Your trusted source

2015 was a year of ups and downs and trepidation for Azerbaijan, said Director of the Department for Problems of Ethnic Relations at the Institute for Political and Military Analysis in Moscow, political scientist, professor Sergey Markedonov during ‘Caucasus 2015’ conference organized by the Caucasus Institute.  

According to Markedonov, for many years official Baku had been claiming that Azerbaijan was the most stable country in the region, and was in a much favourable condition than Armenia or Georgia. Whereas the events of 2015 showed, the alleged stability was shaken. In this respect, the professor pointed out the economic difficulties emerging from huge devaluation of Azerbaijani manat, and the drop of oil prices.

According to him, 2015 was also significant because of deterioration of relationship with the West. Sergey Markedonov emphasized the fact that Azerbaijan had been following the principle of ‘replacing democracy with oil’ for years, and Baku regime was mainly avoiding criticism of the West. In 2015, the West abandoned its previous position concerning Baku and began directly criticizing. According to the political scientist, this was demonstrated when PACE refused being part of observation mission during the Azerbaijani Parliamentary elections.

Markedonov said that repressions against journalists and dissidents in Azerbaijan resulted in the Council of Europe adopting a resolution in 2015 proposing certain sanctions against Azerbaijan.