AZERBAIJAN IS IN THE MIDDLE EAST FOR THE LONG HAUL / GEOPOLITICAL FUTURES

Azerbaijan Is in the Middle East for the Long Haul

The opportunity is there, but its alliances with Turkey and Israel put it in a tough position.

By: Kamran Bokhari

Azerbaijan’s growing involvement in the areas to its south indicates the natural contiguity of the Middle East and the Caucasus. 

Now that Russia and Iran have weakened, Baku has an opportunity to emerge as a budding middle power with interests throughout Eurasia. 

Thanks to its location along the land bridge that connects the Caspian and Black seas as well as Russia and Iran, Azerbaijan can be expected to play a key role in shaping this strategic environment. 

As it does, it will have to balance the imperatives of its two regional allies: Turkey and Israel.

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa paid a state visit to Azerbaijan on July 12-13. 

He held discussions with his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, the second such meeting since April. 

A key outcome of the visit was an energy agreement whereby Azerbaijan will export natural gas to Syria via Turkey to help alleviate energy shortages brought on by years of conflict. 

Within days of the visit, Israel struck Syrian forces in Damascus and in the southwestern province of Sweida, where factions allied with al-Sharaa’s government have been attacking an Israel-aligned Druze minority. 

Modern Azerbaijan is relatively new at addressing situations like this on its periphery. 

Azerbaijan had been cut off from the Middle East since Imperial Russia took it from the Persian Empire in the early 19th century. 

It continued to be isolated well after it became a sovereign state in the early 1990s when the Soviet Union imploded. 

Turkey and Israel were among the first countries to recognize newly independent Azerbaijan in late 1991. 

But Tehran, sensing an opportunity to spread its Islamist ideology and its influence northward into its secular Shiite-majority neighbor, tried to undermine the young regime. 

Baku was able to thwart these efforts by rallying Iran's minority ethnic Azeri population, which, though Shiite, maintains its distinct Turkic identity. 

All the while, Azerbaijan was still within Russia’s sphere of influence – which helped prevent Iran from exploiting its alliance with Azerbaijan's rival, Armenia. 

And so, for almost three decades, Azerbaijan was unable to pay much attention to the Middle East. 

To the extent it did, it forged closer ties with Turkey and Israel.

The basis of its relationship with Israel was close military and intelligence cooperation, especially with regard to their common enemy, Iran. 

Since 2006, Azerbaijan has supplied as much as 40 percent of Israel’s crude oil needs through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which traverses Georgia and Turkey. 

After Recep Tayyip Erdogan came to power in Turkey in 2003, the Turkish-Azerbaijani relationship turned into a strategic alliance based on shared ethnicity, language, religion and geostrategic objectives. 

The culmination of this process was the 2020 war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, in which Baku – with strong military and intelligence support from Ankara – decisively defeated Armenia and regained control over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

The outcome of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War tipped the regional balance of power in Azerbaijan’s favor. 

It also showed Baku that Moscow was no longer as influential in the South Caucasus as it used to be, and it changed the government’s attitude toward Tehran, which was put on the defensive. 

(Armenia, Iran's ally, was weakened, and its rival, Turkey, was now competing with Russia.) 

Russia’s position has gotten only worse over the course of its war with Ukraine.

This explains why, in just the past year, Azerbaijan has acted more assertively against Russia, as evidenced by its response to the downing of an Azerbaijan Airlines flight from Baku to Chechnya. 

Now that it has made progress toward a peace agreement with Armenia – the outcome of a July 10 meeting between Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – Azerbaijan feels secure and confident in the South Caucasus. 

Hence the uptick in attention it is giving the Middle East.

Baku is also buoyed by the shakeup in Tehran, not to mention the broader Middle East, resulting from the war between Israel and Iran. 

Over the past two decades, Azerbaijan and Israel have developed close intelligence cooperation to deal with the shared threat of Iran. 

While Iran has not officially accused Azerbaijan of aiding Israel last month, there is growing talk within Iranian media of Azerbaijan’s close ties with Israel in the wake of the Syrian president’s visit to Baku. 

Add to this that Iran is in the middle of a major leadership transition, and Azerbaijan is seriously considering its options as it enhances its role in the Middle East.

How Iran manages its transition will be key for Azerbaijan. 

Azerbaijan and Turkey are in the process of developing the Zangezur corridor through southern Armenia, a critical connector in the broader Trans-Caspian International Transport Corridor that links Central Asia to Europe. 

Iran deeply opposes the Zangezur project because it has security concerns over this budding Turkey-Azerbaijan axis. 

Meanwhile, what kind of regime emerges from the pending Iranian transition is of utmost significance to the Azerbaijanis. 

Even if the nationalists triumph over the Islamists who have dominated Iran for so long, the regime would still view Baku with deep suspicion. Given the stress on the Iranian political system, Azerbaijan has much to fear from the chaos of internal power struggles in its southern neighbor.

In the meantime, Baku is already enhancing its participation in broader regional issues. 

It has improved ties with fellow energy-rich Gulf Arab states like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, and it has played a crucial role in mediating talks between Turkey and Israel over Syria, where both countries control territory. 

Three rounds of meetings have taken place in the past three months already.

Indeed, Syria is a problem for Azerbaijan. 

Baku is caught in the middle of a long-term struggle between its two closest Middle Eastern allies over the fate of the Levantine nation. 

Navigating that struggle will be a challenge, especially in light of Israel’s attacks on Syrian government positions over the past few days. 

The government in Damascus is supported by Turkey, as well as by the region’s Arab states, all of which have an interest in seeing the new regime consolidate its power, not fall to Israeli barrages. 

Israel is worried that al-Sharaa’s movement, which is Islamist, is allied with other radical factions more hostile to its interests.

The latest feud between the Syrian government and its allies with the Israel-aligned Druze factions places a great deal of strain on Turkey and, by extension, Azerbaijan. 

It’s unclear how Baku will deal with this problem, but clearly Azerbaijan is becoming more deeply involved in the Middle East – and it’s in it for the long haul.