Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on Thursday called an early presidential election for Feb. 7, according to a document printed by his office. Aliyev, 61, was latest re-elected in 2018 for a seven-year term and, with political dissent very much suppressed, is almost certain to win a new term next year. In September, Aliyev ordered a lightning offensive, after a nine-month blockade, to again have control of the breakaway ethnic Armenian-controlled territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, a second victorious assault in the space of three years.
Whilst doing so, he righted what he and most in Azerbaijan viewed as the historical wrong of the region’s de facto secession in a bloody ethnic war that was along with the destruction of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Supported by his nation’s oil wealth, Aliyev has established a solid alliance with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan whilst also managing to maintain working rapports with both Russia and the West, deeply at odds over Moscow’s war in Ukraine.