SEPT. 25 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Most of the 1,520 refugees seeking asylum in Azerbaijan are from Afghanistan, Elsever Agayev, an Azerbaijani official at the UN, said. Mr Agayev’s comments were a rare insight into refugees in Azerbaijan. After Afghans, the biggest number of asylum seekers are from Chechnya, which is part of Russia, and Iran.
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(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
SEPT. 19 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The consortium developing the Shah Deniz II gas field in Azerbaijan’s sector of the Caspian Sea signed a deal with various companies in the EU to supply them with gas over the next 25 years. The deal will help reduce the EU’s reliance on Russia for gas supplies.
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(News report from Issue No. 153, published on Sept. 25 2013)
SEPT. 20 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A TV debate between nine of the 10 people standing in Azerbaijan’s presidential election descended into farce when pro-president candidates shouted insults at Camil Hasanli, the only genuine opposition figure. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, standing for re-election, didn’t take part in the debate.
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(News report from Issue No. 153, published on Sept. 25 2013)
SEPT. 20 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — DemirBank, one of Azerbaijan’s biggest banks, estimated its loan portfolio would grow by 16% by the end of 2014, Trend news agency reported quoting the bank’s deputy chairman Rauf Akhundov. Mr Akhundov’s assessment is another sign that Azerbaijan’s economy has recovered from the 2008/9 global financial crisis.
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(News report from Issue No. 153, published on Sept. 25 2013)
SEPT. 20 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Baku arrested opposition journalist Perviz Hashimli for smuggling weapons into Azerbaijan from neighbouring Iran. Mr Hashimli denied the charges. Human rights activists have accused the Azerbaijani government of cracking down on opposition ahead of an Oct. 9 presidential election.
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(News report from Issue No. 153, published on Sept. 25 2013)
SEPT. 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Hassan Rouhani’s presidency in Iran is still in its infancy but there are signs that relations with Azerbaijan are improving.
This is important because over the past couple of years ties between the two neighbours have worsened dramatically and have, at times, threatened to destabilise the region.
Azerbaijan has moved increasingly close to Israel, Iran’s sworn enemy, supplying it with oil and buying military kit. Last year Azerbaijan-Iran relations hit a nadir when a leaked report suggested that Israel had negotiated a deal to use Azerbaijan as a base for its warplanes if a war with Iran broke out.
Azerbaijan’s government denied the report but the diplomatic damage had already been done. A series of spy scandals on either side of the border also added to the increasingly toxic relations.
This appears to have changed with Mr Rouhani’s election victory on June 15 and inauguration as president on Aug. 3.
Reports said the number of people using a major border crossing between Iran and Azerbaijan has increased this year. Official visits between the two sides have also accelerated. On Sept. 18, the head of Iran’s border police was in Baku. There he said that Iran supported Azerbaijan’s position on Nagorno-Karabakh, the region of the South Caucasus it disputes ownership of with Armenia.
2013 is an election year for both Azerbaijan and Iran and improved cross-border relations appears to be in the interests of both governments.
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(News report from Issue No. 153, published on Sept. 25 2013)
SEPT. 25 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Rovnag Abdullayev, the chairman of Azerbaijan’s state energy company SOCAR, was emphatic when describing a deal between the consortium developing the Shah Deniz II gas field in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea and energy companies in the EU.
It was, he said, the “biggest gas deal in the history of Azerbaijan” and it also marked “the beginning of direct links between Azerbaijan’s huge gas resources and the European markets.”
Clearly for Mr Abdullayev the deal to send around 10b cubic metres of gas every year to Europe for 25 years was historic.
It’s certainly big and important. The deal was worth $100b, reportedly, to the energy consortium developing Shah Deniz II — BP, Statoil and SOCAR — and allows Europe to reduce its dependency on Russia for it gas supplies.
Geopolitically, the gas deal has another important undertone.
Russia is the major loser in the deal. It has been unable to secure extra gas supplies from Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan has also been able to establish itself as a key competitor to Russia for the European gas market.
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(News report from Issue No. 153, published on Sept. 25 2013)
SEPT. 23 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan has steadily increased its gas sales to Georgia over the past few years, Gagamali Seyfullayev, head of state energy company SOCAR’s gas export department, told media. This year Azerbaijan will pump about 1b cubic metres of gas to Georgia, up from 775m in 2011.
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(News report from Issue No. 153, published on Sept. 25 2013)
SEPT. 20 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, and Singapore’s minister for industry, Lee Yi Shyan, opened a new shipyard in Baku. The new yard will turn Azerbaijan into a major shipbuilder. Keppel O&M, a Singapore-based marine construction company, owns a 10% in the $480m project. The rest is owned by Azerbaijan.
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(News report from Issue No. 153, published on Sept. 25 2013)
SEPT. 16 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Officially, campaigning in Azerbaijan’s Oct. 9 presidential election kicked off on Sept. 16 although reports from Baku suggested that not many people have noticed.
The election script already appears to have been written. The vote will deliver a third consecutive five-year term for President Ilham Aliyev and the opposition will complain of fraud and an uneven playing field.
Azerbaijan’s economy is booming and living standards are rising, mainly due to energy sales, although opposition and human rights groups complain that this has come at the expense of personal freedoms.
On Sept. 13, Azerbaijan’s Central Election Committee (CEC) barred Ilgar Mammadov from the election. A genuine opposition leader, Mr Mammadov has been sitting in jail awaiting formal prosecution for fomenting anti-government protests in February.
Since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, vote monitors from the EU’s official monitoring unit have never judged an election in Azerbaijan to be free and fair.
And Azerbaijan’s, rather beleaguered, opposition have already complained that Mr Aliyev has been campaigning before the official start, giving election-style speeches and handing out free apartments to journalists.
The CEC officially registered 10 candidates for the election, including Mr Aliyev and opposition candidate Jamil Hasanli. The other candidates are pro-presidential.
In an interview with the BBC on the eve of the election campaign start, Mr Hasanli described Mr Aliyev as an autocrat.
“We wish to move from authoritarianism to democracy through a normal election,” he said. As well as Mr Haslani’s strongly held views on Mr Aliyev, though, it was also clear from the interview that he thought Mr Aliyev would win another term.
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(News report from Issue No. 152, published on Sept. 18 2013)