MARCH 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Denizbank, a Turkish bank, has agreed to lend Azerbaijani state-owned energy company SOCAR $500m to build a refinery in Turkey, media reported (March 24). The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Finance Corporation had previously rejected a loan request from SOCAR to build the Star refinery.
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(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)
MARCH 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company SOCAR continued to expand its network of petrol stations in Georgia and Romania, media reported. SOCAR is Azerbaijan’s biggest brand and, with its distinctive logo carrying the Azerbaijani flag and an old oil well, is seen as a way of promoting the country abroad.
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(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)
MARCH 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s economy grew only a sluggish 1.6% in the year to end-February, media reported quoting the state’s statistics agency. Most international organisations have predicted GDP growth of around 5% for Azerbaijan this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)
MARCH 25 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Underling just how dependent Azerbaijan is on oil exports, the Central Bank published data that showed that 95% of its exports in 2013 were energy related. It exported $26.9b worth of oil and $1.6b worth of processed oil products, mainly to neighbouring Georgia.
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(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)
MARCH 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The media lobby group Reporters Without Borders (RWB) criticised Azerbaijan for sending to prison journalist Tofig Yagublu for inciting anti-government rioting in the northern city of Ismaylli in January 2013. RWB said the authorities in Azerbaijan are increasingly cracking down on opposition journalists.
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(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)
MARCH 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s rail network recorded a total revenue of 223m manat ($30m) in 2013, roughly the same as in 2012, media reported. International organisations are ploughing millions of dollars into reviving the Soviet-era railway network. Cargo shipments generated over 90% of the revenue.
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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)
MARCH 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — In another sign of relations between Azerbaijan and Iran improving, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani and the Azerbaijani special envoy to Tehran Kamaladdin Heydarov met to discuss ties. They both stressed that relations between the two countries were improving after a tense few years.
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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)
MARCH 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Issues of sovereign integrity are close to Azerbaijan’s heart. Its government, after all, still lays claim to Nagorno-Karabakh — the mountainous region in the South Caucasus that Azerbaijan and Armenia fought over in the early 1990s.
A UN organised cease-fire still holds the peace in Nagorno-Karabakh, ruled by pro-Armenia forces.
All this makes Russia’s moves in Crimea more complex for Azerbaijan to deal with. Just how does it position itself?
Relations with Russia have been strained over the past few years but it still doesn’t want to antagonise its large, and powerful neighbour.
Azerbaijan has also become increasingly important to the West over its energy supplies and deliveries.
In short it needs to tread a careful line.
This is what Azerbaijani foreign minister, Elmar Mammadyarov, looked as if he was trying to achieve when he told a press conference: “We want a speedy solution to all these issues in Ukraine. Azerbaijan respects the territorial integrity and sovereignty of all nations.”
Neither an endorsement of Russia’s policies in Crimea nor a call for Russian forces to pull out of Ukraine.
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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)
MARCH 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has thrown its support behind the Azerbaijani government’s order to banks to stop lending so much cash to consumers.. At a press briefing the IMF head in Azerbaijan, Raja Almarzoqi, said: “A decrease in the share of consumer loans would be beneficial.”
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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)
MARCH 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a decision that provoked international condemnation from human rights groups, a court in Azerbaijan sent two opposition leaders to jail for organising illegal demonstration.
Human rights groups accused the court of being politically motivated, a charge they have used against Azerbaijan’s judiciary often over the last few years.
The US State Department backs up this analysis. Earlier this year in its annual global human rights assessment, it said that the authorities were increasingly persecuting opposition groups.
A court spokesman said that Tofig Yagublu, deputy head of the opposition Musavat party, and Ilgar Mammadov, leader of the Republican Alternative human rights group, were sentenced to five and seven years in prison.
Police arrested them in February 2013 and accused them of organising unrest in the town of Ismailli in January 2013. The unrest in Ismailli, 200km northwest of Baku, was the worst during President Ilham Aliyev’s 11 years in power.
Giorgi Gogia, senior researcher in the South Caucasus for the New York-based Human Rights Watch, wrote a withering analysis of the verdicts.
“Another day, another imprisonment of prominent government critics in Azerbaijan,” he said.
“Instead of looking into the underlying causes of such an expression of mass rage and there are many, starting with astounding government corruption the authorities decided to find convenient scapegoats who fit the false narrative of critics-as-enemies.”
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)