Sunday’s Wikileaks release containing some 250,000 diplomatic cables included headline-creating news regarding Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
One of the cables, marked as “confidential” (not a terribly high level of secrecy) was “classified” and perhaps written by Donald Lu, who at the time was the US Chargé d’Affaires in Baku. The cable summarizes in great detail a meeting in February of this year between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and US Undersecretary of State William Burns.
The cable is extraordinary for a number of reasons. For instance, President Aliyev was remarkably candid in his discussion with Burns, and offers his views on topics such as Iranian subversion in Azerbaijan, President Dmitry Medvedev’s style of governance, his disdain for Turkey’s foreign policy, and the ongoing Nagorno-Karabakh dispute.
As I have written elsewhere, Iranian-Azerbaijani relations are cordial only on the surface. Iran is suspected of fomenting trouble throughout Azerbaijan, supporting radical mosques in the southern part of the country, and attempting to weaken Azerbaijan’s influence in the Caspian region.
The unedited commentary from the diplomatic cable indicates that President Aliyev complained to Burns that Iran was continuing to undermine Azerbaijan:
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13. (C) Aliyev said that Iranian provocations in Azerbaijan were on the rise. He specifically cited not only the financing of radical Islamic groups and Hezbollah terrorists, but also:
— the Iranian financing of violent Ashura ceremonies in Nakhchivan,
— the organization of demonstrations in front of the Azeri consulates in Tabriz and Istanbul,
— a violent religious procession recently in Baku,
— the use of the President’s photo alongside the Star of David on the Azeri-language Seher TV broadcast into Azerbaijan, and
— conflict in the Caspian.
Aliyev’s comments regarding Turkey are extraordinary for their bitterness but also in that they reveal the president’s moderate, pragmatic views on stability in the Muslim world. His disdain for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is particularly revealing. While it is no secret that Azerbaijan has been playing hardball with Turkey over gas profits from the proposed Nabucco pipeline (which is understandable, considering the circumstances), Aliyev also weighs in on what he sees as Turkey’s increasing radicalization, and its counter-productive behavior as a regional power. Supporting Hamas has gotten Turkey nowhere, he says while dismissing the “naïveté” of Erdogan’s foreign policy:
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19. (C) “…Aliyev made clear his distaste for the Erdogan government in Turkey, underscoring the “naivete” of their foreign policy and the failure of their initiatives, including the loss of support for Turkey among traditional international friends because of Ankara,s hostility to Israel. He noted that in his view, there had never been any merit to the notion of a “moderate Islamist” government in Turkey, and that Erdogan,s insistence on promoting Hamas and Gaza ) when other Arab countries were notably silent on these issues ) had brought Turkey no benefits.
The Israeli government has no doubt taken note of Aliyev’s apparent regard for the two countries’ bilateral relations.
On the subject of Nagorno-Karabakh—the “frozen conflict” that could erupt into a destructive regional war—the President stressed that a proposal by Armenian President Sargsian to specify a date for a referendum to determine the province’s final status threatened to derail the peace talks:
6. (C) Aliyev noted that at Sochi, President Sargsian had inserted a proposal for specifying a definite date for a referendum or plebiscite on NK final status. This, Aliyev argued, undermined the entire framework of the agreement, which is premised on an eventual referendum ) with no definite timeframe ) in exchange for legalizing “the illegally established regime in NK.””
Burns also raised the issue of “jailed youth activists” – probably a reference to “donkey bloggers” Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli. Aliyev apparently agrees to release them eventually, adding intriguingly that “I had no intention to hurt anyone.”
The two men were released barely ten days ago, almost nine months after Burns’s visit.
