SEO Header Title

By Rebecca Vincent, Al Jazeera

As an estimated 125 million viewers tuned in to watch the grand final of the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest in Malmö, Sweden, on May 18, I could not help but think how different this year's Eurovision experience was from last year's, when the contest was held in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan became the host of the contest through Eurovision's normal process: the country whose entry wins the contest one year becomes host the next. Azerbaijan's competitors, Ell and Nikki, won Eurovision 2011, and so Baku was set as the location for Eurovision 2012.

WASHINGTON. May 5, 2103. Today, many Americans will be celebrating the 90th birthday of a corrupt foreign communist dictator … unknowingly. They will be attending the “Flower Day” event hosted in the National Mall in DC by a foreign lobbying group Azerbaijani-American Alliance (AAA).

By describing the event as a mere “Celebration of Azerbaijani Culture and Friendship”, AAA clearly and deliberately misrepresents the facts. It hides the real reasons behind the “Flower Day” festivities from residents and visitors of the US capital, whom AAA tries to trick into celebrating the late Azerbaijani dictator’s birthday.

By Shahin Abbasov, Eurasianet.org

BAKU. May 3, 2013: Azerbaijan in late April crossed a self-imposed “red line” in its relations with southern neighbor Iran by dispatching Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov on a visit to Israel, Tehran’s arch-foe. Reasons for the timing of the move are not clear, but, so far, Tehran appears to be biding its time with a response.

While Israel and Azerbaijan – like Iran, a majority Shi’a Muslim country -- have maintained strong diplomatic, economic and military ties for years, Mammadyarov’s April 21-24 trip was the first time an Azerbaijani cabinet member had made such a high-profile visit to Tel Aviv.

By Andy Heil, RFE/RL

"Half the truth is often a great lie."
-- Ben Franklin, "Poor Richard's Almanac"

BAKU. May 2, 2013: The Azerbaijani presidential administration's Ali Hasanov had a saucy sound bite ready when World Press Freedom Day rolled around on May 2.

Speaking at an event devoted to the annual global effort to highlight the importance of the so-called fourth estate, Hasanov asserted that "no media outlet [in Azerbaijan] can claim its activity is restricted," according to RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service.

By Lucy Wallwork, Openoil.net

BAKU. May 1, 2013: There are some big decisions to be made by investors in Azerbaijan’s oil and gas sector this year, with up to $30 billion at stake at the Shah Deniz Stage 2 gas development, planned to come on stream in 2018.  Statoil is fretting about political uncertainty in the EU. But it and other investors should be closely watching political developments at the production end in the run-up to November’s presidential elections, amid signs that the long-standing pact between Aliyev and Azerbaijani citizens – trading a measure of stability for an authoritarian grip on civil life – is showing cracks.

By Eldar Mamedov, Eurasianet.org

BAKU. April 10, 2013: There's a coffee shop in an out-of-the-way part of Baku where the walls are covered with illustrations from an early 20th century satirical magazine called Molla Nasreddin. The magazine represents a bygone era, when Azerbaijan was a font of new cultural trends in the Muslim world, pioneering such issues as female emancipation, anti-clericalism, anti-colonialism and labor rights

Although Azerbaijan was the birthplace of the magazine, arguably the country affected most by its essays and illustrations was Iran.

By Murad Gassanly

LONDON. March 25, 2013: Jeyhun Gubadov was eighteen when he died. Raised by his single mother Samira Gubatova in a small town of Khyrdalan near Azerbaijani capital Baku, Jeyhun was called up for compulsory military service in November 2012. On 8 January 2013 his body was returned to his family. Official cause of death – heart failure. His distraught mother insisted on opening the coffin and it soon became apparent that Jeyhun, who did not have any heart problems, was a victim of vicious abuse – his body carried signs of severe beatings.

Jeyhun’s death sparked the first wave of protests that continue to rock Azerbaijan to this day. Abuse and bullying in the armed forces remain the focus of rising discontent. If the early tremors of the last two months are merely harbingers of a greater challenge to the rule of the Aliyev regime later in this presidential election year, then history will rightly mark the murder of eighteen year old conscript Ceyhun Gubadov as its catalyst.

By Rustam Ibragimbekov

BAKU. March 16, 2013: I have always felt an admiration for the ability of talented publicists to recall real life facts to support their stories. In my case, I always use a fictional “doping” in my literary works. It kind of feels like a high jumping race, in order to overcome a terrestrial gravitation one athlete relies on the strength of his feet, while the other one uses performance enhancers.

When I read Vahid Gazi’s notebook about Cuba, I couldn’t help but feel the same sense of admiration towards him, not only does he describe his adventures in the island of freedom, but he also talks about the real people, their lives and their problems regarding the general political oppressiveness in the country.

By Umud Duzgun 

History made by South Azeris in an international club match between Tractor of Tabriz and Aljazeera of Dubai. A political chant gained voice and momentum.

On February 26, an Asian Champions League match took place between the soccer teams of Tractor (Tabriz) and Aljazeera (Dubai, UAE).  A seemingly non-political event turned into a highly politicized one when an impressive crowd of 85,000 people started chanting " Yasasin Azerbaycan! " or Long Live Azerbaijan! Those were the fans Tractor, a soccer club representing an Azeri region of Iran. Following its state ideology based on Persian nationalism, the Iranian authorities prohibit Azeri soccer fans to carry any cultural and political symbols and banners. Despite all these prohibitions, the fans of an Azeri soccer team managed to sneak in a huge 50 feet long banner writing in English for the first time "South Azerbaijan is not Iran" resembling the Catalan slogan “Catalan is not Spain.”€  It caught the eyes of millions of viewers around the nation and beyond. 

By Eldar Mamedov, Eurasianet.org

BAKU. February 28, 2013: Azerbaijan’s efforts to host the European Olympic Games  and other high-profile international events show that Azerbaijani leaders yearn to be taken seriously in European Union capitals. But that doesn’t mean Baku is willing to listen to Brussels.

When the EU foreign policy supremo Catherine Ashton and the enlargement and neighborhood commissioner Stefan Fule criticized the Azerbaijani government for the recent arrests of an opposition leader Ilgar Mammadov and journalist Tofiq Yaqublu, President Ilham Aliyev retorted that Azerbaijan had no obligations toward organizations of which it is not a member. EU representatives "had no right to interfere in Azerbaijan's internal affairs," Aliyev stated bluntly.