Is Azerbaijan still a democracy? Does anybody care?

In recent years the Caucasian republic of Azerbaijan, independent since 1991, has experienced rapid economic change. With oil and gas revenues skyrocketing, its capital Baku is in the grips of a feverish construction boom. The new oil rigs, the sources of the country's wealth, pump oil from the Caspian seabed. Since May 2006 this oil is then transported via a 1,776 km new pipeline, the second-longest in the world, onwards to the Turkish Mediterranean coast and to global markets. For educated young Azerbaijanis the recent boom created many opportunities. Born in a communist empire that has since ceased to exist, having come of age during a tumultuous transition, they are now able to take advantage of new possibilities to study abroad and to reap the rewards – jobs at international organisations, multinational companies or Azerbaijani institutions – after returning home.

Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli, two young Azerbaijani activists, sentenced to prison on charges of hooliganism in a show trial in 2009, are members of this generation. Adnan studied in the US and later found a job with British Petroleum, the largest international investor in the Azerbaijani energy sector. Emin studied law in Germany and returned to Baku to work for various international organisations. Unable, like many others, to set aside their concerns about the increasing authoritarianism that they found at home, they became democracy activists. Instead of closing their eyes to the inequities of Azerbaijan's new gilded age they started to worry about the democratic gap between their country and the Western world. As Emin put it in a presentation at Columbia University in 2009, while corruption was permeating all spheres of public life Azerbaijan was facing the consolidation of an authoritarian regime: "The regime expands and strengthens its repressive apparatus to intimidate opposition forces and to prevent the formation of independent social groups." A few months later he and Adnan were arrested. hide

So far European governments, the US and international organisations - particularly the Council of Europe, Europe's oldest intergovernmental club of democracies – have failed to address the increasing repression in Azerbaijan, which had joined the Council of Europe one decade ago. Young Azerbaijanis like Emin and Adnan have nonetheless managed to rattle the regime. Their aim is to remind themselves, their friends and the rest of the world that even in this corner of the world, sandwiched between Putin's Russia and Ahmadinejad's Iran, there are those who believe in the right of democratic protest and freedom of speech – and that there are others who fear both.

Writing in the early 1980s, Timothy Garton Ash described communist Czechoslovakia as a "lake permanently covered by a thick layer of ice. On the surface nothing moves. But under the ice, among the philosopher-labourers, the window-cleaning journalists, and nightwatchman-monks – here things are on the move." The medium has changed. Today's dissidents no longer type samizdat literature in copies of 12 on typewriters, but write blogs and communicate via Facebook. But the fundamental dynamic has remained the same, with the same norms and values at its core.

Observing the events in Egypt, Tunisia, and the Middle East as a whole suggests that the hold on power of the Azerbaijani elite might also not be as firm as they like to believe. Beneath the glossy exterior that they have created lives a generation that has learned to expect more from its leaders than handouts at the expense of rights and stability at the expense of democracy. It is a generation that has not given up on the promise of Azerbaijan turning, one day in the near future, into a genuine European democracy. In their endeavours they deserve support, particularly from organisations such as the Council of Europe, whose whole raison d'etre is to preserve democratic standards among its members. In the end it would also be in the interest of Azerbaijan's rulers to respect the rules to which they have themselves committed their country.