January 2024 in CoE-Azerbaijan relations: The beginning of the end? Contemplations with Orkhan Amashov/VIDEO

What does the future have in store for relations between the Council of Europe and Azerbaijan after 24 January, a day that will live on in infamy, for the credentials of the latter’s delegation to PACE (the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe) were not ratified? Orkhan Amashov examines the reasons of this development and its possible fallouts.

The date of 24 January 2024 marks the lowest ebb in the fractious relations between Azerbaijan and the Council of Europe. A full 23 years after joining this organisation, Baku’s appetite for staying in its Parliamentary Assembly (PACE), or even the whole organisation, seems to have ostensibly decreased. However, the holistic picture is far more complicated. In principle, neither PACE, nor Baku, could reasonably be expected to favour the ultimate outcome of the latter leaving the former.

On 24 January, the Azerbaijani delegation to PACE took a decision to cease its engagement with and presence in this body until further notice. This came in the wake of 22 January, when the credentials of the Azerbaijani delegation were challenged on the first day of the winter plenary session of PACE, with this proposal subsequently being referred to the Monitoring Committee that backed it, and just prior to the actual vote that led to the resolution on the non-ratification of the delegation’s credentials.

Timing is of the essence. Of course, the Azerbaijani delegation moved swiftly enough to ensure that its announcement on the suspension of its activities at PACE preceded the final resolution. However, what I mean by the timing refers to the wider landscape of the turmoil in Baku-Strasbourg relations which has been gestating for some considerable time. 

It is important to understand the timing in its full contours, the careful examination of which demonstrates that three elements loom large. The PACE decision not to ratify the delegation’s credentials took place subsequent to the year 2023, when Azerbaijan fully restored its sovereignty over Karabakh, during which PACE issued two resolutions regarding the developments therein which Baku perceived as biased and constituting blatant disrespect for its territorial integrity and sovereign rights. 

And this took place weeks before the snap Presidential elections in Azerbaijan, to which observers from PACE have not been invited. Thirdly, 2024 is also a year in which Azerbaijan is honoured to host COP29, the biggest global event regarding climate change. During this, Baku will naturally be the cynosure of the world’s attention and take all precautions to protect its reputation.

Although the substantive grounds, outlined in the resolution, refer to a wide range of issues related the state of subjective democracy, human rights and many other issues, which collectively have formed the penumbra of traditional accusations levied by the Council of Europe against Azerbaijan for years, which Baku has never accepted, this has never previously led to its refusal to ratify the credentials of the Azerbaijani delegation. The tipping point now is one distinct moment in the resolution, regarding the developments that recently took place in Karabakh.

In 2023, PACE adopted two separate resolutions, namely Resolution 2508 and 2517, condemning Azerbaijan for the situation surrounding the Lachin Road and for the counter-terrorism measures taken on 19-20 September, which led to the full restoration of the nation’s sovereignty.

In view of the nature of these resolutions and other concomitants, which further exacerbated the deterioration of Azerbaijan-PACE relations, no rapporteurs were allowed visit Karabakh and no invitation was extended to the Council of Europe to observe the snap presidential elections to be held on 7 February this year.

Given that the whole essence of the present tensions between Baku and Strasbourg is encapsulated in and around the events that ultimately led to the restoration of Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh in 2023, one is inescapably led to believe that Azerbaijan is presently paying the price for its massively crucial success last year - the full restoration of its sovereignty after three long decades.

It does not seem at all probable that PACE would be interested in the self-removal of Azerbaijan from this body or from the Council itself. It is probable that, in the year of COP29 and at a time when Azerbaijan and Armenia may reach a peace deal, the pressure being levied on Baku will only be increased. This interim position of Azerbaijan, which remains a full member of the Council of Europe, yet with its mandate suspended at the Assembly, would apparently make it malleable from the PACE perspective.

Frank Schwabe, a German MP from the Social-Democratic Party of Germany, who presented the proposal, in his recent interview with BBC Azerbaijani, suggested that Azerbaijan would not be interested in excluding itself from this international organisation, citing the future hosting of COP29, amongst other reasons. 

In particular, he expressed his dissatisfaction with the fact that OSCE, unlike the Council of Europe, has been invited to observe the elections in Azerbaijan, viewing this as an attempt by Baku to pit the two bodies against each other. In Schwabe’s view, OSCE and the Council of Europe have a long-standing common understanding that either they monitor a given election together, or neither does so.

Whether such an agreement exists or not, it surely cannot be binding on Azerbaijan. And, technically, Azerbaijan is under no legal obligation as such to invite an observation mission from the Council of Europe. On a different note, Baku may argue that cooperation is a reciprocal arrangement, and that Azerbaijan, in view of the lack of receptiveness to and understanding of its decades-long plight from the Council of Europe, and due to the 2023 resolutions casting aspersions on its territorial integrity, decided to downgrade its interaction with Strasbourg.

On the whole, if to judge by the letter sent by the Speaker of Azerbaijan’s Milli Majlis to the Heads of Parliaments of the Council of Europe Member States, and some individual statements made by the Azerbaijani delegation to PACE, it is clear there will be no backtracking from the Azerbaijani side. Samad Seyidov MP, Head of the delegation to PACE since 2001, stated that the existence of the Council of Europe was sustained by the collapse of the USSR in the early 90s, and that the fresh breath brought by newly independent post-Soviet nations has not been duly utilised. Nigar Arpadarai MP, another member of the delegation, tweeted: “I believe this marks a pivotal moment in history, when the CoE space starts to shrink and will continue to do so.”

Where are we now in the history of the relations between the Council of Europe and Azerbaijan? If, to borrow slightly from Winston Churchill, this is definitely not the end, this is probably not even the beginning of the end. It is perhaps the end of the beginning, and much of the drama is yet to begin.