Azeri Themes

AZERI THEMES ACROSS A VARIETY OF CEU PRESS PUBLICATIONS

This compilation features books of the Central European University Press, published since its establishment in 1993, that have some relevance to the Azeri. After the latest release, titles in the backlist are arranged by content: contemporary topics are on top, older themes below. For more substantial information about the content and availability, please click on the cover of the book, or on the links inserted into the citations.

“The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) accepted complaints from ‘Karabakh’ citizens, victims of the April 2016 War, though the state name was noted in quotation marks.”—The War in Ukraine’s Donbas.
“Karabakh’s exceptionality became possible because the Armenians have influential lobbies in the United States and Europe, Karabakh does its best to show itself as a non-pro-Russian state, and the Azerbaijanis committed extreme atrocities in the April 2016 War. For example, they beheaded three Karabakh soldiers and uploaded videos and pictures of the act on social media.”
“In contrast to their Karabakh colleagues, the Donbas lawyers rely more upon the International Criminal Court than the ECHR because the latter imposes a time limit for acceptance of complaints; plaintiffs should submit complaints with the necessary materials and evidence within six months of the event. The April 2016 War continued for four days and both parties were therefore able to collect materials and evidence by October 2016.”

“In Azerbaijan a referendum was held in 2009 on 29 constitutional amendments, including the abolishment of term limits for the president and several measures that further concentrated power in the hands of chief patron Ilham Aliyev. The referendum was preceded by no democratic discussing but by a loyalty-structuring campaign, intimidating voters and all those who opposed the reform of the constitution.”—The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes.
“In cases like Azerbaijan or Russia, the country’s single-pyramid patronal network features a transformed secret service at its core, whereby the latter remains a specific, operationally distinguishable branch of the adopted political family (nomenklatura-based clan).”
“Dependence on other criminal states is particularly relevant in Russia with its imperial ambitions and the constant strategy of tying foreign patronal networks to itself. This may take the form of formal intergovernmental treaties, like in the cases of supporting Azerbaijan with weapon sales.”

Titles on the backlist of Central European University Press with reference to Azeri, historical titles on top, contemporary issues below:

“Ottoman plans to occupy the Caucasian isthmus in order to exercise control over the Black and Caspian Seas were motivated by commercial and religious interests. The Russian conquest of Astrakhan in 1557 and the Iranian bid for power in the rich province of Azerbaizhan threatened to block them.”—Imperial Rule.
“The founders of the new, Safavid dynasty were Turkic tribes from the Iranian frontier province of Azerbaizhan. Foremost among these were tribes dubbed qizilbashi (red turbans) after the twelve red stripes on their caps in honor of the twelve imams of the Shiites. They regarded Azerbaizhan as the ideal Turkic State where syncretic religious practices prevailed, blending pre-Islamic local beliefs with shamanist beliefs from the steppe under a thin veneer of Shiite Islam.”
“During the revolution of 1905 the entire complex frontier was engulfed in violence directed against the Russian authorities and local elite, or flaring up among ethnic groups, particularly Armenians and Azeri.”

“In the 1920s some residents of Daghestani and Azerbaijani highland villages, populated by Tats and highland Jews, were ‘moved down’ to Derbent and Kuba.”—Against their Will.
“In order to organize the zones, 1,325 Kurds were resettled from the frontier districts in Armenia and Azerbaijan in 1937, 812 of them were sent to Kyrgyzistan and 513 to Kazakhstan (as additional manpower for the soviet and collective farms in the Alma-Ata and South Kazakhstan Obls.).”
“Having started with resettling 608 Kurdish and Azerbaijani families (3,240 persons in total), former residents of Tbilisi, to the districts of Tsalkini, Borchalini and Karayaz within the republic, Stalin set about handling the ‘Muslim peoples’ of Georgia that populated the Soviet–Turkish border zone.”
“The most likely development of the Meskhetian Turk situation may involve their gradual moving to and consolidation in Azerbaijan, with prospective piecemeal assimilation into and absorption by the Azerbaijani ethnic environment.”

“Over time, the Soviet population—while appreciating his role in initiating reform—has increasingly come to see Gorbachev as ineffective and indecisive. Nationalists from Armenia and Azerbaijan to the Baltics regard him as a man without a bottom line and it is Gorbachev, not the nationalists, who has retreated in the face of repeated challenges.”—The Last Superpower Summits.
“Memorandum of Telephone Conversation, Bush–Gorbachev, November 30, 1991
President Bush
: First, I want to commend you on mediating the Azerbaijan-Armenia dispute. It is very good, and we commend you for that.
President Gorbachev: We will try to take precisely that approach to end that conflict. But it is hard to expect immediate results. The differences are large.
President Bush: I know.”

“Samad Agamalioglu, one of Azerbaijan’s foremost cultural leaders, and Galimjan Ibrahimov, a leading Tatar linguist, proposed that Arabic was defective for teaching school subjects, since one reads mathematical formulas from left to right, while Arabic is read from right to left.”—Nation, Language, Islam.
“The differences in Azeri and Tatar Islam (Shiite and Sunni, respectively) are great, perhaps even greater than the differences between Armenian Christianity and Russian Orthodoxy.”
“Azeris working in the central bazaar selling clothes that arrive in Kazan through endless networks of brothers go to Bauman Street on their days off looking for a little fun.”
“Azerbaijani participants in Kazan’s Third Tatar World Congress Forum for Youth staged a ‘Min tatarcha söiläshäm’ action in Baku at the Tatarstan Government Representative in September 2008 during Ramadan.”

“Georgia never engaged in conflict with neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijan despite the presence of significant minorities of both Armenian and Azeri origin on the Georgian territory.—Globalization and Nationalism.
“Alarmed by the rising tide of militant nationalism, national minorities began to oppose Georgia’s bid for independence, fearing its consequences for themselves and their rights. The most radical of Georgian nationalists described them as ‘ungrateful guests’ or as the fifth column exploited by the Kremlin to curb Georgia’s will for freedom. The tensions increased also in the Armenian and Azeri populated territories of southern Georgia, which led to small-scale clashes and skirmishes.”
“In his passionate style, Saakashvili proclaimed, for those who hate Azeris, I am an Azeri and for those who dislike Armenians, I am an Armenian.”

“The Business Advisory Services (BAS) programme promoted economic transition through advice and mentoring at the enterprise level. 2004 saw the launch by BAS of a small-scale Women in Business Initiative in Azerbaijan, running a workshop for women, in cooperation with the Soros Foundation.”—Transforming Markets.
“Within a year, the BAS offices in the south Caucasus, in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, had delivered 15 focus groups and workshops for women in business and 30 BAS projects with women in micro, small and medium sized enterprises.”
“The inefficient use of energy and neglect of environmental impacts across the EBRD region was a substantial legacy of the communist era. According to a 1995 Energy Operations Policy paper, most countries used between three and five times more energy per unit of value added than western industrial countries. Even the best performer, Hungary, used about twice as much energy per unit of GDP as Germany while in the case of Azerbaijan the multiple was a factor of ten.”

“Does a single network dominate? In the case of Azerbaijan, the answer seems to be yes. Still, some separation does exist between the networks controlled by the families of Ilham Aliyev and of his wife, Mehriban, born into the powerful Pashayev family.”—Stubborn Structures.
“Members of the Aliyev and Pashayev families and other high-ranking government officials hardly try to hide their ownership stakes. DIA and Ata Holdings are notable examples, as is the Aliyev-controlled Silk Way Group, which includes banks and hotels as well as construction firms. According to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, the Aliyev/ Pashayev clan owns no fewer than eleven banks.”
“International NGOs, including those focused on civil society, sometimes fall into the enabling trap. The prestige (as well as the revenue-generation opportunities) afforded by Azerbaijan’s presidency of the Council of Europe is an egregious example.”