Ilham Aliyev, the former Prime Minister of Azerbaijan and the son of former Azerbaijani leader and former KGB chief Heidar Aliyev as many observers have predicted had won the presidential elections in Azerbaijan and became the acting President of the Azerbaijani Republic. The elections were mired with mass voting violations, violence and numerous cases of ballot box staffing, which lead the Aliyev Jr. to accumulate nearly 80% of the electoral votes, while his opponent Isa Gambarov from the rival Musavat Party received less than 20%.
The official announcement of Aliyev’s victory were quickly followed by mass demonstrations, public acts of disobedience, numerous riots and violence on the streets of Baku, where thousands of Isa Gambarov’s supporters burned cars, tires, broke windows in the near by shops, stoned police stations, police vehicles and public busses till they violently clashed with the Azeri riot police who dispersed them with the water cannons and chased them with violent strikes of police clubs.
As we have predicted, the first dynastic transfer of power on the territory of the former Soviet Union has just recently occurred in Azerbaijan. Despite vocal allegations by the international observers about fraud and vote-rigging in the presidential elections, Ilham Aliyev assumed the role of the Azeri president and organized a major crack down against political dissidents who challenged his legitimacy in the Azeri parliament and on the streets of the Azeri capital. Even though the Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent his congratulations to the newly elected Azeri president, United States of America on the other hand has refrained from making any major public announcements in this regard.
So what does election of Ilham Aliyev into Azeri presidency mean to the region and the international geopolitics at large? In our opinion, there are several important factors that he will need to clarify his position towards and will be judged upon in regards to the political course that Azerbaijan will take in the next several years. Those are: Caspian Oil Policy of Azerbaijan, the unresolved issue of Armenian-Azeri dispute over de-facto independent Artsakh Republic of the Mountainous Kharabagh and the international orientation of the Azerbaijani foreign policy. Domestic state of affairs is another factor that may pose great challenges to the Azeri leadership of Ilham Aliyev and his ability to hold power inside the country.
In our view Aliyev Jr. will continue to abstain from the re-igniting of the Armenian-Azeri conflict, because of the two reasons. First reason is the fact that the current Azerbaijani military is not strong enough to win a war with Armenia; second reason is that any signs of major instability in the region will jeopardize Azeri hopes of attracting any foreign investments into its oil sector and thus leave Azerbaijan in a miserable economic conditions that most of its citizens currently experience. Furthermore, the economic slum that Azerbaijan is now living in guarantees the continuation of the Azeri oil diplomacy, which is struggling to attract new oil companies into the country as many others have already left Azerbaijan after numerous unlucky oil drills turned out very little oil or literally nothing at all to justify the enormous amounts of money that they spent to drill them.
Speaking of the third factor that will determine the future course of the Azerbaijani foreign policy, we think that the Azerbaijani leadership will be split into a two counteractive camps. One camp will represent those who will seek greater relations with Russia and the second camp will represent those who will seek greater relations with the United States. As such, Azerbaijan will have no other choice but to adopt the Armenian model of foreign relations known as Policy of Complimentarity, where the interests of all major powers will have to be taken into equal consideration. The alternative to such foreign policy will be filled with dangerous prospects of internal political turmoil and the loss of power by the current Azeri administration. It is also highly probable, that Aliyev Jr. will seek the normalization of Azeri foreign relations with Iran, otherwise face growing threat of Islamic fundamentalism in the country.
In the end, we think that if current Azeri administration doesn’t manage to balance itself between various conflicting interests from abroad or contain the public resentment coming from within, they will have no other choice but to step down or face civil war that will bring down the Aliyev’s rule in Azerbaijan before 2005.