Diplomacy between Azerbaijan and the EU has concentrated on the territorial dispute with Armenia, but since the outbreak of peace there’s a new focus: Making money.
Bilateral relations with the old enemy over Nagorno-Karabakh are considered to have been put to bed following the lightning offensive of September 2023. The ethnic Armenians have mostly left the region and the two countries can today move forward with joint infrastructure projects, according to Azerbaijan’s latest envoy to Brussels.
“We won the war, now let’s win the peace,” Hikmat Hajiyev, head of President Aliyev’s department of foreign policy, told journalists in the EU capital last week. “We are completely transforming the region and solidifying Armenia-Azerbaijan peace agenda”.
For many, this means completion of the Zangezur Corridor, a road-rail project lying at the intersection of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Iran and Turkey: An axis that could potentially link China and Europe (the US is in partnership with Armenia for its section of the link, named after President Trump).
Azerbaijan is also flogging its potential as a provider of both more gas (if the EU gets over its “green fanaticism”) and renewable electricity. While geological studies are incomplete, there are thought to be gold deposits; there might be rare earths.
The Zangezur Corridor and Armenia could however prove to be the least tricky of the diplomatic balls Baku is juggling.
Azerbaijan is sandwiched between nations sanctioned by the West — Russian and Iran — which hardly makes for a stable region.
Baku’s attempts to deliver gas to Ukraine were put on ice in August when energy facilities owned by Azerbaijan’s Socar company were hit by Russian airstrikes. President Aliyev’s press service condemned the “deliberate” attack, though Hajiyev is today offering a different explanation. “I don’t think … it was deliberate,” he says. “If it was deliberate, probably there could be far bigger explosions”. This was “probably” therefore “collateral damage”.
This followed the “accidentally downing” in 2024 of an Azerbaijani Airlines plane en route from Baku to the Chechen capital Grozny, a tragedy resulting in the deaths of 38 of the 67 people on board. This is also now considered water under the bridge. President Putin has “addressed the four concerns of Azerbaijan,” says Hajiyev. “Number one, we expected an official apology. Number two is the investigation of the fact. It was also admitted that a proper investigation will be done, and then bringing to justice of the ones who have committed this crime. And of course, there’s a compensation.” Now these issues are being addressed “we are turning the page of the misunderstanding”.
Just last month, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry lodged a “strong protest” with Moscow after the country’s embassy in Kyiv was damaged in another Russian air strike. This was also probably “collateral damage”, according to Hajiyev.
Iran, meanwhile, in May executed one man judged responsible for the 2023 attack on the Azerbaijani embassy in Tehran.
“All of this escalation of tension may affect [us],” says Hajiyev. “But nevertheless, Azerbaijan is an island of stability and security and prosperity, and we will continue to just solidify it.”
The end of the conflict with Armenia has triggered a revision of Baku’s foreign policy. Azerbaijan now considers itself a central Asian country bestriding the Caucasus mountains and the Middle East. Azerbaijan’s geopolitical identity has become “multiple”, says Hajiyev.
