On the sidelines of this weekend’s Caucasus BarCamp in Tbilisi, capital of the Republic of Georgia, Global Voices Online’s Caucasus Editor Onnik Krikorian had a brief opportunity to talk to BarCamp Ambassador and Regional Program Manager for Transitions Online, Emin Huseynzade, on blogging in Azerbaijan and the potential for its future development.

Huseynzade was also in Tbilisi to coordinate special training by Transitions Online for journalists and bloggers from all three South Caucasus republics. The training deals with the latest trends in new media, including podcasting, video casting, RSS feeds, and social networks, as well as the impact of blogs on traditional media.

Over 150 people from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia as well as Eastern Europe and Central Asia registered for the conference although perhaps only half attended. Neverthless, the unconference dealt with topics such as the use of mobile telecommunication for social and environmental surveys, research and activities, as well as other topics as diverse as social networks such as Birge.az.

With the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karabakh still frozen, both events also gave bloggers and journalists from both countries the rare possibility to meet with each other. Although interaction was minor for the BarCamp, participants from both countries attended presentations by the other and Huseynzade says that communication between the two would likely be greater for the smaller Transitions Online training.

However, with Azerbaijan due to stage its own BarCamp on 29-31 August in Lenkoran, Azerbaijan, it is unlikely that Armenians will be able to participate.

The full post and interview accompanied by photographs is available on Global Voices Online. Comments can be left on the original post.

Sirusho, Arabkir, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2008

With the first of the semi-finals in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Belgrade, Serbia, just days away, the countries of the South Caucasus are becoming increasingly excited about the international song contest and how their representatives will fair. What makes the situation all the more interesting is that this year will be the first time all three republics compete.

While this will be the third consecutive appearance of Armenia in the competition, Georgia entered for the first time last year, and Azerbaijan will be making its debut. However, of the three contestants, it is Armenia that currently appears to be the favorite not only from the region, but in general as well.

The British bookmaker William Hill currently has 21-year-old Sirusho at 6/1 to win and the popularity of her song, Qele Qele, has extended way past the borders of the country as the Eurovision Blog confirms.

Another tune almost certainly destined for the final is the Armenian entry, Qele Qele. As one of the countries whose national final we paid attention to, we’d heard this one before it was chosen but having heard the other options, we were screaming “Armenia! Choose! This! NOW!!!!!!!!!” before a note of the contest had even been sung. Coming over as Shakira crossed with a healthy dose of Helena Paparizou, only an entirely tone-deaf performance from Sirusho can possibly stop this one from bringing the house down on the night.

All Kinds of Everything for Eurovision 2008 agrees.

ARMENIA : This just gets better and better with every run through. Sirusho sounds confident and looks a lot more confident that before. The choreography is complex and involves a lot more rolling on the floor than I would like, but it is effective for the overhead shots. They have almost all the camera angles right, which is more than can be said for several entries, and even if the song is a tad repetitive, the dancing and fireworks add a bit of variety.

Other people may be less impressed but for me this is an absolutely certain qualifier, and it’s not totally out of the running to win.

The full post is available on Global Voices Online.

A quick look at Wikipedia’s electoral calendar confirms one thing. Perhaps rather poignantly, the Year of the Rat is definitely shaping up as the year of elections. That’s certainly the case in the South Caucasus where today Georgians vote in a presidential election, but also for Armenia which will hold its own next month. And in October, Azerbaijan will also hold a presidential election, and as in the other two South Caucasus republics, the opposition doesn’t look likely to stand much of a chance at all.

Christine Quirk at Asking Tough Questions in Tough Places looks ahead to the presidential election in Azerbaijan and attempts to debunk five myths about the political situation in the country. As the former Country Director for the National Democratic Institute (NDI) in Azerbaijan, her opinion and analysis is interesting to say the least.

Did you like Russia’s election? Get used to that model because many of the same strategies and tactics will be used by Azerbaijan’s ruling party (YAP) in the October 2008 Presidential election. I doubt, however, that Ilham Aliyev will be satisfied with Unified Russia’s 64%.

[…]

[…] I don’t think Aliyev is unpopular but his popularity is the kind enjoyed by a leader who has no opposition: it’s a mile wide and an inch deep. Soviet-style media outlets in Azerbaijan exist solely to promote his trips abroad, the schools and hospitals he opens and the growing economy over which he presides. If there’s no media coverage of his shortcomings or any outlet for opposing views or any party or candidate offering an alternative, how can voters make an informed choice?

[…]

[…] Aliyev will be issue-oriented to the degree it demonstrates that, as the head of his clan, he’s handing out enough goodies to make everyone happy. There will be no
discussion about whether or not his approach is right for the country, whether his priorities are right or whether there’s any accountability for the future.

[…] Let’s make one thing clear: the political parties in Azerbaijan are a disaster. That assessment includes the ruling party, the opposition parties and the ones created on behalf of the government to placate the West. The opposition parties in Azerbaijan share many negative characteristics with political parties throughout the former Soviet Union, where freedom of assembly, press freedom and freedom of association are curtailed. Not only is it next to impossible for them to operate democratically in these environments, the parties that grow in those conditions are usually as stunted, myopic, incompetent and corrupt as the regimes they wish to replace.

Continual losses in falsified elections nourish opposition leadership and allows them to thrive on the illusion that they will achieve power if only elections were free and fair. Nothing would do more to flush out the gene pool of the opposition leadership in Azerbaijan than a reasonably free and fair election in which they achieved the 30%-35% they probably deserve. Then, and only then, would a genuine internal assessment take place and new leadership offering an alternative direction of the party emerge. Until then, the parties are stuck with the same leadership that served them so effectively during the 1990s. Watch them fight and bicker among themselves in the coming months and then each run a candidate for President, just like they did in 2003.

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Transitions Online’s Steady State reports that Mr. Eldar Namazov, a possible candidate in next year’s presidential election in Azerbaijan and the former head of the administration under Heydar Aliyev, has accused the Azeri government of “selling out the occupied lands.” By this, of course, he means Nagorno Karabakh and the surrounding territories currently under Armenian control.

However, what was most interesting about the speech which Namazov gaveis that he accused the Azerbaijani authorities of supporting President Robert Kocharian in Armenia when they should be doing all they can to ensure the return of his predecessor, Levon Ter Petrosian. The blog implies that a concessionary peace deal which “favours Azerbaijan” is more likely with the first president in power again.

In Armenia, Mr. Petrossian is a candidate with democratic credentials, who is supported both by US and the EU. He also champions the “step by step” approach to Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution, which benefits the Azeri side more than the Armenian. It could be argued that the reason why Petrossian was overthrown in 1998 is precisely his approach to the conflict resolution.

Now USA pressures the current President Kocharian through its open support to the candidate Petrossian and through messages that the Nagorno Karabakh conflict should be resolved as soon as possible.

In fact, Azerbaijan will win more if Petrossian succeeds in elections, simply because he is for the “step by step” peace talks. HOWEVER, notes Mr. Namazov quite correctly, due to certain reasons, the Azeri media backs the Kocharian administration and portrays the Petrossian as the initiator of the war over Nagorno Karabakh.

[…]

From my own research work I can surely state that Mr. Petrossian was completely against the war and was the main broker of all cease-fire agreements. The question arises: why does the Azeri government support Kocharian and not Petrossian?

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My first entry as Caucasus Editor for Global Voices Online has now been posted and there are no prizes for guessing what it’s about. Even if the title of this post gives the game away, it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to work out. Indeed, House Resolution 106 recognizing the Armenian Genocide is the main topic related to Armenia being covered not only in the blogosphere, but also by the world media.

It’s not often that Armenia makes international headlines across the globe, but when it does it’s usually because of one issue that remains fiercely debated until this day — the massacre and deportation of as many as 1.5 million Armenians from Ottoman Turkey in 1915-17. 22 countries recognize the events that occurred towards the end of World War I as genocide, a charge that the modern-day Republic of Turkey refuses to accept even though the term was devised by Raphael Lemkin in 1943 with the Armenian and Jewish experience in mind.

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Welcome to the first roundup of blogs from the Azerbaijani Blogosphere. It might raise a few eyebrows at first, but as I’m interested in what Azeris and foreigners living in Azerbaijan think and get up to, it only seems natural to do the occasional roundup of posts from or about Armenia’s estranged neighbour. However, I have to be honest and say that the Azerbaijani Blogosphere isn’t as evolved and extensive as its Armenian counterpart.

Regardless, let’s take a look to see what’s going on.

First up is the always educational CRRC Caucasus which posts details of an Organization for Security & Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) report on Islamic and Ethnic Identity in Azerbaijan. The paper aims to examine potential causes of internal conflict in Azerbaijan specifically originating from religion and ethnicity. However, AaronE is not entirely happy with the results of the survey upon which the discussion paper is based.

[…] the scholar fails to meet basic academic standards of documentation by not naming the survey from which these statistics came from or what kind of sample was involved when these data were collected.

Indeed, the report highlights the continued role of anecdotal evidence in research in Azerbaijan and raises the need for more comprehensive survey data. The paper also raises the problem of of interviewing local elites and claiming they represent the population as a whole. Local elites in places like Zaqatala or Khachmaz are certainly not the Baku intelligentsia, however, they may not represent people who do not take part at all in local politics or civil society.

The problems in both interviewing and quantitative data collection show the need of having researchers who invest in the long term. Most of the religious developments in Azerbaijan will not easily be understood by people who have not invested considerable time and resources–often years–and this kind of investment is rarely undertaken by outside consultants.

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