Sovereignty as a Strategy: Ilham Aliyev's Messages from the City of Shusha

The city of Shusha, liberated from occupation, over which the flag of Azerbaijan proudly flies today, has once again become a venue where not only assessments of current events were voiced, but also a strategic vision for the future of the region was outlined: the IV Shusha Global Media Forum, held on July 13-14, confirmed the special status of Azerbaijan's jewel as a political and intellectual platform.

The speech of the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev at the Shusha Media Forum, and the head of state's detailed answers to participants' questions, once again confirmed an indisputable fact: official Baku does not merely react to ongoing changes but consistently — and at times preemptively — forges its own long-term agenda. The central idea voiced in Shusha in the Azerbaijani leader's speech crystallized in an utterly clear form: after Azerbaijan's Victory in the Patriotic War of autumn 2020, the region entered a fundamentally new stage of its development. The political configuration that had defined relations in the South Caucasus for decades is a thing of the past. The OSCE Minsk Group no longer exists, the former perception and former stereotypes about Azerbaijan are gone, the main regional actors have changed, and so have the rules of the game overall. Today, new realities have taken shape in the region, based not only on textbook international law but also on the indisputability of the principle of territorial integrity and the recognition of the actual balance of power.

That is precisely why President Aliyev's words should be viewed far more broadly than within the context of elementary theories. This is not an emotional reaction to current events, nor an attempt at political polemics. This is the presentation of a strategic concept that the Azerbaijani state has been consistently putting into practice for many years — calmly, confidently, and without strident ideological slogans. In recent years, virtually all regional and global players have, in one way or another, adjusted their approaches to the South Caucasus, including Armenia, as evidenced by the results of the recent parliamentary elections in that country, where the majority of voters rejected revanchism and voted for peace.

However, there remain forces that continue to view the region through the lens of perceptions formed several decades ago. It was precisely to them that the important message from Shusha was addressed: attempts to build modern policy based on outdated geopolitical frameworks are doomed to failure.

Over the past decades, Azerbaijan has managed to build one of the most balanced systems of international relations across the entire post-Soviet space. Baku successfully develops cooperation with fraternal Turkey, the European Union, the states of Central Asia, the countries of the Turkic and Islamic world, China, the United States, and many other partners, without attempting to pit one center of power against another. The Azerbaijani state has always placed and continues to place one single but supremely important criterion at the forefront — the national interests of the country. It is precisely this pragmatic, flexible, and at the same time firm policy that has allowed Azerbaijan to navigate through the most complex geopolitical crises of recent decades without losses.

President Ilham Aliyev's speech in Shusha once again confirmed: Azerbaijan does not lay claim to others' spheres of influence and does not impose its own development