Azerbaijan Weekly Bulletin - Issue 1
12–18 April 2021
Ilham Aliyev inaugurated Military Trophy Park
On 12 April, President Ilham Aliyev took part in the opening of the new Trophy Park in Baku. The large open-air museum displays the military equipment of the Armenian army that was either captured or destroyed by the Azerbaijani army. Additionally, the museum contains some belongings of Armenian military servicemen as well as their wax sculptures. At the opening, the president posed in front of an installation made with hundreds of helmets of Armenian soldiers. In society, there were divided opinions with regards to the demonstration of trophies in a dehumanizing way. Many, including some public figures, posited that building war museums is a common practice, referring to the previous examples in the world. Others, including opposition politician Azer Gasimli, expressed disapproval. “Ilham Aliyev’s behaviors can be compared to those of Hitler,” he said. He added that if Azerbaijan wants peace for the region and citizenship for Nagorno Karabakh Armenians, this is not how it can be achieved. This opinion was echoed by several other opposition figures. During his speech at the opening, the president also took the chance to target the first Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan (1918–1920) and also the current opposition to his government. He said that the opposition parties Popular Front and Musavat betrayed the country then they were in power during the first Karabakh war. He accused the former government coalition of selling the districts of Karabakh to Armenia. He also added that those opposition groups intended to make a revolution against him in 2003 in order to grab the power and then to compromise Karabakh to Armenia. In response, an official of the former coalition said it is unacceptable that Aliyev is using the Karabakh matter to contest his current opponents. In the trophy park, the recently found remains of Iskander-M missile are also demonstrated. Aliyev said he still has not received any response on how Armenia obtained the Russia-made weapon, export of which is banned. Aliyev also indirectly drew attention to military support by Russia to Armenia. He said that the worth of the destroyed and captured equipment of Armenia is 5 billion USD, which was gifted to them, unlike Azerbaijan, “which builds its independent economy”.
Lukashenko’s visit to Baku
On 13 April, Alexander Lukashenko arrived in Baku for two days working visit. During his visit, he met with Ilham Aliyev twice, informally and in an official format. Prior reports indicated that the focal points of meetings were multiple aspects of the bilateral cooperation between Belarus and Azerbaijan, including current and future joint projects on the industry, food production, and agriculture. According to the media, the informal meeting of Lukashenko with Aliyev upon his arrival took five hours. Political analyst Shahin Jafarli believes that Lukashenko is striving to diversify the sources of foreign debt in order to be able to control the deepening political and economic crisis in his country, while also trying to reduce financial dependency solely on Russia. Therefore, it can be assumed that the main purpose of his visit is finding an agreement on financial assistance from Baku. It would also the case that, as in the past, Azerbaijan will continue to import military equipment from Belarus, the expert added. In another report, the transport and communication minister of Belarus, who also arrived in Baku to meet his counterpart, suggested Azerbaijan Airlines to arrange its Baku-New York flights via Minsk. At the end of the meetings, the presidents informed the public that the two countries are entering to a new phase of cooperation in the spheres of energy, military, agriculture, health, tourism, technologies, and more. The most interesting moment of the press briefing of the presidents was when Lukashenko shared the story of how in the past Aliyev asked him to convince former Armenian leadership to solve the Karabakh conflict in an exchange for money when Azerbaijan was witnessing an oil boom. He said the former Armenian leadership refused Aliyev’s offer. Commentators said that these remarks are aimed at deepening the political crisis in Armenia.
Guardian report on troll army in Azerbaijan
On 14 April, the Guardian released an investigative report on the Azerbaijani ruling party’s practice of employing mass social media trolls in order to target independent media outlets and opposition politicians online. According to the report, although former Facebook employee and whistleblower Sofie Zhang informed the management in 2019 about the government-sponsored trolling campaign in the Azerbaijani segment of the social network, Facebook still continues to allow such practices. Conducting an analysis, the Guardian also found that over 97 percent of comments under one post by a critical online media (Azad Soz Facebook page) were made by government trolls. Talking to the Guardian, Popular Front party leader Ali Karimli said that the government recruits around 10 thousand trolls who are paid by the Ministry of Interior through the youth branch of the ruling party as well as some GONGOs. In her comment, social media expert and journalist Arzu Geybullayeva said that Facebook usually neglects countries like Azerbaijan. The investigation on the troll army in Azerbaijan led to wide discussions in the media and triggered a response by the government. On 14 April, the New Azerbaijan Party (YAP) demanded the Guardian to reject the article, as they believed it violated the main principles of journalism including responsibility, truth, and objectivity. Party representative Elman Nasirov stressed that YAP is the biggest party in the South Caucasus with 760 thousand members, 40 percent of which are young people, thus, the party does not need trolls. Activist Bakhtiyar Hajiyev said society is aware of the network of trolls already for a long time. He added that the presidential administration, the state-owned news agency Azertag and the New Azerbaijan Party managers are dispatching the texts and links to the trolls to be further disseminated over social media. He believes that large sums of money are allocated for this purpose as the authorities believe it helps them to manipulate public opinion.
