State built around restoration of territorial integrity

Modern Azerbaijan emerged from the Muslim political world of the late Russian Empire, the brief Azerbaijan Democratic Republic of 1918–20, Soviet Azerbaijan and the post-1991 republic. Its political geography includes the Caspian oil capital Baku, the former NKAO inside internationally recognised borders, the Nakhichevan exclave, and the districts around Karabakh whose Azerbaijani populations were displaced in the First Karabakh War.

The central post-Soviet Azerbaijani state project was restoration of territorial integrity. From Baku's standpoint, Armenian control of the former NKAO and the seven surrounding districts was occupation, confirmed by UN Security Council resolutions and by the absence of international recognition for Artsakh. From the Armenian standpoint, the same territory included a population whose security under Azerbaijani rule had been made impossible by pogroms and war. Both claims structured the failed diplomacy of 1994–2020. contested

Oil revenue, state consolidation under Heydar Aliyev and military modernisation under Ilham Aliyev enabled Azerbaijan's victory in the 2020 war and the restoration of full control over Karabakh in September 2023. That victory resolved the territorial question in Baku's favour but produced a new moral and legal problem: the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh left almost entirely. Azerbaijan's current legitimacy narrative depends on reconstruction and return for Azerbaijani displaced people; its vulnerability lies in the absence of credible guarantees for Armenian return. editorial