which will significantly reduce the chances of success in a military confrontation with Armenia, where, incidentally, the Russian military bases are stationed. Or else the Caucasian Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty will be concluded, that is, on the conditions that are extremely unfavorable for Azerbaijan. The Western interest lies in the fact that the conflict is resolved and, thereby, the possibilities of the Russian influence on Azerbaijan and Armenia are limited as much as possible. The EU and the US are of little concern, whether the decision will take into account the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, and therefore the answer is rather no than yes. Most likely, an important driving motive of the conditional revolutionaries is the change of elites and, ultimately, the redistribution of the country's resources in favor of the new elite. Whether a simple people will win from this is a big question.
Afterword
There is not much doubt that Ilham Aliyev will win on the upcoming elections. There are no persons among registered candidates who could compete with the incumbent head of state. The traditional opposition, united in the National Council of Democratic Forces, decided to boycott the elections in a friendly manner. Its supporters are going to rallies at Baku stadium "Mehsul" - the last sanctioned meeting, according to official estimates, gathered 1500 people. The organizers say there were about 10 thousand participants, although the photos from the rally show that there were much fewer people. The problem of the small number of modern Azerbaijani opposition lies not only and not so much in the absence in the country of those dissatisfied with their position - they are always enough of them everywhere - but rather in their inability to offer more than the state can offer. The opposition relies on bare slogans and the former authority of its leaders, rather than thought-out political programs, the preparation of which requires serious intellectual resources - namely, they are sorely lacking in classical opposition parties like the Popular Front or Musavat. An important factor undermining the credibility of the opposition is also the fact that the leaders of these parties have headed them for the last 15-20 years, despite the numerous parliamentary and presidential elections that they lost. In the European democracies, which they regularly set as an example in the speeches, the chairmen of the parties that failed at the elections are resigning without further ado; in Azerbaijan, nothing of the kind is happening. This discrepancy is so obvious that their criticism of the long-standing Aliyev presidency on a state scale cannot be taken seriously until at least they are ready to act differently on the scale of their own parties.
Not least for this reason, the educated and politically active cadres do not join the opposition parties, but prefer to work either in the private sector or in the state and related structures - thereby, by their knowledge and experience they contribute to the reforms of the state and renewal of the political elite of the country. The strategic task of the state, at the same time, is to improve the functioning of the social elevators, since this is the basis for the long-term stability of any political system. The issue of ‘political emigration’ in Europe should also be considered from this angle as well - the unrealized potential of some citizens of this country can be used abroad. But it is obvious that it is not in Azerbaijan's interests anymore.
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