Line #7 UsefulNotes/Azerbaijan


1	[[quoteright:328:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/aj-map.gif]]
2
3	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).
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5	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.
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7	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/GeorgiaCaucasus 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.
8
9	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. 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.
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11	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, which itself was on top of 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 community 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". Before the 20th century, Azerbaijanis were simply called "Turks"; nationalist sentiment was not strong back then, as people tended to identify themselves with their clans rather than a nation. 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).
12
13	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 would dissolve on January 1, 2024, marking the effective end of Armenian presence in the region.
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15	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 UsefulNotes/JosefStalin 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. In 1989, a wave of ethnic Azerbaijanis of Nakhchivan crossed the border to Iran in an attempt to meet up with their relatives in Iranian Azerbaijan, which was denounced by the Soviet government as an "act of Islamic fundamentalism". In response, the local Nakhchivan Soviet declared independence from the Soviet Union on January 20, 1990 -- making it the first part of the Soviet Union to do so (and beating UsefulNotes/{{Lithuania}}'s claim by seven weeks). Heydar Aliyev, who later became the country's president, hailed from Nakhchivan, and he campaigned for the continued union of his homeland with the rest of Azerbaijan after it declared independence in 1991. 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.
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17	Azerbaijan's relations with Iran have become rather unstable as of late because Azerbaijan has shown itself to be pro-U.S. and pro-UsefulNotes/{{Israel}} (and both countries see Azerbaijan as a potential springboard for attacking Iran should the need arise), and Azerbaijan is angry at Iran for having good relations with Armenia, causing more problems for Nakhchivan (luckily, it just ''barely'' borders with Turkey at one little corner, so it has one friend in the region that actually borders it). This comes despite the fact Armenia also has good relations with the US and Israel.
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19	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]]. In fact, to this day, Azerbaijan denies all entry by not only Armenian citizens, but anyone who has the slightest bit of Armenian ancestry, and it also bans anyone who has visited Artsakh without explicit permission from the Azerbaijani government. Even having an Armenian stamp on your passport (which signifies that you've visited the country) can lead to problems when checking in immigration.[[note]]Notably, the reverse isn't true, as Armenia allows Azerbaijanis to visit the country without a visa for six months, though it requires a special permit (and probably raises eyebrows).[[/note]]
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21	The name of the country is sometimes considered an {{Inherently Funny Word\|s}} in English-speaking media, largely because it has the letters Z and J in it. It is often referenced when a 'random obscure country name' is needed in media. It has largely inherited this role from Czechoslovakia, which ceased to exist in 1993. The country's name comes from Atropates, a Persian who set up his own kingdom in the area after UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat's invasion ([[UsefulNotes/YanksWithTanks US Army]] officer training often involves planning invasions of fictional countries in the Caucasus that have the same borders as real ones, Azerbaijan is "Atropia" for presumably this reason).
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23	In more recent news, Azerbaijan won the Series/EurovisionSongContest in 2011, with the song "Running Scared" by Ell & 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.
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25	!!Azerbaijan in media
26	* ''Film/TheWorldIsNotEnough'', as mentioned.
27	* Recordings of Azeri bagpipes were included on the Voyager Golden Records, currently (October 2010) 13 and 16 light-hours that away.
28	* One of the missions in ''VideoGame/ModernWarfare'' has the SAS going to an Azerbaijani village to track down Khaled al-Asad.
29	* Snap, Professor Sinister/Trevolry, and Loopin (among other characters) are apparently imprisoned here in ''Fanfic/MyImmortal''. [[CardboardPrison It doesn't work for long]].[[note]]Obviously, it's just a misspelling of [[TheAlcatraz Azkaban]].[[/note]]
30	* It's an Azeri oil field worker and Muslim extremist who sabotages a major Soviet oil refinery at the beginning of ''Literature/RedStormRising'', setting the book's plot in motion.
31	* The final two episodes of ''Series/{{Six}}'' take place in Azerbaijan.
32	* The mission "Kaffarov" in ''VideoGame/Battlefield3'' has you playing as a Russian GRU member storming a villa here to capture the titular character.
33	* The Oil Rig mission in ''VideoGame/SplinterCell1'' takes place on the Caspian Sea off the coast here, where one of Nikoladze's terrorist cells has been located after it has been discovered that he's been orchestrating an invasion of Azerbaijan and murdering his way through the country.
34	----
35	[[AC:The Azerbaijani flag]]
36	[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/flag_of_azerbaijan_3.png]]
37	->The flag's blue, red and green stripes symbolize the Turkic peoples, progress, and the Muslim world, respectively. At the center is a crescent and star, traditional symbols of Islam, except the star is eight-pointed star to denote the Turkic peoples. The prior flag of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic was quite different looking, and very similar to that of the Ukrainian SSR (a defaced version of the USSR's flag, with a dark blue rather than lighter blue bar along the bottom).
38	----
39	[[AC:National emblem of Azerbaijan]]
40	[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/national_emblem_of_azerbaijan.png]]
41	->The emblem has traditional and modern symbols with the flame in the center. It was adopted in 1990.
42	----
43	[[AC:The Azerbaijani national anthem]]
44
45	->Azərbaycan! Azərbaycan!
46	->Ey qəhrəman övladın şanlı Vətəni!
47	->Səndən ötrü can verməyə cümlə hazırız!
48	->Səndən ötrü qan tökməyə cümlə qadiriz!
49	->Üçrəngli bayrağınla məsud yaşa!
50	->Üçrəngli bayrağınla məsud yaşa!
51
52	->Minlərlə can qurban oldu,
53	->Sinən hərbə meydan oldu!
54	->Hüququndan keçən əsgər,
55	->Hərə bir qəhrəman oldu!
56
57	->Sən olasan gülüstan,
58	->Sənə hər an can qurban!
59	->Sənə min bir məhəbbət
60	->Sinəmdə tutmuş məkan!
61
62	->Namusunu hifz etməyə,
63	->Bayrağını yüksəltməyə
64	->Namusunu hifz etməyə,
65	->Cümlə gənclər müştaqdır!
66	->Şanlı Vətən! Şanlı Vətən!
67	->Azərbaycan! Azərbaycan!
68	->Azərbaycan! Azərbaycan!
69
70	--
71
72	->Azerbaijan! Azerbaijan!
73	->Oh you glorious Fatherland of the brave child!
74	->We are all together ready to give our lives for you!
75	->We are all together strong to sacrifice our blood for you!
76	->Live blessed with your three-coloured flag!
77	->Live blessed with your three-coloured flag!
78
79	->Thousands of lives were sacrificed,
80	->Your chest became an arena for battles!
81	->Soldiers gave their life for you,
82	->All of them became heroes!
83
84	->You shall be a garden full of roses
85	->The sacrifice of our souls anytime for you!
86	->Never–ending love for you
87	->Have got a place in my heart!
88
89	->In order to maintain your honor,
90	->In order to elevate your flag,
91	->In order to maintain your honor,
92	->The young are intended sententiously!
93	->The glorious Homeland, The glorious Homeland,
94	->Azerbaijan! Azerbaijan!
95	->Azerbaijan! Azerbaijan!
96
97	----
98	[[AC:Government]]
99	* Unitary semi-presidential republic
100	** President: Ilham Aliyev
101	** Vice President: Mehriban Aliyeva
102	** Prime Minister: Ali Asadov
103	** National Assembly Speaker: Sahiba Gafarova
104
105	----
106	[[AC:Miscellaneous]]
107	* '''Capital and largest city:''' Baku (''Bakı'')
108	* '''Population:''' 10,127,874
109	* '''Area:''' 86,600 sq km (33,400 sq mi) (112th)
110	* '''Currency''': Azerbaijani manat (₼) (AZN)
111	* '''ISO-3166-1 Code:''' AZ
112	* '''Country calling code:''' 994
113	* '''Highest point:''' Mount Bazardüzü (4485 m/14,715 ft) (34th)

Context UsefulNotes / Azerbaijan