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The Question of Succession in Azerbaijan: Is The Aliyev Era (Almost) Over?
by Thomas Goltz
Thomas Goltz is an independent author and journalist.
Summary
President Heydar Aliyev has established such a dominant presence on the Azerbaijani political scene that it is hard to imagine who will be his successor. Etibar Mammedov of the National Independence Party is the rival with the best political organization, but his hard line on the Karabakh conflict bodes ill for regional stability. The most plausible candidate to succeed Aliyev is his son, Ilham, although Ilham''s ability to stay in office cannot be assured. His chances would be improved if Aliyev senior were able to reach some sort of resolution of the Karabakh conflict before he leaves office. The resignation of key Aliyev advisor Vafa Guluzade underlines the fact that the recent Russian aggression towards Chechnya poses a serious threat to the stability of the South Caucasus.
* * *I have been asked to present a paper on the thorniest subject to be discussed during the course of our two day meeting, namely, that of succession in Azerbaijan. Implicit in the request that I deliver such a paper is the question: "Is the Aliyev era (almost) over?"
I would like to note that I am aware that several others - or at least one other - scholar was asked to address this particular issue before the ball fell into my court, but they declined. One reason, I presume, was that this conference was to be addressed by none other than Ilham Aliyev, the current president''s son - and chief candidate of being the man to take up the Old Man''s mantle, and that the other candidates invited to take up the issue may have factored this into their decision to decline the honor. Quite frankly, I am not unhappy that Ilham Aliyev was a no-show although I have to say that it might have been amusing to toss this particularly hairy football around in front of him.
While I will certainly take advantage of my allotted time to pontificate on the question of who is likely to come after Heydar Aliyev (and even more dangerously, to speculate about the ''when'') the truth of the matter is that anything said will remain highly speculative.As the joke going around Baku has it, Heydar is bouncing his granddaughter on his knee, and then asks her:"Granddaughter, what do you want to be when you grow up?"
Says the kid: "Granddaddy, I want to be president of Azerbaijan, just like you!"
Heydar stares at her in astonishment for a moment, and then says:
"But darling, whatever would we need two for?"Indeed, the Grand Old Man of Azerbaijan seems to think that the usual clock ticking away on all aspects of human affairs does not apply to him. Following his heart operation in Cleveland in summer of 1998, he is once again running people into the ground and leaving thirty-year-olds panting in his wake. A best nameless Western diplomatic source involved in the negotiations with Armenian President Robert Kocharian related to me that during the last of the Azerbaijani-Armenian proximity summit talks held recently on the border of Armenia and Naxjivan, following a grueling day of meetings at the border, an even more grueling schedule of banquets and meetings were held. At a banquet held for the diplomatic corps that night, Heydar danced a lady down the length of the table and back, held multiple toasts and then, at 10 p.m., held a three hour meeting with the American ambassador to Baku, Stanley Escudera. Escudera later told me that Heydar certainly looked and acted like a man who will see out the end of his second term as president in the year 2003. President Aliyev himself has even suggested that if ''the people'' demand a re-run for president in the next elections, he sees no reason not to listen to them...Some observers argue, however, that this statement was less a threat or expression of desire for a third term (forbidden by the constitution; but then again, that document has always seemed to be malleable in Azerbaijan) than a short-term means of deflecting speculation about the future political pretensions of his son, Ilham Aliyev, thus giving Ilham more time and leisure to build his ''team'' of ''reformers.''Indeed, my reading of the current situation concerning the question of succession basically comes down to that one name - Ilham. A foreign associate of the younger Aliyev described him to me as "smart, crafty, and with the best command of economic issues of anyone in Azerbaijan," adding that he believed that Ilham would be the next president of Azerbaijan, but was not sure he believed he would remain so. How is that for a Delphi statement?
The reason, of course, is that Ilham inherits all of his father''s enemies but not all of his friends, or debtors. He will never be as strong as his father, and never exercise the personal control that the elder Aliyev does. This, presumably, is the main reason why Heydar is so vigorously pursuing a peace deal with Armenia over Karabakh - both in order to seal some sort of historic legacy, as well as to spare Ilham, at least in part, the debilitating political blow-back that any compromise deal will entail.What about the other contenders? I personally do not see many, if any, among the current generation of political wannabes, washouts, and hopefuls in Azerbaijan. Everyone from Rasul Guliyev to Abulfez Elchibey and Isa Gamber are hopelessly tainted by past events, and have no real following inside Azerbaijan. The same goes for that Moscow-based bogey-man, Ayaz Mutalibov, despite reports that several citizen groups are collecting signatures, demanding his right of return and exemption from arrest on charges of putative putsch-making over the years. Of the usual suspects, however, I would say that Etibar Mammedov of the National Independence Party looks ''officially'' the best, as he runs the tightest organization - witness his well-orchestrated election campaign in 1998 - and has never been in power per se. And yet Etibar''s popularity is also limited, or at least untested. For years he has been laying claim to the role of being ''the main opposition'' in Azerbaijan. But on what basis? As suggested above, he certainly ran an interesting and well-thought out presidential campaign in 1998 and certainly spooked the authorities with his last-minute surge - but what were the real results of those polls? Did he receive 10 percent or 20 percent of the vote or even something more that would really have demanded a second round of voting - as he claimed was necessary - because the incumbent did not receive the ridiculous 66.6 percent required to win in the first round? Heydar Aliyev, it will be recalled, claimed a mandate from 76 percent of the people which, while admittedly down from the whopping (and impossible) 98 percent he claimed in the elections held in 1993, was still an insult to the intelligence of any true observer of the electoral process. It was my contention then and it is my contention today that Heydar could have genuinely won a plurality of the vote and then claimed popular legitimacy with a real total of something like 55 percent of the vote or maybe even 65 percent. But this did not serve his ego, with the result that the fix was on - and we will never know the true level of popularity of any of the candidates in those unfortunately tainted polls; not Aliyev''s, not Mammedov''s, nor any of the other field of non-entities who had their names put on the ballot.Oddly, perhaps, I find Etibar weakest in the same area where other claimants to the mantle of being the main opposition are weak: their non-compromising attitude on Karabakh, and their insistence to resolve the conflict by military means. This may be what many in Azerbaijan want to hear, but it is not what many in Azerbaijan are ready to do. The resonance of the opposition''s claim that the Aliyev government is planning to ''sell out'' Karabakh by even negotiating with Kocharian is best viewed not by the headlines in the opposition press, but in the turn-out numbers to their anti-negotiation rallies. The most recent, held in the Baku Motordrome, reportedly attracted 50,000 souls who, by inference, were in agreement that there would be ''civil war'' in Azerbaijan if the government made any concessions on Karabakh. The real number was more like 5,000, and how many of them were mere passersby is open to question. Another estimate made by Western diplomats more experienced in the art of crowd-counting (albeit from an organization that might have an interest in making the lowest tally possible for political reasons) came in at a mere 2,000.Does this mean that Heydar, and by inference, Ilham are popular in an Azerbaijan that is increasingly known for being a society split between destitute have-not refugees and urban poor on one hand and an indifferently corrupt, money-gouging elite on the other? By no means. What it suggests to me is that the population of Azerbaijan is so utterly exhausted with the political process that, increasingly, no-one cares or believes that caring about anything will result in any positive developments. This is a truly sad state of affairs, and is potentially very destabilizing for the future, when some heretofore unknown Pied Piper arrives on the scene and sings the song the unwashed and unemployed masses want to listen to, and then follow. The Resignation of Vafa Guluzade
Anyway, what I find of far keener interest than possibly idle speculation about known personalities who might succeed Aliyev is the recent resignation of presidential adviser Vafa Guluzade. What were the reasons? Exhaustion is clearly a factor. Guluzade, after all, served not only Aliyev for six years, but Elchibey before him and Mutalibov before that, not to speak of the various temporary presidents Azerbaijan has enjoyed in between coups. Vafa has been telling me about his intention to resign due to ''health reasons'' for years. The negotiations he has been involved with for eight years over Karabakh were clearly another reason. I do not have much doubt that Vafa was starting to feel a little queasy about being identified with whatever peace document his boss Heydar and Robert Kocharian have been cooking up. But I believed Vafa when he told me that the thing that pushed him beyond complaining in action was and is the current Russian push against Chechnya.Chechnya?
Well, yes. Vafa explained his position to me in September in the following words. "None of the current violence is new. The Russians have been attempting to crush the indigenous peoples of the region for centuries, but at the end of the current epoch, it must end. Today it is the ''fundamentalists'' of Dagestan and Chechnya; tomorrow it will be Georgia and Azerbaijan. The people fighting against the Russian military both in Chechnya and Dagestan are freedom fighters, part of a Caucasus resistance that dates back more than 150 years, and will continue. And I will go further. I will tell you right now that if that brave and courageous people in their tiny republic (of Chechnya) had not managed to defeat Russia in the 1994-96 war, Moscow would long have been back in Azerbaijan, making further trouble and trying to destroy our independence. Our debt to the Chechens is huge - and yet not one voice in this government will speak one word of support or solidarity. Silence. I am ashamed, mortified. That is why I quit."For as long as I have known him, Vafa has been more than just an Azerbaijani functionary, or even an Azerbaijani patriot. He has been a passionate believer in the concept of ''the Caucasus'' as a whole, and a critic of the sort of narrow, ethnic nationalism that would seem to be the flavor of the day. The greatest threat to the sort of ''kleptocratic'' stability that has been established over the past few years in Azerbaijan (and Georgia), he feels, is the current Russian military campaign in Chechnya. The Russian action has all the potential for spill-over into the South Caucasus that one could wish for, or better, that one could and should fear. If Chechen refugees or fighters are indeed driven into Georgia and possibly Azerbaijan to winter in the two republics, they will provide Moscow with the pretext to start mucking around in the South Caucasus, too. At that point the question of succession in Azerbaijan and Georgia and possibly even Armenia will become a very moot point indeed.