History UsefulNotes / Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan is rich in oil and natural gas, particularly under the Caspian Sea where new technology can now reach deposits that Soviet drillers were never able to reach. The South Caucasus Pipeline carries this oil and gas to the West - a plot point in ''Film/JamesBond'' film ''Film/TheWorldIsNotEnough''. Like Turkey, it also has a very shady history with regards to human rights and freedom of speech. Just be careful not to publicly insult the state or say anything positive about Armenians when within its borders; while Turkey has been slowly relaxing its rules in this regard, Azerbaijan has not. Writer Akram Aylisli, formerly Azerbaijan's "Writer of the People", found this out the hard way after his novella ''Stone Dreams'' dealt with Azerbaijani actor Saday Sadykhly and his efforts to protect his Armenian neighbors during the Sumgait and Baku pogroms as the USSR collapsed; he was stripped of his title and pension by Azerbaijan's president, forced to submit to DNA testing to see if he had any Armenian ancestry, had his wife and son fired from their jobs, subjected to protests, and [[DisproportionateRetribution given death threats by actual politicians, one of whom offered a $13,000 reward for whoever would cut Aylisli's ear off]].

Azerbaijan (Azerbaijani: ''Azərbaycan''), officially known as the '''Republic of Azerbaijan''' (Azerbaijani: ''Azərbaycan Respublikası'') is a Eastern European and West Asian country which, like neighbouring UsefulNotes/{{Armenia}}, is one of the clutch of former UsefulNotes/{{Soviet|RussiaUkraineAndSoOn}} republics in the Caucasus region, where UsefulNotes/{{Russia}} and UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} meet. "Where Russia and Turkey meet" (more broadly, "where UsefulNotes/{{Europe}} and UsefulNotes/{{Asia}} meet") applies well to the country, as it has long been under Russian rule, but speaks a language which is very close to Turkish[[labelnote:How close is it?]]The Azeri Language is near-identical to the Turkish dialects spoken in eastern Turkey, like Kars and Erzurum, and nearly all the differences between Azeri and Turkish are actually differences between eastern dialects of Turkish and the Istanbul dialect (which is the basis for Standard Turkish). The only thing that sets Azeri apart from the eastern dialects of Turkish is the vocabulary; while Turkish absorbed most of its western loanwords from French, Azeri absorbed them from Russian, and since the Soviet Union closed its border to foreigners before Atatürk's reforms took steam, the Arabic and Persian loanwords that were purged out of the Turkish language in favor of Turkic neologisms are still used in Azerbaijan. The latter difference makes Azeri sound basically like FloweryElizabethanEnglish spoken in an Appalachian drawl for Turks.[[/labelnote]]. This can be seen in names like Aliyev ("Ali"-"ev", a typical Middle Eastern name with a Russian suffix). Since independence, it has been ruled by a dynasty of the Aliyevs, consisting of Heydar, its first president, and his son, Ilham, who has been ruling since 2003 and maintaining power through what most foreign observers like Freedom House would objectively call 'rigged' elections.

The titular ethnic group of the country, the Azerbaijanis, despite being linguistically Turkic, are an example of what ethnologists call "Turko-Persian"; their culture is highly Persianized, and their people identify themselves more as part of the Iranian world than with Central Asia, where the majority of Turkic peoples live. Compare the [[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1d/Azerigirl.jpg/200px-Azerigirl.jpg national dress of Azeris]] with [[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/fd/a0/3e/fda03ec3174ce7d8f3dd633a08839407.jpg the Parthians]] as contrasted with [[http://aboutkazakhstan.com/images/kazakhstan-people-national-clothes-9.jpg the Kazakhs]]. This is supported by genetic and historical evidences, which showed that there was no large-scale immigration in the historical period, suggesting that local Iranians adopted the language of the Turkic conquerors while retaining their base culture. Meanwhile, the former Iranians in turn were assimilated ethnic Caucasians (i.e. people who came from the Caucasus Mountains, not an alternative term for white people) related to the Georgians, the Chechens, the Lezgians, etc.

Note regarding the naming of the country. Despite being in its name, only a small part of the country occupies the historical region of Azerbaijan. Instead, most of it is in present-day Iran, where ethnic Azeris are more numerous than in the Republic. The current country of Azerbaijan is largely on top of the former duchy of Shirvan, a powerful Persian vassal who held tributaries within the Caucasus during its golden days, and on Caucasian Albania[[note]]which is unrelated to UsefulNotes/{{Albania}} in Europe. "Albania" in this case is a corruption of the native name ''Aghwank'' or ''Arran'', and "Caucasian" was later added to stress this difference[[/note]], originally a Caucasian speaking land (related to Dagestani people) until it was Persianized and later Turkicized. The duchy of Shirvan is the reason why the Azeri language used to be the lingua franca of the Caucasus before the Russian invasion and why there exists a large diaspora of Azeris in Russia's Dagestan, Georgia, Eastern Turkey and formerly Armenia (before the 1992 war forced them out, see below). Meanwhile, this reason is also why Iranians still popularly call Azeris as "Tork" instead of the politically correct "Azari". Long story short, before the 20th century, Azeris were still considered an eastern extension of the Turks of the Ottoman Empire. When Shirvan briefly gained independence from Russia during [[UsefulNotes/OctoberRevolution the chaos of the Russian Civil War era]] (Russia had annexed Shirvan, as well as the rest of the Caucasus region, after a war with Qajar Iran in 19th century), they decided to name themselves after the region of the south and invented the Azeri appellation to gain a new identity of their own. Iran has several reasons to object to this, but mostly because it implies that Azeri Turks are always a distinct nation, rather than a subdued vassal (though a very powerful and numerous one; the people who founded Iran's revivalist dynasty, the Safavids, were likely considered Azeris today, and the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Khamenei current Supreme Leader of Iran]] is half-Azeri).

After its independence from the [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn Soviet Union]], Azerbaijan became embroiled in internal conflict when its Armenian minority declared the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, located near the southwestern border with Armenia and Iran, independent. The titular war, which occurred from 1992 to 1994 caused the region, as well as its surrounding areas, to be occupied by Armenian troops and local militia and its considerable Azeri minority forced out, while the Armenian minority in the rest of Azerbaijan also fled to avoid pogroms. The Azeri refugees were then settled into refugee camps where even to this day they live in horrible conditions and poverty. Before the end of the war things got increasingly ugly, with massacres on both sides [[note]] Azeris will be quick to point to the Khojali Massacre in which the Armenian army gunned down somewhere around 300 Azeri villagers (who to be fair were given a warning to evacuate 24 hours before and even had an escape corridor provided for them, but were not allowed to use it by the Azeri authorities), though the Azeri side is equally guilty for needlessly massacring Armenians in Baku and Sumgait early in the war[[/note]]. The war itself ended in a ceasefire, not that you'd be able to tell or anything - skirmishes along the border were common. The Armenians eventually declared the region independent under the name UsefulNotes/RepublicOfArtsakh, after an ancient Armenian province. It had its own democratic government in place (seen by several human rights groups as the least corrupt in the whole region, in fact; Freedom House classified it as having better civil and political rights than both its neighbours), though every country was too afraid to recognize its independence, including Armenia itself, for fear of starting another war. Armenia and Azerbaijan had pursued talks for a peaceful solution to the conflict, though neither side wanted to budge or concede anything, so the talks had been fruitless. Azerbaijan wanted the conflict settled based on the concept of territorial integrity, while the Armenians wanted it settled based on the right of self-determination. In 2020, a string of tit-for-tat attacks caused [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nagorno-Karabakh_war another war]]. This time, Azerbaijan won outright and regained all areas not explicitly part of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, leaving Artsakh surrounded by Azeri territories at all sides barring a tiny strip of land called the Lachin corridor, which connects it with Armenia, that was declared a neutral region patrolled by Russian troops. Ultimately, this arrangement only lasted three years, as Azerbaijan launched another campaign in 2023 which was decisively won in their favor. In the aftermath of the conflict, over 100,000 ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh left for Armenia, the Artsakh armed forces was disbanded, and the Artsakh government announced that it will dissolve on January 1, 2024, marking the effective end of Armenian presence in the region.

That little piece of Azerbaijan on the other side of Armenia you see on the map is called Nakhchivan (the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic), a semi-independent exclave of Azerbaijan. The reasons that bit of land belongs to Azerbaijan are complicated, but it's mostly due to the fact that Josef Stalin gave it to the Azerbaijani SSR to appease Turkey in the early 1920's, and the majority Azeri population voted for Nakhchivan to be part of the Azerbaijani SSR. Over the years of Soviet rule the Armenians were slowly forced out by discrimination; a similar process was attempted in Nagorno-Karabakh with less success. It is separated from mainland Azerbaijan by a strip of Armenia called Zangezur (or Syunik). Because of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, for several decades after independence, the region was only accessible through Iran or Turkey, making its inhabitants rather impoverished. In 2020, the same ceasefire agreement that ended the second Nagorno-Karabakh war envisaged the creation of a trade corridor between Nakhchivan and the rest of Azerbaijan through Armenian territory, which, like the Lachin corridor, will be patrolled by Russian troops.

In more recent news, Azerbaijan won the Series/EurovisionSongContest in 2011, with the song "Running Scared" by Ell & [[Music/NikkiJamal Nikki]], and then hosted the 2012 contest in Baku. While it went well, within a few days the European Parliament threatened sanctions if the human rights situation in the country wasn't brought up to standard, thanks to the new-found attention the country was getting. But other than that, the country's strategic position to the West, as well as its oil, has largely made it immune to criticism, even after [[http://freedomhouse.org/article/aliyevs-rigged-election-azerbaijan-lacks-credibility the results of the 2013 presidential elections]] were leaked onto the internet ''before'' anyone ever cast a vote.

* '''Area:''' 86,600 km
(33,400 sq mi) (112th)

The country is one of the few whose population are overwhelmingly Shia Muslim, but more than a century of Russian rule has completely secularized the population to the point that very few currently practice their faith. This makes it somewhat of an oddball when compared to its fellow Caucasian neighbors, Armenia and UsefulNotes/{{Georgia}}, and its former colonizer, Russia, whose churches have considerable influence on national politics, as does the theocratic UsefulNotes/{{Iran}} across the border. This is attributed to the ancient times where Azerbaijan belonged to the Safavid Empire and its founder UsefulNotes/IsmailI implemented a policy of obligatory conversion from Sunni to Shia Islam in order to solidify Persian identity, which also explains why Iraq is also a Shia-majority country.

After its independence from the [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn Soviet Union]], Azerbaijan became embroiled in internal conflict when its Armenian minority declared the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, located near the southwestern border with Armenia and Iran, independent. The titular war, which occurred from 1992 to 1994 caused the region, as well as its surrounding areas, to be occupied by Armenian troops and local militia and its considerable Azeri minority forced out, while the Armenian minority in the rest of Azerbaijan also fled to avoid pogroms. The Azeri refugees were then settled into refugee camps where even to this day they live in horrible conditions and poverty. Before the end of the war things got increasingly ugly, with massacres on both sides [[note]] Azeris will be quick to point to the Khojali Massacre in which the Armenian army gunned down somewhere around 300 Azeri villagers (who to be fair were given a warning to evacuate 24 hours before and even had an escape corridor provided for them, but were not allowed to use it by the Azeri authorities), though the Azeri side is equally guilty for needlessly massacring Armenians in Baku and Sumgait early in the war[[/note]]. The war itself ended in a ceasefire, not that you'd be able to tell or anything - skirmishes along the border were common. The Armenians eventually declared the region independent under the name UsefulNotes/RepublicOfArtsakh, after an ancient Armenian province, and has its own democratic government in place (seen by several human rights groups as the least corrupt in the whole region, in fact; Freedom House classifies it as having better civil and political rights than both its neighbours), though every country is too afraid to recognize its independence, including Armenia itself, for fear of starting another war. Armenia and Azerbaijan have pursued talks for a peaceful solution to the conflict, though neither side wants to budge or concede anything, so the talks have been fruitless. Azerbaijan wants the conflict settled based on the concept of territorial integrity, while the Armenians want it settled based on the right of self-determination. In 2020, a string of tit-for-tat attacks caused [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nagorno-Karabakh_war another war]]. This time, Azerbaijan won outright and regained all areas not explicitly part of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, leaving Artsakh surrounded by Azeri territories at all sides barring a tiny strip of land called the Lachin corridor, which connects it with Armenia, that has been declared a neutral region patrolled by Russian troops. As many observers noted, this agreement basically blockaded Artsakh and gave the few Armenians who chose to remain two options: stay and rot or leave for Armenia.

Azerbaijan (Azerbaijani: ''Azərbaycan''), officially known as the '''Republic of Azerbaijan''' (Azerbaijani: ''Azərbaycan Respublikası'') is a Eastern European and Western Asian country which, like neighbouring UsefulNotes/{{Armenia}}, is one of the clutch of former UsefulNotes/{{Soviet|RussiaUkraineAndSoOn}} republics in the Caucasus region, where UsefulNotes/{{Russia}} and UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} meet. "Where Russia and Turkey meet" (more broadly, "where UsefulNotes/{{Europe}} and UsefulNotes/{{Asia}} meet") applies well to the country, as it has long been under Russian rule, but speaks a language which is very close to Turkish[[labelnote:How close is it?]]The Azeri Language is near-identical to the Turkish dialects spoken in eastern Turkey, like Kars and Erzurum, and nearly all the differences between Azeri and Turkish are actually differences between eastern dialects of Turkish and the Istanbul dialect (which is the basis for Standard Turkish). The only thing that sets Azeri apart from the eastern dialects of Turkish is the vocabulary; while Turkish absorbed most of its western loanwords from French, Azeri absorbed them from Russian, and since the Soviet Union closed its border to foreigners before Atatürk's reforms took steam, the Arabic and Persian loanwords that were purged out of the Turkish language in favor of Turkic neologisms are still used in Azerbaijan. The latter difference makes Azeri sound basically like FloweryElizabethanEnglish spoken in an Appalachian drawl for Turks.[[/labelnote]]. This can be seen in names like Aliyev ("Ali"-"ev", a typical Middle Eastern name with a Russian suffix). Since independence, it has been ruled by a dynasty of the Aliyevs, consisting of Heydar, its first president, and his son, Ilham, who has been ruling since 2003 and maintaining power through what most foreign observers like Freedom House would objectively call 'rigged' elections.

Azerbaijan ('''Azerbaijani:''' ''Azərbaycan''), officially known as the '''Republic of Azerbaijan''' (Azerbaijani: ''Azərbaycan Respublikası'') is a Eastern European and Western Asian country which, like neighbouring UsefulNotes/{{Armenia}}, is one of the clutch of former UsefulNotes/{{Soviet|RussiaUkraineAndSoOn}} republics in the Caucasus region, where UsefulNotes/{{Russia}} and UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} meet. "Where Russia and Turkey meet" (more broadly, "where UsefulNotes/{{Europe}} and UsefulNotes/{{Asia}} meet") applies well to the country, as it has long been under Russian rule, but speaks a language which is very close to Turkish[[labelnote:How close is it?]]The Azeri Language is near-identical to the Turkish dialects spoken in eastern Turkey, like Kars and Erzurum, and nearly all the differences between Azeri and Turkish are actually differences between eastern dialects of Turkish and the Istanbul dialect (which is the basis for Standard Turkish). The only thing that sets Azeri apart from the eastern dialects of Turkish is the vocabulary; while Turkish absorbed most of its western loanwords from French, Azeri absorbed them from Russian, and since the Soviet Union closed its border to foreigners before Atatürk's reforms took steam, the Arabic and Persian loanwords that were purged out of the Turkish language in favor of Turkic neologisms are still used in Azerbaijan. The latter difference makes Azeri sound basically like FloweryElizabethanEnglish spoken in an Appalachian drawl for Turks.[[/labelnote]]. This can be seen in names like Aliyev ("Ali"-"ev", a typical Middle Eastern name with a Russian suffix). Since independence, it has been ruled by a dynasty of the Aliyevs, consisting of Heydar, its first president, and his son, Ilham, who has been ruling since 2003 and maintaining power through what most foreign observers like Freedom House would objectively call 'rigged' elections.

Azerbaijan ('''Azerbaijani:''' ''Azərbaycan''), officially known as the '''Republic of Azerbaijan''' ('''Azerbaijani:''' ''Azərbaycan Respublikası'') is a Eastern European and Western Asian country which, like neighbouring UsefulNotes/{{Armenia}}, is one of the clutch of former UsefulNotes/{{Soviet|RussiaUkraineAndSoOn}} republics in the Caucasus region, where UsefulNotes/{{Russia}} and UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} meet. "Where Russia and Turkey meet" (more broadly, "where UsefulNotes/{{Europe}} and UsefulNotes/{{Asia}} meet") applies well to the country, as it has long been under Russian rule, but speaks a language which is very close to Turkish[[labelnote:How close is it?]]The Azeri Language is near-identical to the Turkish dialects spoken in eastern Turkey, like Kars and Erzurum, and nearly all the differences between Azeri and Turkish are actually differences between eastern dialects of Turkish and the Istanbul dialect (which is the basis for Standard Turkish). The only thing that sets Azeri apart from the eastern dialects of Turkish is the vocabulary; while Turkish absorbed most of its western loanwords from French, Azeri absorbed them from Russian, and since the Soviet Union closed its border to foreigners before Atatürk's reforms took steam, the Arabic and Persian loanwords that were purged out of the Turkish language in favor of Turkic neologisms are still used in Azerbaijan. The latter difference makes Azeri sound basically like FloweryElizabethanEnglish spoken in an Appalachian drawl for Turks.[[/labelnote]]. This can be seen in names like Aliyev ("Ali"-"ev", a typical Middle Eastern name with a Russian suffix). Since independence, it has been ruled by a dynasty of the Aliyevs, consisting of Heydar, its first president, and his son, Ilham, who has been ruling since 2003 and maintaining power through what most foreign observers like Freedom House would objectively call 'rigged' elections.

* '''Capital and largest city:''' Baku ('''Azerbaijani:''' ''Bakı'')

* '''Capital and largest city:''' Baku (Bakı)

* '''Capital and largest city:''' Baku

Note regarding the naming of the country. Despite being in its name, only a small part of the country occupies the historical region of Azerbaijan. Instead, most of it is in present-day Iran, where ethnic Azeris are more numerous than in the Republic. The current country of Azerbaijan is largely on top of the former duchy of Shirvan, a powerful Persian vassal who held tributaries within the Caucasus during its golden days. Their existence is the reason why the Azeri language used to be the lingua franca of the Caucasus before the Russian invasion and why there exists a large diaspora of Azeris in Russia's Dagestan, Georgia, Eastern Turkey and formerly Armenia (before the 1992 war forced them out, see below). Meanwhile, this reason is also why Iranians still popularly call Azeris as "Tork" instead of the politically correct "Azari". Long story short, before the 20th century, Azeris were still considered an eastern extension of the Turks of the Ottoman Empire. When Shirvan briefly gained independence from Russia during [[UsefulNotes/OctoberRevolution the chaos of the Russian Civil War era]] (Russia had annexed Shirvan, as well as the rest of the Caucasus region, after a war with Qajar Iran in 19th century), they decided to name themselves after the region of the south and invented the Azeri appellation to gain a new identity of their own. Iran has several reasons to object to this, but mostly because it implies that Azeri Turks are always a distinct nation, rather than a subdued vassal (though a very powerful and numerous one; the people who founded Iran's revivalist dynasty, the Safavids, were likely considered Azeris today, and the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Khamenei current Supreme Leader of Iran]] is half-Azeri).

Azerbaijan ('''Azerbaijani:''' ''Azərbaycan''), officially known as the '''Republic of Azerbaijan''' ('''Azerbaijani:''' ''Azərbaycan Respublikası'') is a Eastern European and Western Asian country which, like neighbouring UsefulNotes/{{Armenia}}, is one of the clutch of former UsefulNotes/{{Soviet|RussiaUkraineAndSoOn}} republics in the Caucasus region, where UsefulNotes/{{Russia}} and UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} meet. "Where Russia and Turkey meet" (more broadly, "where UsefulNotes/{{Europe}} and UsefulNotes/{{Asia}} meet") applies well to the country, as it has long been under Russian rule, but speaks a language which is very close to Turkish[[labelnote:How close is it?]]The Azeri Language is near-identical to the Turkish dialects spoken in eastern Turkey, like Kars and Erzurum, and most of the differences between Azeri and Turkish are actually differences between eastern dialects of Turkish and the Istanbul dialect (which is the basis for Standard Turkish). What sets Azeri apart from the eastern dialects of Turkish is the vocabulary; while Turkish absorbed most of its western loanwords from French, Azeri absorbed them from Russian, and since the Soviet Union closed its border to foreigners before Atatürk's reforms took steam, the Arabic and Persian loanwords that were purged out of the Turkish language in favor of Turkic neologisms are still used in Azerbaijan - which makes Azeri sound like FloweryElizabethanEnglish for Turks.[[/labelnote]]. This can be seen in names like Aliyev ("Ali"-"ev", a typical Middle Eastern name with a Russian suffix). Since independence, it has been ruled by a dynasty of the Aliyevs, consisting of Heydar, its first president, and his son, Ilham, who has been ruling since 2003 and maintaining power through what most foreign observers like Freedom House would objectively call 'rigged' elections.

Azerbaijan ('''Azerbaijani:''' ''Azərbaycan''), officially known as the '''Republic of Azerbaijan''' ('''Azerbaijani:''' ''Azərbaycan Respublikası'') is a Eastern European and Western Asian country which, like neighbouring UsefulNotes/{{Armenia}}, is one of the clutch of former UsefulNotes/{{Soviet|RussiaUkraineAndSoOn}} republics in the Caucasus region, where UsefulNotes/{{Russia}} and UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} meet. "Where Russia and Turkey meet" (more broadly, "where UsefulNotes/{{Europe}} and UsefulNotes/{{Asia}} meet") applies well to the country, as it has long been under Russian rule, but speaks a language which is very close to Turkish[[labelnote:How close is it?]]The Azeri Language is near-identical to the Turkish dialects spoken in eastern Turkey, like Kars and Erzurum, and most of the differences between Azeri and Turkish are actually differences between eastern dialects of Turkish and the Istanbul dialect (which is the basis for Standard Turkish). What sets Azeri apart from the eastern dialects of Turkish is the vocabulary; while Turkish absorbed most of its western loanwords from French, Azeri absorbed them from Russian, and Atatürk's purge of Arabic and Persian loanwords didn't take hold in then-Soviet Azerbaijan for obvious reasons – so for Turks, Azeri basically sounds like FloweryElizabethanEnglish.[[/labelnote]]. This can be seen in names like Aliyev ("Ali"-"ev", a typical Middle Eastern name with a Russian suffix). Since independence, it has been ruled by a dynasty of the Aliyevs, consisting of Heydar, its first president, and his son, Ilham, who has been ruling since 2003 and maintaining power through what most foreign observers like Freedom House would objectively call 'rigged' elections.

Azerbaijan ('''Azerbaijani:''' ''Azərbaycan''), officially known as the '''Republic of Azerbaijan''' ('''Azerbaijani:''' ''Azərbaycan Respublikası'') is a Eastern European and Western Asian country which, like neighbouring UsefulNotes/{{Armenia}}, is one of the clutch of former UsefulNotes/{{Soviet|RussiaUkraineAndSoOn}} republics in the Caucasus region, where UsefulNotes/{{Russia}} and UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} meet. "Where Russia and Turkey meet" (more broadly, "where UsefulNotes/{{Europe}} and UsefulNotes/{{Asia}} meet") applies well to the country, as it has long been under Russian rule, but speaks a language which is very close to Turkish[[labelnote:How close is it?]]The Azeri Language is near-identical to the Turkish dialects spoken in eastern Turkey, like Kars and Erzurum, and most of the differences between Azeri and Turkish are actually differences between eastern dialects of Turkish and the Istanbul dialect (which is the basis for Standard Turkish). What sets Azeri apart from the eastern dialects of Turkish is the vocabulary; while Turkish absorbed most of its western loanwords from French, Azeri absorbed them from Russian, and Atatürk's purge of Arabic and Persian loanwords didn't take hold in then-Soviet Azerbaijan for obvious reasons. For Turks, Azeri basically sounds like FloweryElizabethanEnglish.[[/note]]. This can be seen in names like Aliyev ("Ali"-"ev", a typical Middle Eastern name with a Russian suffix). Since independence, it has been ruled by a dynasty of the Aliyevs, consisting of Heydar, its first president, and his son, Ilham, who has been ruling since 2003 and maintaining power through what most foreign observers like Freedom House would objectively call 'rigged' elections.

Azerbaijan ('''Azerbaijani:''' ''Azərbaycan''), officially known as the '''Republic of Azerbaijan''' ('''Azerbaijani:''' ''Azərbaycan Respublikası'') is a Eastern European and Western Asian country which, like neighbouring UsefulNotes/{{Armenia}}, is one of the clutch of former UsefulNotes/{{Soviet|RussiaUkraineAndSoOn}} republics in the Caucasus region, where UsefulNotes/{{Russia}} and UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} meet. "Where Russia and Turkey meet" (more broadly, "where UsefulNotes/{{Europe}} and UsefulNotes/{{Asia}} meet") applies well to the country, as it has long been under Russian rule, but speaks a language which is very close to Turkish. This can be seen in names like Aliyev ("Ali"-"ev", a typical Middle Eastern name with a Russian suffix). Since independence, it has been ruled by a dynasty of the Aliyevs, consisting of Heydar, its first president, and his son, Ilham, who has been ruling since 2003 and maintaining power through what most foreign observers like Freedom House would objectively call 'rigged' elections.

* '''Highest point:''' Mount Bazardüzü (4485 m/14,715 ft) (39th)

* '''Lowest point:''' Caspian Sea (−28 m/−92 ft) (17th[[note]]shared with UsefulNote/{{Iran}} and UsefulNote/{{Russia}}[[/note]])

* '''Lowest point:''' Caspian Sea (−28 m/−92 ft) (17th[[note]]shared with Iran and Russia[[/note]])

* '''Highest point:''' Mount Bazardüzü (4485 m/14,715 ft) (58th)

* '''ISO-3166-1 Code:''' AZ