The Aliyev family has been having its way with the Azerbaijanis for decades. Heydar Aliyev, the family patriarch, was a Communist Party boss in the best of Stalinist traditions from the 1960s, and president of Azerbaijan from 1993 to 2003.
Like Russian President Vladimir Putin, former Lenin Prize winner Ilham Aliyev came out of the security apparatus, which left him well positioned to take over from his father following the ‘democratic’ transition to an independent Azerbaijan after the Soviet collapse. Good contacts in the security apparatus have proved more important than democratic credentials in much of former Soviet Asia. The countries of the Caucasus, where Azerbaijan is perched on the western shores of the Caspian Sea, must walk a thin line between Russia in the north and the Islamic world further south, while at the same time making nice with a Europe hungry for oil and gas, and a US empire obsessed with geo-political positioning. Little wonder the desires and needs of ordinary Azerbaijanis get lost in the shuffle.
