This year NATO is celebrating the 60th Anniversary of its foundation, while Azerbaijan is marking the 15th Anniversary of its accession to the Partnership for Peace.  On these significant occasions, it gives me a special pleasure to glance through past years and to assess the current level of partnership that we have achieved.  Let me first stress that the foundations of this mutually beneficial partnership were laid down by President Heydar Aliyev when he signed the Framework Document about accession to PFP during the official visit to NATO HQ on 4 May 1994. Over the past 15 y...

What happened in Georgia last summer, Turkey’s rapprochement with Armenia, and closer ties between Azerbaijan and Russia since that time have led many to conclude that there has been a complete redrawing of the geopolitical map of the South Caucasus and that Azerbaijan must recalibrate its approach.  But less has changed than meets the eye, and Azerbaijan’s national interests remain what they were, an underlying reality many more alarmist analysts have failed to recognize or to include in their analyses of what is likely to happen next. The events of August 2008 cannot be unders...

Turkey’s rapprochement with Armenia and especially the publication of the five-part “road map” for future relations between Ankara and Yerevan have sparked much anger in Baku with some people viewing this Turkish move, in the absence of significant progress on ending the Armenian occupation of 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territory as a betrayal and others predicting that it will force Azerbaijan to re-orient its foreign policy away from Turkey and the West and towards Moscow.  Such reactions, perhaps understandable under the circumstances, require at least three correctives: ...