Analysis

Baku No Longer Wants to Remain Only a Regional Player

By AZE.US Editorial Team For years, Azerbaijan was viewed internationally through a relatively narrow lens: the conflict with Armenia, energy exports to Europe, and its...

Who Is Selling Off Baku’s Nizami Street?

By AZE.US Editorial Team Baku’s famous Nizami Street, known to generations of residents simply as Torgovaya, is gradually being transformed from the capital’s main pedestrian...

Little Baku in the U.S.: Cash Jobs, Borrowed Accounts and Fear of Deportation

A growing Azerbaijani community in Northern Virginia was built partly by newcomers who entered through the southern border and expected time, work permits or...

Armenia and Russia After the Election: A Divorce Delayed, Not Canceled

Yerevan is steadily moving out of Moscow’s political orbit, but economic dependence makes a clean break impossible. Russia, meanwhile, has lost the ability to...

Moscow Is Too Late: Baku Is Building a South Caucasus Without Masters

By AZE.US Editorial Team Russia has long viewed the South Caucasus as a region where Moscow should have the final word. Governments could change, countries could...

An Ice Cream Ad Became Azerbaijan’s Biggest Culture War

By AZE.US Editorial Team An ice cream commercial has become one of Azerbaijan's hottest political and cultural debates. Not inflation. Not housing prices. Not corruption allegations. Not social inequality. Ice...

The Kremlin Swallowed a Bitter Pill From Aliyev

Russia called Azerbaijan’s position on Ukraine “mistaken,” then immediately assured Baku that the disagreement would not damage bilateral relations.

The South Caucasus Is No Longer Anyone’s Backyard

By AZE.US Editorial Team President Ilham Aliyev’s appearance at the Fourth Shusha Global Media Forum was more than a long exchange with foreign journalists. It...

Why Some Azerbaijani Men Now See Marriage As A Financial Risk

AZE.US As housing becomes harder to afford and divorce remains common, a growing number of young men fear that marriage could leave them with debt,...

Russia Has Trapped Itself In A War With No Good Exit

Moscow can continue fighting, striking Ukrainian cities and seizing small areas of territory. What it can no longer do is explain what victory is...

Georgia Risks Becoming The Weak Link In The South Caucasus

By AZE.US Editorial Team For years, Georgia was the easiest country in the South Caucasus for Western policymakers to understand. It was pro-European, strategically located,...

Ankara Showed the New NATO: Turkey Is No Longer Asking for a Seat at the Table

By AZE.US Editorial Team The NATO summit in Ankara was formally about Ukraine, defense spending and the future of the alliance. In reality, it revealed...

Sea for the Rich, Trash for Everyone Else

As more of Baku’s coastline becomes commercialized, families who cannot afford private beach clubs are being pushed onto a shrinking number of overcrowded public...

€70 Billion for Ukraine and an Unpredictable Trump: What to Expect From NATO’s Ankara Summit

By AZE.US Editorial Team The NATO summit in Ankara on July 7 and 8 will test more than the alliance’s policy toward the war in...

Analysis: Azerbaijan Faces Four Months of Strategic Waiting

AZE.US Azerbaijan is entering a four-month period of strategic waiting as uncertainty grows across several international disputes affecting the South Caucasus, according to Farhad Mammadov,...

Recognition as Leverage: Why Israel Is Reopening an Old Wound Now

By AZE.US Editorial Team Israel’s decision to support recognition of the 1915 events as genocide does not look like an act of historical memory. It...

Putin’s Fuel Trap: The War Has Reached Russia’s Gas Stations

By AZE.US Editorial Team Russia loves to call itself an energy superpower. Oil, gas, pipelines, tankers, global markets, grand maps on Kremlin walls. Then an ordinary driver...

Recognition As A Lever: Why Israel Is Reopening An Old Wound Now

By AZE.US Editorial Team History rarely returns to international politics on its own. More often, it is brought back when it becomes useful. That is exactly...

It Is Time For Armenians To Visit Baku And Azerbaijanis To Visit Yerevan

By AZE.US Editorial Team The visit of Gor Azizyan, coach of UFC fighter Sharabutdin Magomedov, to Baku has triggered a familiar wave of emotion. Some...

Two Wars, One Message: The Old Rules No Longer Work

By AZE.US Editorial Team The war in Ukraine and the crisis around Iran may look like two separate stories. They involve different regions, different actors...

The European Union Talks About The South Caucasus, But Forgets Azerbaijan

By AZE.US Editorial Team The European Union appears eager to present Armenia as its new success story in the South Caucasus. Brussels wants to show...

Azerbaijan And Turkmenistan: When A Bilateral Visit Becomes Part Of Bigger Geopolitics

By AZE.US Editorial Team The visit of the president of Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan should not be seen as just another protocol event between two friendly...

Housing, Parents And Poverty: What Is Behind Azerbaijan’s “Family Values”

By AZE.US Editorial Team In Azerbaijan, the desire to buy an apartment is often described as a cultural habit. People are said to be attached...

A Father Who Lost His Child Does Not Owe Social Media The “Right” Kind Of Grief

By AZE.US Editorial Team The death of 17-year-old Zahra Mehtizade in a motorcycle crash has shaken many people in Azerbaijan. But the reaction to the...

Moscow Is Burning: Putin Has Backed Himself Into a Corner

By AZE.US Editorial Team Moscow is burning, and not only in the literal sense. The smoke rising over the Russian capital is also smoke over the...

A Dilijan Signal: Peace Between Baku and Yerevan Is Again a Real Scenario

By AZE.US Editorial Team The meeting between Azerbaijani presidential aide Hikmat Hajiyev and Armenian Security Council Secretary Armen Grigoryan in Dilijan was more than another...

Pashinyan Won, Moscow Lost, But Peace With Azerbaijan Remains in Question

By AZE.US Editorial Team Nikol Pashinyan’s election victory in Armenia is being widely read as more than a domestic political result. For many observers, it...

Ex-MP wants Azerbaijan to debate shorts. The country has bigger problems

By AZE.US Editorial Team Azerbaijani politics has no shortage of real problems. Prices are rising. Young people are leaving. Courts, jobs, education, healthcare, corruption and...

Can Armenia Really Walk Away From Its Historic Dependence on Russia?

By AZE.US Editorial Team Nikol Pashinyan’s election victory has revived a tempting headline: Armenia is leaving Russia and moving toward the West. That sounds clean. It...

Crypto in Azerbaijan: You Can Buy It, but You Can’t Pay With It

By AZE.US Editorial Team Bitcoin was trading near $61,742 on Wednesday, equal to about 104,961 Azerbaijani manats at the official 1.7000 AZN dollar rate. For...

Banning Social Media for Children Is Easier Than Teaching Adults Responsibility

By AZE.US Editorial Team Azerbaijan is moving toward tighter rules on children’s access to social media, including a proposed minimum age of 16 for independent...

Shorts, hairy legs and Baku’s double standards

By AZE.US Editorial Team Baku has somehow found itself in the middle of a summer culture war over one urgent national question: should men be...

Why friendship is getting more expensive in Azerbaijan

By AZE.US Editorial Team Friendship is supposed to be one of the few parts of life that does not come with a price tag. In Azerbaijan,...

Zeynab Javadly’s voice and the silence of those meant to protect

By AZE.US Editorial Team The public appeals made by Azerbaijani woman Zeynab Javadly have stirred wide debate on social media in recent days. She has spoken...

Armenia is voting on more than Pashinyan. It is voting on whether it can become a state

By AZE.US Editorial Team Armenia’s June 7 parliamentary election is not just a vote on Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. It is a test of whether...

An Adult Woman Is Not Family Property

By AZE.US Editorial Team A private family conflict in Azerbaijan has turned into a public argument about something much larger than one couple. A young woman...

Why Young Azerbaijanis Want To Leave, Even When They Love Their Country

By AZE.US Editorial Board In Azerbaijan, youth emigration is often explained too easily. They do not love the country, some say. They look too much to...

Why Young Families In Azerbaijan Are Delaying Children

By AZE.US Editorial Team Azerbaijan is debating child benefits as if the issue were a minor budget dispute, not a warning about the country’s future. One...

EU Flag At Rasulzade Monument Sparks Dispute Over Symbolism And Force

A political dispute in Azerbaijan over an EU flag displayed near the monument to Mammad Amin Rasulzade on Independence Day has exposed poor judgment on both sides: a questionable symbolic gesture by opposition activists and an excessive reaction by those who forcibly removed the flag.

A Cigarette Butt Abroad Can Damage A Country’s Reputation

By AZE.US Editorial Team A video circulating on social media from Ukraine has stirred an uncomfortable debate among Azerbaijanis about behavior abroad and the way...

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