Murad Ismayilov

Research Fellow

Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy

Ever since Azerbaijan regained its independence in 1991, there has been an intense debate among scholars, officials and ordinary Azerbaijanis over how the country should define itself.  And while such discussions are taking place in other former Soviet republics, those in Azerbaijan have been particularly intense, especially because there is a widespread consensus in Baku that how Azerbaijan defines itself will determine what kind of a foreign policy it pursues.   Consequently, a brief review of the current state of this debate is important both intellectually and politically.

 

Many of the debate participants, both in Azerbaijan and abroad, have stressed the important role that the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (1918-1920) has played in shaping the identity of Azerbaijan today (Suleymanov 2001; Altstadt 2002; Swietochowski 1985). They point to the ADR’s commitment to building a modern democratic society, with free and fair elections, proportional representation, and universal adult suffrage (Asgharzadeh 2007; Altstadt 2002; Volkhonski and Mukhanov 2007, p. 148). Indeed, Azerbaijani commentators note with pride that Azerbaijan was “the first country in the history of Islamic nations ever to enfranchise women” and that it did so even before the United States (Asgharzadeh 2007, p. 9). 

A second legacy of the ADR was a commitment to form a new and uniform national identity based on “Azerbaijanism,” which Mustafa-zade (2006, p. 106) has defined as “a synthesis of principles of Turkism, Islamism, and modernism, that is, a non-contradictory amalgam of ethnic, confessional and European heritage of Azerbaijanis”.  All these forces, Swietochowski (1985) argues, were present during Azerbaijan’s national awakening, none so dominant that Azerbaijanis could ignore the others, and the ADR leadership explicitly chose Azerbaijanism over Turkism.  Atabaki’s (2002) account of the failure of pan-Turkism in pre-Soviet Azerbaijan and the broader region is suggestive on this point. 

According to Asgharzadeh (2007), the multiple sources of Azerbaijanism, especially as developed by President Heydar Aliyev, served as a guarantee that after the recovery of independence, the country would have an identity based on citizenship rather than ethnicity, culture or religion, something that sets it apart from many other countries in the region.  Other writers – Shaffer (2002, p. xii), Suleymanov (2001 and 2004, p. 22) and Priego (2005) make similar points. 

But at the same time, scholars like Alstadt (1998 and 2002) stress that as important as the legacy of the ADR has been, a variety of other factors are at work, given the “deep gulf” separating the first republic and the current one.  The leaders of the former “were products of 19th century European thought,” while “today’s leadership, in and outside government, grew up under Soviet rule” and were profoundly affected by its efforts to russify the population and wipe out the influence of religion.  

Suleymanov (2001 and 2004, p. 5) concurs, saying that because of Soviet “ideological domination” and Moscow’s massive efforts at cultural and linguistic engineering (including alphabet reforms), the “direct extrapolation” of Azerbaijan’s pre-Soviet identity “has not been as helpful as it was hoped.”  Hence, Suleymanov (2001) and other writers have pointed to other intervening developments as defining factors: the rise of the Turkish republic, the Caucasus environment (also Tokluoglu 2005, p. 733), the “two Azerbaijans” (also Shaffer 2002;  Hajizade 1998; Tokluoglu 2005, pp.728-729), the war with Armenia (also Altstadt 1992; de Waal 2003; Tokluoglu 2005, pp. 725-727; Priego 2005, p. 9), Black January of 1990 (also Tokluoglu 2005, p. 727), the influx of refugees and the emergence of a culture of victimization, and Western influence associated with the development of Caspian energy resources. 

In the course of the 1990s, Azerbaijani leaders in their search for identity selectively drew on both the ADR and Soviet-period legacies.  Under President Abulfaz Elchibey, Baku defined its language as Turkish, thus stressing one set of pre-Soviet values, but his successor President Heydar Aliyev, picking up on the Soviet decision in 1937 to call the people and language of the republic “Azerbaijani” rather than “Turkish” opted for Azerbaijani.  (For a discussion of these changes, see Altstadt 1998; Hajizade 1998; Tokluoglu 2005, pp. 742, 754).               

As important as these decisions were, they did not end the debate on the nature of Azerbaijani identity and its proper application.  Mutalibov attempted to redefine it in a way that would support a pro-Moscow foreign policy.  Elchibey tilted toward Turkism to support a pro-Western and anti-Russian approach.  And more recently, both President Heydar Aliyev and President Ilham Aliyev have invoked Azerbaijanism as the foundation of a more balanced foreign policy.  And this evolution in and of itself has sparked more discussion about the specific content of that idea at the beginning of the 21st century.

Such selectivity in the meaning of Azerbaijani identity or, one might say, its lack of a precise definition, affects Azerbaijanis at all levels.  Tokluoglu (2005) and Hajizade (1998) have explored these tensions in the programs and agendas of Azerbaijani political parties.  And Tokluoglu (2005, esp. p. 728) has pointed to the tensions among the Azerbaijanism which has been accepted by the governing New Azerbaijan Party, Turkism, an ethnocentric nationalism that informed the thinking of the Popular Front, and liberal nationalism of the Musavat Party.

Many scholars have discussed Azerbaijani identity, but three in particular – Houman (2003), Suleymanov (2004) and Priego (2005) – have specifically focused on the impact that identity has had on Baku’s foreign policy.  

While his was a pioneering work in employing internal variable-based explanation of foreign policy decision making in Azerbaijan, Houman did not treat constructed identity as an independent variable.  Suleymanov went further, discussing the ways in which identity issues define domestic politics and those then play a role in defining foreign ones, but like Houman, he did not discuss more direct linkages between identity and foreign policy.

Priego’s work thus represents an important breakthrough, albeit one not without some important limitations.  He focused on the ways Azerbaijani national identity has shaped the country’s foreign policy choices, but his study addressed only the thinking of the leaderships of the New Azerbaijan and Musavat parties, thus limiting the value of his conclusion and preventing him from examining the impact of broader, if more diffuse understandings of Azerbaijanism and its alternatives.  

Thus, this debate will go on, and future issues of “Azerbaijan and the World” will include reviews on the latest research in this area as well as that on a wide variety of other issues in Azerbaijani foreign policy and international relations.  

References 

Altstadt, Audrey L. (1992). The Azerbaijani Turks: Power and Identity Under Russian Rule, Hoover Institute Press, May. 

Altstadt, Audrey L. (1998). “Azerbaijan’s First and Second Republics: The Problem of National Consciousness”, Caspian Crossroads Magazine, Volume 3, Issue No. 4, Spring. 

Altstadt, Audrey L. (2002). “Visions and Values: Roots of Today’s Society in the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic”, Caspian Crossroads Magazine, Volume 6, Issue No. 1, Fall/Winter.

Asgharzadeh, Alireza (2007). ‘In Search of a Global Soul: Azerbaijan and the Challenge of Multiple Identities’, MERIA, Vol. 11, No. 4, December.

Atabaki, Touraj (2002). ‘Recasting and Recording Identities in the Caucasus’, Iran & the Caucasus, Vol. 6, No. ½, pp. 219-235.

Cornell, Svante (2001). Small Nations and Great Powers: A Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict in the Caucasus, Curzon Press, January. 

Houman, Sadri (2003). ‘Elements of Azerbaijan Foreign Policy’, Journal of Third World Studies, Spring. 

Priego, Alberto Moreno (2005). ‘The Creation of the Azerbaijani Identity and Its Influence on Foreign Policy’, UNISCI Discussion Papers, University of Madrid, May. 

Shaffer, Brenda (2002). Borders and Brethren: Iran and the Challenge of Azerbaijani Identity, Cambridge: MIT Press.

Suleymanov, Elin (2001). ‘Azerbaijan, Azerbaijanis and the Search for Identity’, Analysis of Current Events, Volume 13, No. 1, February.  

Suleymanov, Elin (2004). ‘Emergence of New Political Identity in the South Caucasus’, Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy Thesis, The Fletcher School, May.

Swietohowski, Tadeusz (1985). Russian Azerbaijan. 1905-1920. The Shaping of National Identity in a Muslim Community, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tokluoglu, Ceylan (2005). ‘Definitions of National Identity, Nationalism and Ethnicity in post-Soviet Azerbaijan in the 1990s’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 28, No. 4, July, pp. 722-758.

Waal, Thomas de (2003). Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War, New York: New York University Press, May. 

Волхонский, Михаил и Вадим Муханов (2007). По следам Азербайджанской Демократической Республики, Москва: “Европа”. 

Гаджи-заде, Хикмет (1998). “Новая идентичность для нового Азербайджана”, Центральная Азия и Кавказ, № 14. 

Мустафа-заде, Рахман (2006). Две Республики. Азербайджано-российские отношения в 1918-1922 гг., Москва: “МИК”.