Azerbaijan

Power in Azerbaijan’s authoritarian regime remains heavily concentrated in the hands of Ilham Aliyev and his extended family. Corruption is rampant, and the formal political opposition has been weakened by years of persecution. The authorities have carried out an extensive crackdown on civil liberties in recent years. In 2023, Azerbaijani forces seized control of Nagorno-Karabakh—an ethnic Armenian enclave that had enjoyed de facto independence since 1994—prompting nearly the entire ethnic Armenian population of the territory to flee to the Republic of Armenia.