Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev is no longer an independent figure, according to political analyst Grant Melik-Shahnazaryan.
He claims that Aliyev, in order to secure victory in the war, ceded control to Turkey in several critical areas.
“This isn’t outwardly apparent, especially when Aliyev speaks as a victorious president, issuing threats against Russia and Iran. But if you examine the state’s governance structure—who controls the security services, who controls the army—it becomes clear that Ilham Aliyev is far from an independent actor; he is fully managed by Turkey,” Melik-Shahnazaryan asserts.
He believes that Ankara is pushing Baku into confrontation with Russia and has been doing so since the moment it gained levers of influence.
According to him, signs of Russian-Azerbaijani tensions emerged immediately after the 44-day war ended.
“After the war, the responsibility for Artsakh’s security was placed on Russian peacekeepers. If you look at the periods when Azerbaijan took actions against the Armenian population, it becomes clear that these coincided with Russia’s setbacks on the Ukrainian front. Whenever Russia faced failures or losses on the front, Azerbaijan took steps: the capture of Parukh, taking prisoners, blocking the corridor, and many other actions. All of this indicates that, in reality, there is some form of confrontation between Baku and Moscow,” he stated.