Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan -- a secular nation with a majority-Turkic and majority-Shia Muslim population -- was briefly independent (from 1918 to 1920) following the collapse of the Russian Empire; it was subsequently incorporated into the Soviet Union for seven decades. Beginning in 1988, Azerbaijan and Armenia fought over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which was populated largely by ethnic Armenians but incorporated into Soviet Azerbaijan as an autonomous oblast in the early 1920s. In the late Soviet period, an ethnic-Armenian separatist movement sought to end Azerbaijani control over the region. Fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh escalated after Armenia and Azerbaijan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. By the time a ceasefire took effect in 1994, separatists with Armenian support controlled Nagorno‑Karabakh and seven surrounding Azerbaijani territories. After decades of cease-fire violations and sporadic flare-ups, a second sustained conflict began in 2020 when Azerbaijan tried to win back the territories it had lost in the 1990s. After significant Azerbaijani gains, Armenia returned the southern part of Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding territories to Azerbaijan. In September 2023, Azerbaijan took military action to regain the rest of Nagorno-Karabakh; after a conflict that lasted only one day, nearly the entire ethnic Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh fled to Armenia. Since gaining its independence in 1991, Azerbaijan has significantly reduced the poverty rate and has directed some revenue from its oil and gas production to develop the country’s infrastructure. However, corruption remains a burden on the economy, and Western observers and members of the country’s political opposition have accused the government of authoritarianism. The country’s leadership has remained in the ALIYEV family since Heydar ALIYEV, the most highly ranked Azerbaijani member of the Communist Party during the Soviet period, became president during the first Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1993.