Tomorrow, Azerbaijan will hold the early presidential election, which will determine the future of the republic until 2031. Azerbaijani political scientist Farid Shafiyev told Vestnik Kavkaza about what impact will this election have on Azerbaijan and the region.
EXCLUSIVE
The early presidential election in Azerbaijan are taking place at the most necessary moment for the republic - the previous era of struggling to restore territorial integrity ended in an unshakable victory, now the country faces new tasks to protect its national interests. The February 7 election will make it possible in the near future to launch updated versions of domestic and foreign policy that meet the needs of our time, chairman of the Center of Analysis of International Relations (AIR Center) of Azerbaijan Farid Shafiyev told Vestnik Kavkaza.
“Azerbaijan has achieved its goal in the matter of territorial integrity. At the same time, the current geopolitical situation is very difficult - both in the north with the ongoing Ukrainian conflict, and in the south with the Middle East conflict. Holding the early election was necessary to hold elections early to determine Azerbaijan’s foreign and domestic policy for the next 7 years,” he said in the first place.
“We also need to take into account the psychological aspect. Residents of our country, especially my generation and those older, remember the destruction and losses of the early 1990s very well. Now we have finally become a normal country, because we fully control our territory. Therefore, it is very important for us that the presidential election will be held both in Karabakh and in Eastern Zangezur. Even though not many people live there now, this is crucial ," Farid Shafiev emphasized.
The political scientist noted that the election in Karabakh and Eastern Zangezur has been organized in the same way as in the rest of Azerbaijan. “Tomorrow six polling stations will be opened there, the process will be monitored by foreign observers,” he noted.
“In general, all our traditional partners will observe the elections, including the CIS, SCO and OSCE. I must say that PACE is criticizing us for not inviting observers from the Council of Europe - but we invited OSCE observers. The OSCE reports on Azerbaijan are quite critical, that is, we are not afraid of criticism. But we will not allow anti-Azerbaijani actions, because of which Azerbaijan stopped cooperating with PACE," Farid Shafiyev said.
Among the innovations in Azerbaijan's post-election policy, we can expect increased regional cooperation. “Now we hear voices in Armenia about some form of cooperation with Azerbaijan. Let’s see what can happen, perhaps the “3+2” platform will start working. We still consider it as a reasonable basis, the “Georgia-Armenia-Azerbaijan” and "Turkey-Russia-Iran" triangles. We are sometimes pushed to spoil relations with our neighbors, for example, our ties with Iran are uneasy, but we do not refuse economic cooperation, because these are our neighbors, we're not going anywhere, so we must maintain good relations," he said.
