No meeting of Azerbaijani and Armenian leaders in the past decade generated such widespread expectations that there would be a breakthrough toward a settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as did the June 24th session of Presidents Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sargsyan hosted by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Kazan. To a large extent, this reflected not so much a change in Baku or Yerevan, but rather the actions of the three OSCE Minsk Group co-chair countries, whose leaders not only issued a joint statement at Deauville calling for progress toward a settlement, but also personally l...

Azerbaijan has always played a special role in Turkey’s foreign policy, a role that reflects what Heydar Aliyev famously called their existence as “one nation, two states.”  Indeed, over the last century, Turkey’s foreign policy cannot be understood without reference to Azerbaijan, and in the last several years, Baku has played a key role in prompting the Turkish political elite to revise its plans for a “zero problem” situation with its neighbors, first and foremost Armenia.  The relationship between the two Turkic countries in fact predates both of the modern stat...

Over the last 20 years, Azerbaijan and Turkey have experienced a complex evolution of their relationship in the energy sector, with now one and now the other taking the leading and with shifts sometimes coming because of changes in each of their capitals but more often happening because of pressure from third countries.  The very complexity in this sector helps to provide texture to the overarching spirit of cooperation between the two Turkic states. After Azerbaijan emerged as an independent country, Turkey was among the very first outside powers to get involved with Azerbaijan’s...