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Azerbaijan Celebrates 26 Years Of Independence

By Mushvig Mehdiyev October 18, 2017

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The Supreme Council of Azerbaijan announced a declaration of independence on October 18, 1991 / Getty

Azerbaijan is celebrating its 26th year as an independent and sovereign state on October 18, a day that is nearly impossible for Azerbaijanis to talk about without mentioning the Soviet Union’s 70-year long rule over the South Caucasus and Caspian region country made up of nearly 10 million people.

A declaration of independence, signed in 1991, identified the Republic of Azerbaijan as the successor to a previous sovereign Azerbaijani state, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, which was established on May 28, 1918 in the wake of the collapse of the Russian empire. Facing insurmountable internal and external problems, the young country – the first secular, democratic state in the Muslim world – was unable to withstand invasion by the Russian Red Army, and collapsed by April 28, 1920 to become a Soviet republic.

Seventy-one years later, after the Supreme Council of Azerbaijan announced a declaration of independence on October 18, 1991, a nationwide referendum was held on December 29 of the same year, garnering 95 percent of the vote, in favor of independence.

The first country to recognize Azerbaijan’s independence was Turkey, whose majority population is, like that of Azerbaijani, ethnically and linguistically Turkic. Romania, Pakistan, Switzerland, Iran, the U.S. and Russia all followed to recognize Azerbaijan, and by March 2, 1992, Azerbaijan had been admitted into the United Nations.

Azerbaijan’s $37 billion gross domestic product makes it the strongest economy in the South Caucasus, and ahead of its regional neighbors Georgia and Armenia. But the relatively young country is still dealing with the fallout from independence, particularly in its Nagorno Karabakh region, which is occupied by another post-Soviet, South Caucasus state, namely Armenia.

“If the USSR was still alive, there would be a more strained geopolitical situation in the region, because in the dying years of empire there were numerous internal separatist movements, including ethnic Armenians’ claims for the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan,” Elkhan Shahinoglu, Head of the Atlas Research Center based in Baku, told Caspian News.

“Given the explicit and latent sympathy among the Soviet rulers towards Armenia, it would inevitably lead to bitter consequences in the region.”