Azerbaijan - Internal Political Affairs

[Eddo211]

Re: Azerbaijan - Internal Political Affairs

We'll Eddo, maybe our military forces should start a real hunt for azery snipers. Those are the only preferred warriors left in them as it is in their nature to try to kill when feeling safe or unnoticed. If in any danger, they prefer to run. If we make them feel that their snipers are our preferred pray , regardless of any politics, then Baku will be inclined more into pulling them out from line of conflict because of losses. Also, world opinion does not condemn the killing of snipers very much. So you could say that our military has been missing a point there.

Yes, you talking my language when dealing with these scumbacks.....we must go after high valued targets like officers and above. A good sniper is hard to hunt down (normally team of two) but I am sure our boys will have no problems tracking/trapping/setting them up plus diversions to fool their commanders.
Our boys are just not getting the green light to run special ops from the top leaders and it seams the division defense commanders cannot make those decisions by themselves....too bad because we are giving the enemy insentive to continue thid xxxx due to our lack of proper and decisive response.

[Hakob]

Re: Azerbaijan - Internal Political Affairs

We'll Eddo, maybe our military forces should start a real hunt for azery snipers. Those are the only preferred warriors left in them as it is in their nature to try to kill when feeling safe or unnoticed. If in any danger, they prefer to run. If we make them feel that their snipers are our preferred pray , regardless of any politics, then Baku will be inclined more into pulling them out from line of conflict because of losses. Also, world opinion does not condemn the killing of snipers very much. So you could say that our military has been missing a point there.

[Eddo211]

Re: Azerbaijan - Internal Political Affairs

Well we all have known for years that right before any meeting of CSTO peace deals Azeri snipers under the order of Aliyev murder Armenian soldiers and throw money everywhere to shut people up so nothing new President Sargsyan is saying.
He should declare CSTO talks null and void and any further aggression from Azerbaijan will met with extreme force to end their ability dispatch snipers within range.

[Hakob]

Re: Azerbaijan - Internal Political Affairs

Azerbaijan’s killings on border have several objectives – Armenia President (PHOTOS)




February 15, 2014 | 13:11
YEREVAN. – The authorities of Azerbaijan, which has lost the war, are attempting to create the impression among their people that, as if, the fight for Karabakh goes on.

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan stated the above-said while addressing the Yerkrapah Volunteers Union’s tenth congress being held Saturday in capital city Yerevan (PHOTOS).

“This convention is taking place at a time when there is neither peace nor war. The [Armenian] soldiers and civilians are being killed on our border from the adversary’s fire. Such an act is common murder nothing to do with the war. It is these murders which the Azerbaijani propaganda presents to its people as, allegedly, fight for Karabakh,” Sargsyan said, in particular.

In his words, these killings have another objective: “To regularly aggravate the situation, and keep lit the fire of enmity against the entire Armenian nation.”

“The murders on the border have yet another objective. The months of January and February are overloaded with ‘black’ days on the official calendar of Azerbaijan. They blame the Armenians and everyone in the world, but not themselves, for that.

“Azerbaijan’s last [military] diversion attempt, which had an inglorious end, was on the very January 20. The culmination point of the pogroms of the Armenians in [Azerbaijani capital city] Baku was the mobs’ setting on fire of the Armenian church in Baku; this happened at a time when the Soviet troops had not yet entered Baku; this is the truth, and the residents of Baku know this very well.

“These murders have yet another objective: to burn the bridges of peace. To rule out the chances for mutual understanding between the Armenian and the Azerbaijani peoples; [and] I consider this to be the most perilous for our two nations.

“Why are the [Azerbaijani] snipers not withdrawn from the boundary line? Because a murder is the last argument in a debate. Money and murder; here are two arguments which the adversary brings when dealing with us and the world.” President Serzh Sargsyan also stated, in particular.
Source: Panorama.am

[Hakob]

Re: Azerbaijan - Internal Political Affairs

Azerbaijani Communications Minister is sure that Armenians steal Azerbaijanis Internet

"The Armenians stole internet from Azerbaijan," stated the Minister of Communications and Information Technologies Ali Abbasov. As the site “Qafqazinfo.az” reports, according to the minister, Georgia, Iran and Central Asia also use the services provided by the telecommunications company “Delta Telekom.” The latter provides output to Internet to Azerbaijan as well.

"According to our information, Armenia also uses this Internet through Georgia, however we are not able to trace it," stated the Minister.

As the Azerbaijani site noted the Armenians are suspected of using the Internet in the border-close areas of Georgia. By Panorama.am

[Mher]

Re: Azerbaijan - Internal Political Affairs

Azerbaijan Man In Grave Condition After Setting Himself Alight

By RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service

February 13, 2014
BAKU -- A 41-year-old man has been hospitalized in grave condition after setting himself on fire in Azerbaijan's Naxcivan Autonomous Republic.

Huseyn Mammadov poured gasoline over himself and set himself alight in front of the regional Interior Ministry on February 12.

His brother, Ramiq Mammadov, told RFE/RL that he is not aware of the reasons for the act.

A witness says Mammadov set himself on fire after he visited the Interior Ministry, where the issue of his taxi driver's license was discussed.

It is the fifth attempt at self-immolation in Azerbaijan since late December.

Last week, an Azerbaijani woman died after setting herself alight in Baku.

Two men publicly ignited themselves last month.

They remain in hospital.

The death of a Karabakh war veteran who self-immolated in December in Baku caused a public outcry.

http://www.rferl.org/content/azerbaijan-immolation/25263037.html

[Hakob]

Re: Azerbaijan - Internal Political Affairs

February 13, 2014 - 18:14 AMT
Poverty, sexual abuse behind mass suicides in Azerbaijan: experts
80% of suicides in Azerbaijan are committed due to social problems. Suicide is not a solution, with problems to be resolved through fighting for one’s rights, participants of the Feb 12 hearings, organized by the National Council of Democratic Forces (NCDF), believe. The event was attended by politicians, human rights experts, lawyers, public figures, investigative journalists, Contact.az reported.

36 suicides have been posted in Azerbaijan since the beginning of the year. According to statistics, 138 suicides were committed in 2008; 165 in 2009; 289 in 2010; 414 in 2011; 482 in 2012. 920 suicide attempts were posted in 2013.

In 2011 there were 12 suicides in the army; in 2012 - 19, in 2013 – 16, and 4 cases were reported in January 2014.

"These figures are alarming enough. Government should wake up and act, otherwise promotion of human rights becomes a mere pretense," said the head of the National Council of Democratic Forces NCDF, Jamil Hasanli.

Psychologist Azad Isazade said that in practice, 1-2 of out 10 suicide attempts become lethal.

"If 36 people died in 2013, 350-400 suicides were attempted. Suicides are committed for two reasons - "I cannot live" or "I cannot take it any longer." In Azerbaijan even children are at risk. The other day, a third-grade student committed suicide because he could no longer stand taking care of his grandmother," said Isazade.

According to him, only 10-15 % of suicides are committed by the mentally deranged; usually, those who have social problems, especially women, commit suicides. Failing to find an outlet for their grief, people began to demonstratively self-immolate, with society indifferent to the problems of others, Isazade said.

Azerbaijani Popular Front Party (APFP) leader Ali Kerimli believes that poverty, social problems and hopelessness lead people to suicide. "The government must bear responsibility for it. But the opposition is also responsible. We, opposition, cannot even unite to bring hope to the society," Kerimli said. "The only way is to bring yourself to live and join the struggle," he said.

The participants noted that the authorities conceal the facts of suicide in the army and prisons. In 90% of cases, a criminal investigation is not carried out. "Suicides often occur in the families and the army because of sexual exploitation, with the actual reason behind it remaining concealed. In any case, lawsuits must be filed," said the head of the Islam, Democracy, Human Rights NGO and human rights activist, Aytekin Imranova.

According to experts, every year, 80-90 children commit suicide.

One of the causes of suicide is a breach of democratic freedoms, lack of justice at courts. "Due to the fact that it is not allowed to protest in a democratic way, people have resorted to desperate and demonstrative steps," said lawyer Namizad Safarov.

"The behavior of the government in connection with the self-immolation of Karabakh war veteran, Zaur Hasanov, contributed to the growth of such cases. People thought that this is a way to solve their problems. Media should not romanticize suicide and truthfully present it as an act of desperation," Azerbaijani expert Ulviya Asadzade said. By Panorama. Am

[Hakob]

Re: Azerbaijan - Internal Political Affairs

EurasiaNet on linguistic authoritarianism: Azerbaijani authorities banned naming children Ataturk

The Azerbaijani government has decided that citizens cannot name their children after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founding father of the Turkish Republic, or after their favorite fruits and objects, the site of the EurasiaNet American organization writes in an article.

After years of close cooperation with Ankara, Baku has decided that it wants to help its big Turkic cousin make sure there is only one Atatürk out there. As it stands, Azerbaijan has 18 of them; several born within the past few years, according to the country's State Terminology Commission.

Commission Chairperson Sayaly Sadigova claimed that the decision to ban "unofficially" the use of Atatürk was made at Turkey's own request. However as the article notes, the Turkish foreign ministry did not respond to requests from EurasiaNet.org to confirm the report.

The article reads that Azerbaijan’s linguistic authoritarianism does not end there. The name-regulators say parents also cannot call their baby Samovar even if they are convinced that the little darling totally looks like the Russian tea boiler. All such requests have been denied, Sadigova underlines.

As the article notes, apart from providing guidelines for translations, the commission has created an advisory system on proper names, categorizing them essentially as good, bad and funny. The "good names,” color-coded in green for users’ convenience, are the names that supposedly conform to Azerbaijan's cultural and ideological values. The bad names are pretty much names associated with much-hated neighbor Armenia and are marked in red. Names that sound funny in Azeri or other languages go into the yellow, best-to-avoid category.

“Yet, despite the commission’s tireless efforts to improve the quality of Azerbaijani names, funny names remain a serious problem. Back in 2011, Sadigova complained that 10 percent of the 180,000 names reviewed by the commission do not conform to Azeri-language standards and are plain ridiculous,” the article notes.

Back in 2012 the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan adopted the "principle of traffic light," according to which it is the state agencies that determine the "trustworthy" and "forbidden" names for children that parents can choose. Armenian names were included in the "red" - forbidden - list. Also, a special committee of the National Academy of Sciences approved the draft law according to which the endings of Azerbaijani surnames will be changed from "ov" and "ev" to Turkic "lu-li", "baili", etc.

Chairman of the Committee on Culture of the Azerbaijani Parliament Nizami Jafarov, answered the question, how will the new law affect the national minorities in Azerbaijan - Lezghins, Talysh, Avars, Tats and other nations, and said: "The question is presented in such a way that anyone who considers himself an Azerbaijani, considering the fact that most indigenous peoples merged with Azerbaijanis and consider themselves Azerbaijanis, will have to change their names." By: Panorama.am

[ninetoyadome]

Re: Azerbaijan - Internal Political Affairs

Azerbaijan and the West´s Rapprochement with Iran
February 12, 2014 - 1:52pm, by Richard Kauzlarich and Eldar Mamedov Azerbaijan EurasiaNet's Weekly Digest Geopolitics Iran
Eurasianet Commentary
The brewing rapprochement between the United States and Iran, signified by the Geneva nuclear deal signed in January, seems likely to scramble American strategic priorities in the South Caucasus, especially for Azerbaijan.

In recent years, the United States deemphasized democratization in its dealings with Azerbaijan on account of Baku’s strategic position as Iran’s northern neighbour, a position that made it a key cog in the West’s containment policy against Tehran. But now that the United States -- along with other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany – are taking the first steps toward re-establishing a working relationship with Iran, the justification for Washington’s tolerance of Baku rights abuses is starting to recede.

The Joint Action Plan, also known as the Geneva interim agreement, is designed to roll back aspects of Iran's controversial nuclear program in exchange for limited sanctions relief. This deal is seen as a stepping stone to a comprehensive pact that ensures the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program. Prior to reaching agreement, the nuclear standoff had prompted increasingly tight US-led sanctions against Iran, and raised the prospects of military action.

If developments now unfold as envisioned, the regional order in the Middle East and Caspian Basin could turn upside down. Diplomatic normalization would certainly change the region’s existing energy-export calculus. Since the Islamic revolution of 1979 and the ensuing diplomatic break with Tehran, the exclusion of Iran from regional security plans and energy-related projects has been a permanent feature of American policy.

Many regional players have come to see opposition to Iran and alignment with the United States as strategically beneficial for them. Azerbaijan is a case in point. Since it gained independence in 1991, Baku has sought the West's support to achieve its overriding national objective: regaining control over the separatist territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Striving to burnish its pro-Western credentials, Baku was happy to accommodate the United States by excluding Iran from Western-led energy consortia and the regional pipelines that bring Caspian oil and gas to the world markets. US laws forbidding US companies to partner with Iranian entities made that a necessity.

Establishing a partnership with NATO and developing close security cooperation with Israel helped bolster Baku's strategic importance for Washington: Lots of experts speculated that Azerbaijan could emerge as a forward operating area for military operations, in the event of a US and/or Israeli strike against Iran. In exchange, President Ilham Aliyev’s administration expected, and mostly got, the West to turn a blind eye to its authoritarian governing practices, especially its muzzling of a free press and its crackdown on political dissent.

The Geneva interim agreement challenges existing arrangements. Not only the probability of a military strike is fading, but also the rise of Sunni jihadist groups in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East is pushing the US and Shi’a Iran towards at least some sort of tacit cooperation -- even without waiting for a final agreement on the nuclear issue. While a full-fledged strategic realignment is still far off, there is an obvious convergence of interests in countering the Al-Qaeda-type groups, and, at least in Iraq, some behind-the-scenes cooperation seems already to be occurring.

In this context, emphasising Azerbaijan's anti-Iranian credentials as a strategic asset for the United States, as some American neoconservative pundits do, is counter-productive to US national security interests. Previously, few questioned those promoting a “strategic” alliance with Azerbaijan to counter Iran. Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s war-mongering rhetoric and actions made it easy for anyone in Washington to be an unquestioning backer of Baku. But a more moderate Iranian incumbent, President Hassan Rouhani, now makes it far harder to argue that Iran is a perpetual enemy of the United States and a threat to Western interests.

For its part, Azerbaijan is unlikely to welcome a possible US-Iranian rapprochement. As it is, Azerbaijan is facing an uncertain future as an energy supplier. The shale gas boom in North America and declining demand in Europe threaten the profitability of Azerbaijani energy resources and pipeline projects. Iran’s potential re-emergence as a global energy player could seriously choke Azerbaijan’s existing revenue streams, as investors could easily find Tehran a more appealing option than Baku.

While Aliyev's administration might not be happy about recent developments, there is little it can do to derail them. Unlike Israel and Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan has no leverage to publicly oppose the rapprochement between the US and Iran without paying a steep price in terms of its relations with Washington. And sitting back and quietly hoping that Israel can torpedo the deal, as seems to be the preference of some policymakers in Baku, is probably not a winning strategy. The Obama-Kerry team has shown that it is determined to make the final agreement happen.

For Aliyev’s team, this means that it will have to find a different basis to articulate its strategic importance for the West. Changing geopolitical circumstances, especially if the nuclear deal places Iran on a more liberal domestic political trajectory, will make it much more difficult for the Azerbaijani government to justify its authoritarian tendencies.

The way to redefine the strategic partnership with the United States and EU would be for Azerbaijan to commit itself to shared values of democracy, human rights and the peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Such a commitment could pay some diplomatic dividends in itself, as the case of neighbouring Georgia has shown. And in the context of engagement with Iran, a democratizing Azerbaijan, with its mainly Shi’a Muslim population, would remain a strategic asset in Washington’s eyes.

Instead of seizing an opportunity, Baku is currently sending all the wrong messages: there are still dozens of political prisoners in Azerbaijan, including a former presidential candidate Ilgar Mammadov, and President Aliyev is maintaining a bellicose posture on the Karabakh question.

While the anti-Iranian rationale for the strategic partnership between the West and Azerbaijan is starting to crack, the Azerbaijani government is showing neither the vision nor the political will to redefine its strategic priorities. Failure to adjust could, sooner or later, render Azerbaijan geopolitically irrelevant.

Editor's note: Richard Kauzlarich is a former US ambassador in Azerbaijan and is currently Adjunct Professor at the School of Public Policy, George Mason University.

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/68038

[Mher]

Re: Azerbaijan - Internal Political Affairs

Azerbaijani Riot Police mistakenly detain man who was demonstrating in favour of the Aliyev regime

http://www.azadliq.org/media/video/25249451.html

lmaoo es martik esh kan oo kmnan