Azerbaijani dictator Ilham Aliyev called the jailed leaders of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) “war criminals and child killers” at the summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Baku on Thursday, October 15. Their trial in Baku, he said, was “an analogue of the Nuremberg Tribunal. Only this time, Armenian fascists were in the dock,” APA reported.
Later in the session, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan led a walkout as Israeli President Isaac Herzog, whom Aliyev hosted the day before, began speaking. Representatives of more than 10 countries left the hall, Turkey’s state news agency Anadolu reported. Delegates from Pakistan, Iran, Kuwait and the Palestinian Authority were among them, while Qatar’s emir stayed, The Times of Israel reported.
“Cooperation cannot thrive with boycotts,” Herzog said in his speech, according to Israel National News. Pro-government APA quoted him as saying “Azerbaijan is a very tolerant country.” After meeting Aliyev at the Presidential Palace on Wednesday, Herzog said “Israel and Azerbaijan share a unique relationship.”
Aliyev also said Armenians who had threatened to take Baku “are today drinking Azerbaijani tea in our prisons.” Azerbaijan unlawfully holds 19 Armenians in Baku, including former Artsakh leaders and prisoners of war.
“We took revenge on the battlefield and offered peace to Armenia,” Aliyev said, adding, “We did not stoop to the level of the barbarians and child killers who caused so much suffering to our people.” He claimed “Armenia forced us into war,” though Azerbaijan launched the 2020 war on Artsakh, in which 3,833 Armenians were martyred and 191 remain missing, according to Armenian official figures.
Aliyev said Armenia used the 2020 ceasefire to rebuild its army and, “with the help of its new patrons in the West, attack Azerbaijan once again.” In fact, Azerbaijan launched its offensive on September 19, 2023, after a 9-month blockade of Artsakh, ethnically cleansing the region and forcibly displacing 120,000 Armenians. That offensive came a year after Azerbaijan attacked Armenia’s sovereign territory in September 2022.
Aliyev told the summit that peace with Armenia “remains fragile,” two weeks after telling his party’s congress that “a third Victory Arch would likely be standing in the center of Yerevan” had Azerbaijan “given in to our emotions.”
The walkout came days after Aliyev’s ruling New Azerbaijan Party defended Azerbaijan’s ties with Israel in a public rebuke of Erdo?an’s chief adviser Oktay Saral and AK Party lawmakers, who had condemned Azerbaijani schools for turning away girls in hijabs. Aliyev received Fidan on Thursday, and the two discussed “recent developments” in relations between their countries, APA reported, without giving details. Fidan also met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said.
On Wednesday, Azerbaijan’s state Media and Broadcasting Council accused Iran and Turkey of “coordinated troll attacks” against Azerbaijan on X, Telegram and TikTok, without naming a single account.
Israel supplied 69 percent of Azerbaijan’s major arms imports from 2016 to 2020, the five years before the 2020 war, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Turkey delivered at least 5 Bayraktar TB2 drones shortly before that war began.
Inside Azerbaijan, the Interior Ministry said on Monday that police had arrested 37 people in Baku in a criminal case over public order violations. Courts have since handed hijab protesters 10 to 30 days of detention, Meydan TV reported.
One man received 30 days for writing “Freedom to the hijab!” on a school building, and another in Nakhichevan received 25 days over a TikTok video, Caucasian Knot reported. A mother held since Tuesday was told she must “uncover your child’s hijab and send them to school, or you go to jail,” her husband told Meydan TV.
The arrest count comes from Aliyev’s own Interior Ministry, and activists say more than 200 people have been detained, according to Caucasian Knot. Neither figure can be independently confirmed, because Azerbaijan has jailed or driven out nearly all of its independent press.
Reporters Without Borders ranks Azerbaijan 171st out of 180 countries for press freedom and counts 24 journalists behind bars. Courts sentenced Abzas Media journalists who reported on government corruption to 7.5 to 9 years in prison, and Meydan TV, the exiled outlet reporting the hijab detentions, has had its own journalists arrested in Baku.
