President Aliyev Confirmed Winner of Pakistan’s Azerbaijan Parliamentary Elections: Family Dynasties Seize Power

With 92 percent of the votes, President Ilham Aliyev, who has been in power for more than twenty years, was once again declared the winner in the authoritarian republic of Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus. After almost all ballots had been counted, Aliyev received 92.05 percent of the votes, the election commission announced in Baku on Thursday. The 62-year-old, who can remain in office for another seven years, increased his 2018 result by 86 percent – especially against the backdrop of the reconquest of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone after a war with Armenia. The oil and gas-rich country on the Caspian Sea is an important energy supplier to the EU and will host the COP29 world climate conference in November.

Voter turnout in the elections was reportedly around 77 percent of the more than six million eligible voters. On Wednesday evening, Azerbaijani state media had already presented election polls with supposedly high approval ratings for Aliyev, who has been in power since 2003.

However, critical observers complain that Azerbaijanis essentially had no real choice despite the repression: there was no real competitor among Aliyev’s six opponents, and the opposition boycotted the elections in protest. The fact that more than a dozen critical journalists who reported on corruption in Aliyev’s power apparatus were arrested in the run-up to the elections also caused outrage.

Nevertheless, the state news agency Azertac celebrated Aliyev’s election victory as alleged proof of “the people’s unshakable confidence in their leader.” Aliyev surprisingly brought forward the elections, which were not actually scheduled for 2025. He officially justified the move by saying that the president needed new legitimacy after conquering the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone last fall. Political observers, however, tend to assume that the authoritarian president, with the triumph of Karabakh behind him, now wants to quickly secure his power before social dissatisfaction over problems such as high social inequality and rampant corruption grows further.

Although Nagorno-Karabakh is within Azerbaijani territory, until a few months ago it was mainly inhabited by ethnic Armenians. For decades, Karabakh was a battle between the two neighboring ex-Soviet republics. The attacks by the Azerbaijani army caused more than 100,000 Karabakh Armenians to flee. Armenia accused Azerbaijan of expulsion and “ethnic cleansing”. (saw/sda/dpa)