Some Azerbaijani Tall Tales

Vartan Matiossian

I recently came across an asinine piece crafted by some Azerbaijani "historian" and lodged at their "Presidential Library" meant to show the huge antiquity of Baku (1), which was an obscure Russian outpost in the nineteenth century until oil extraction started and Armenians, who were among the pioneering oilmen, became one of the main driving forces behind the building and embellishment the city in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. However, this is something those "historians" always fail to remember.

Letter from Azerbaijan: Live, From the Fifth Most Censored Country, It’s the First Ever European Games

Andrew Connelly

 

Rejoice! After years of enviously watching athletes in Asia, Africa, the Pacific and the Americas flaunt their sporting might together as continental brothers and sisters, Europe finally has a competition to call its own. Live, from the fifth most censored country in the world, it’s the first ever European Games.

Azerbaijan: Falling Economy, Rising Karabakh War Risk

Youri Smakouz

 

Azerbaijan is a major energy exporter. It is also one of the most oil-dependent economies in Eurasia and has been hit hard by lower oil prices. If the current fiscal trends persist, regional stability is likely to come under growing threat.

The country’s 2015 budget, which envisaged a high level of spending on infrastructure projects, was drawn up under the assumption that the average oil price would be $90 per barrel. Now the oil price is hovering around $60 per barrel and previously envisioned levels of state spending do not seem sustainable, at least in the near term. As a result, the government must confront austerity.

The Heydar Aliyev Era Ends in Azerbaijan Not with a Bang but a Whisper

Richard Kauzlarich (*)

 

“… [O]ur path is clear…. The system of government and style of society we are developing in Azerbaijan is based on Western values, including democratic pluralism, the free market economy, and a secular republic that respect (sic) universal human rights.”

Heydar Aliyev (quoted by Thomas Goltz in Azerbaijan Diary pg. 477)

On December 3, 2014 the Heydar Aliyev era in Azerbaijan ended. With it went the previously close political relationship between the United States and Azerbaijan. Heydar Aliyev, who was President of Azerbaijan from 1993 until his death in 2003, presided over a foreign policy that emphasized energy relations with the West, and political and security engagement with the United States and a range of transatlantic institutions, such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Council on Europe (COE), European Union (EU) and NATO. This policy eventually also led to Azeri military support for U.S. operations in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. His son and successor, Azerbaijan’s current president Ilham Aliyev, has increasingly moved away from his father’s path and now seems to have approved a final rupture with the past.

Seis argentinos y cinco uruguayos en la "lista negra" de la cancillería azerbaiyana

El ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Azerbaiyán publicó la lista de los visitantes de Alto Karabagh que han sido declarados persona non grata. La lista consta de 35 páginas y tiene 335 nombres.

La “lista negra” contiene representantes de distintas nacionalidades, mayoritariamente rusos. Pero también hay italianos, australianos, georgianos, franceses, ucranianos, estadounidenses, iraníes.  También figuran, por qué no, seis argentinos y cinco uruguayos. He aquí esos once “privilegiados”, que hemos extraído del texto azerbaiyano publicada en el sitio web de la cancillería de Bakú, incluyendo la traducción literal de las “razones” de la prohibición (la fraseología pertenece, obviamente, a la fuente):

Thomas Goltz: The Godfather of the Legend of the “Khojaly Genocide”

Vahram Atanesyan
Translated by Vartan Matiossian

Thomas Goltz. Born in Japan. Graduate of New York University, majoring in Near Eastern issues. He has been a journalist for fifteen years in Turkey and then in the former Soviet republics. He is the author of three books: “Azerbaijan Diary,” “Chechnya Diary,” “Georgia Diary.” He cooperates closely with Azerbaijani organizations of the U.S. and Canada (see http://ru.wikipedia.org)
He authored the first publication about the events of Khojaly in the international press. The Washington Post printed an article with his signature on February 27, 1992. Here it is:

Could the Kardashians Enter Baku Even If They Really Wanted to?

Peter Savodnik

 



Last weekend [February 10], the [New York Times] magazine published my article with the print headline, “If They Build It, Will the Kardashians Come?” The story, about Baku’s ambition to become a new hub for the global 1 percent, focuses on Khazar Islands, a $100 billion megadevelopment being built on the Caspian, and the headline flicks at the development’s target audience — celebrities and, mainly, people who want to be celebrities — while touching on the unavoidable globalizing and liberalizing effect this sort of project will have.

Azerbaijan Is Rich. Now It Wants to Be Famous

Peter Savodnik

 



In March 2010, Ibrahim Ibrahimov was on the three-hour Azerbaijan Airlines flight from Dubai to Baku when he had a vision. “I wanted to build a city, but I didn’t know how,” Ibrahimov recalled. “I closed my eyes, and I began to imagine this project.” Ibrahimov, one of the richest men in Azerbaijan, is 54 and has a round, leathery face with millions of tiny creases kneaded in his brow and the spaces beneath his eyes. He walks the way generals walk when they arrive in countries that they have recently occupied. In the middle of his reverie, Ibrahimov summoned the flight attendant. “I asked for some paper, but there wasn’t any. So I grabbed this shirt in my bag that I hadn’t tried on. I took the tissue paper out, and in 20 minutes I drew the whole thing.”

Nuevo frente en el conflicto de Karabagh se abre en Latinoamérica

El 9 de septiembre, durante un seminario organizado por el Consejo Pro Causa Armenia del Uruguay y el Grupo de Amistad Interparlamentaria Uruguay-Armenia en Montevideo, el canciller uruguayo Luis Almagro realizó declaraciones que fueron interpretadas como un apoyo explícito al reconocimiento de la independencia de la República de Alto Karabagh. Inmediatamwnte comenzó un nuevo capítulo de la guerra diplomática armenio-azerbaijana, de lo cual da cuenta la nota que presentamos a continuación, publicada el 16 de septiembre con la firma de una periodista armenia en Ereván y un periodista azerbaijaní en Bakú. Es importante advertir al lector que hemos mantenido la fidelidad al texto original, aunque términos como “territorio separatista” (Karabagh no se separó de Azerbaiján, que no había declarado su independencia por entonces), “presidente de facto” (Bakó Sahakián fue elegido en elecciones populares multipartidarias), y el esperpento lingüístico “Nagorno-Karabagh” (oficializado, lamentablemente, por la propia república)  sean harto discutibles.

De acuerdo con la transcripción ofrecida por el semanario “Armenia” de Buenos Aires (16 de septiembre de 2011), Almagro habría dicho:

“Estamos examinando la cuestión de Nagorno Karabagh a fin de presentar una posición oficial de nuestro gobierno al respecto. Personalmente, estoy convencido de que Nagorno Karabagh es parte íntima de  Armenia y debe ser independiente, y en un corto lapso unificarse con Armenia. Esta es la única solución a la cuestión de Artsaj”. 

The New York Times Goes to Baku...

Vartan Matiossian

 

You are the government of this or that country, you cannot allow yourself to have direct access, but you desperately want to push your own story in the top echelon of national or international media. What do you do? You get a good public relations firm and send it to shop around. There is nothing that money cannot pay, especially with oil flowing to the West and petrodollars filling the coffers of Western companies. Money talks and... You know the rest. Even if this were a completely fictional scenario, the outcome could not be very different from the blissfully biased piece of Ellen Barry dispatched from Baku and published on June 1, 2011 in The New York Times.