Vol. 4, No. 22 (November 15, 2011)

Azerbaijan and recent shifts in Turkish-Iranian relations

Relations between Turkey and Iran are in flux, and changes in the longstanding dynamics of cooperation and competition between them, amplified by the upheaval in the Middle East, Turkey’s foreign policy shifts and the new Eurasian energy calculus, are certain to be significant for the entire region and for Azerbaijan in particular. Since the Iranian revolution of 1979, the relationship between Turkey and Iran has alternated between subtle competition and public cooperation.  For Turkey’s leadership, the spectre of revolutionary Islam in Iran and fears about a possible “Iranian...
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Why is EU external governance in Azerbaijan so limited?

None of the numerous articles on EU-Azerbaijani relations has addressed them from the increasingly influential perspective of EU external governance.  Instead, all of them have focused on what can be called the EU foreign policy approach.  This article seeks to fill that gap and clarify the differences of these two approaches.  On the one hand, while the foreign policy approach focuses mainly on agents, the external governance approach focuses on structure.  And on the other, unlike the EU foreign policy approach, the EU external governance approach considers systems ...
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Call to resettle Armenians in Karabakh threatens peace process

An Armenian diaspora effort to convince Armenians living abroad to resettle in the Nagorno-Karabakh not only violates international law, which specifies that an occupying power cannot change the ethnic mix of a region in advance of a referendum by introducing its citizens or co-ethnics into a region, but threatens progress under the aegis of the OSCE Minsk Group to a resolution of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Elman Abdullayev, the press secretary of the Azerbaijan Foreign Ministry, noted that in connection with the 20th anniversary of the independence of Armenia, Armenian...
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