AZE.US
Azerbaijani politician and public figure Ilgar Mammadov has pushed back against attempts to present the “Singapore model” as a viable path for Azerbaijan, arguing that the comparison is mainly used to justify authoritarian rule and restrictions on freedom.
Mammadov made the argument in a Facebook post reflecting on a familiar idea that periodically returns to Azerbaijan’s public debate: that dictatorship can also be effective, and that Azerbaijan should therefore follow Singapore’s example.
According to Mammadov, this line of thinking gains traction when people come under pressure from above and begin accepting what is packaged as an “intellectual” argument. In reality, he suggested, it is a convenient moral compromise dressed up as strategic thinking.
In the post, Mammadov recalled a conversation from the mid-2000s during a dinner at the British ambassador’s residence, where former UK special envoy to the South Caucasus Sir Brian Fall raised the question of why Azerbaijan should not consider the Singapore model.
Mammadov said he rejected the idea at the time, arguing that under those conditions it effectively meant accepting the loss of occupied territories, concentrating the country’s future on Absheron, relying on oil and gas exports through Georgia and postponing fundamental national questions.
He said that debate then rested on three historical contexts: the occupation of Azerbaijani territories, the future of Caspian oil and gas projects, and human rights. Two of those contexts, he wrote, are now gone. Azerbaijan’s territories are no longer under occupation, and the country’s oil-and-gas future is no longer what it once appeared to be. But the third issue remains: human rights and the rule of law.
That, Mammadov argued, is where the real problem lies. In his view, some democratic states still do not know how to justify close cooperation with Azerbaijan while also presenting themselves as morally accountable to their own societies, given the pressure on freedoms and rights inside the country.
For that reason, he said, the Azerbaijani government periodically revives the Singapore narrative itself, trying to present dictatorship as a rational national choice both at home and abroad.
Mammadov argued that Singapore cannot be separated from the unique conditions that made it what it is. Low corruption and high living standards, he said, did not emerge in a vacuum. Singapore is a city-state with an exceptional geographic, economic and historical position that cannot simply be replicated elsewhere.
He pointed in particular to the Strait of Malacca. While much of the world is currently focused on the Strait of Hormuz, Mammadov wrote that Malacca is no less important and carries an even larger share of global trade. In his view, control over that route gives outside powers enormous leverage over Chinese trade flows.
From that perspective, he argued, Singapore’s success rests not only on internal governance, but also on a unique geopolitical and geoeconomic reality. A corruption-free city-state sitting on a critical trade chokepoint served the interests of global powers that did not want to lose influence over Chinese trade. In that setting, he wrote, democracy and human rights became secondary so long as the local population did not interfere with core geopolitical and geoeconomic interests.
Against that backdrop, Mammadov said, the Azerbaijani government tries to exaggerate the country’s geopolitical and trade significance in order to make the Singapore comparison appear more credible. But even tensions involving neighboring Iran do not make Azerbaijan remotely comparable to Singapore, he argued. The scale is different, the geography is different, the history is different, the culture is different, and trade volumes are not even close.
For that reason, Mammadov said Azerbaijan’s “Singapore syndrome” has nothing to do with genuine national development. What the government wants, in his view, is a lasting excuse for violating rights at home. The point is not to build an efficient and fair state, but to make dictatorship look practical and acceptable.
He compared that logic to a lottery: to win, you have to match all the numbers, not just two. But in Azerbaijan’s version of the Singapore argument, he said, society is asked to accept only dictatorship and the absence of corruption, as if all the other conditions that shaped Singapore’s success would somehow fall into place on their own.
Mammadov ended on a broader political point, saying Azerbaijan is a nation and a state with its own historical mission and should not accept a subordinate role in someone else’s geopolitical order. The country, he argued, should define and strengthen itself differently – by protecting freedom, human rights and democracy.
Until those values become part of the country’s political code, Mammadov said, Azerbaijan will not climb out of its current political and social dead ends.
AZE.US