Azerbaijan’s oil dictatorship is trying to gain respectability

The autocrat Ilham Aliev has never had the wind in his sails so much. Oil and gas prices are high, the former Soviet Republic derives around 90% of its exports and a third of its GDP from them. The country has just restored its territorial integrity, having regained control of Nagorno-Karabakh from the Armenians after the war in autumn 2020 and a final offensive lasting a few days in September last year. This earned the head of state a popularity that his father, Geïdar, had not even enjoyed, whom he succeeded in 2003, making some of the ten million Azerbaijanis forget the harshness and corruption of the dictatorship. .

In this context, the organization of COP29 appeared to be the culmination of a prosperous period for Azerbaijan. But it didn’t happen alone. In particular, it took all the cunning and know-how of an heir to a throne who does not say his name, aged 62 today, to make the planets…