Ambassador Rich Kauzlarich: "This looks like a monarchy" Azerbaijan resembles Argentina in 1940s

Now that the real-life Donald Trump presidency is only a month-old and and the U.S. foreign policy seems to shift on an almost daily basis, Azerbaijan suddenly occupied world headlines when president Ilham Aliyev, in a surprise move, appointed his wife as vice president. It came just days after Ziya Mammadov, one of the mainstays of the country's regime was fired, raising eyebrows among local overseers. Some say it's politics, others are watching with interest. The world is watching too...

TURAN's Washington correspondent recently set down with former U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan, Richard Kauzlarich, to discuss the road ahead for Azerbaijan and its relations with the U.S..

Q. President Aliyev has picked his wife to be his vice president. What are the possible implications of this move?

A. When the decision was announced to change the constitution and have a referendum [last September], I looked at the changes and thought at the time that this would be a natural consequence of those changes that the president's wife Mehriban Aliyeva would become vise-president.

As for timing, I'm not so sure about it - I don't really know why [president Aliyev] chose this particular point to make that decision. But for people looking from the outside world, that really is an unusual development.

We've had some experience in our own country when the brother of president Kennedy was named Attorney General and played a very close role as an advisor [to the president]. Or Hillary Clinton during president Clinton's first administration played a role on healthcare, [albeit] unofficially, not in a formal sense...

As I thought about [M.Aliyeva's appointment], I don't pretend to be a student of the history of governance around the world, but I can only think of one other country, which could be similar to this and that would be Argentina at the end of Juan Perón's presidency (in 1940s), when he named his wife Evita as vise-president.

So, there aren't really many examples to see complications arising from this, but it's just a very unusual thing and it looks to an outsider that [Azerbaijan] is becoming a monarchy: members of a family now occupying key positions of the government and I'm not sure, that's the model that everyone had hoped Azerbaijan would follow at this point.

I worry about the future of democracy, because this is not a step into direction of greater involvement of the people and the possibility for democracy that develop in a way that we had all hoped 25 years ago.

Q: llham Aliyev has a history of presenting himself as a politician who takes things personal when it comes to public criticism or particularly media coverage of his family members' interests - from politics to business dealings. Will the latest move stretch the first family's comfort zone even in little ways, given that his government has recently been a subject to international criticism amid human rights crackdown at home?

A. Well, it could be that to have not all the attention always on the president and what he is doing. Mehriban Aliyeva has a different image - in a public sense she has been portrayed as someone concerned about Azerbaijani society, art and culture.

When I was the Ambassador [to Baku], my wife Anne along with Mehriban organized a group called "Friends of Azerbaijani culture" to raise money to support the development of traditional Azerbaijani culture. So, it's a different image - a traditional politician who may have spent years in the [presidential palace] and in the Milli Majlic.

But that really doesn't help the image of Azerbaijan because at the same time what is recently going on with the families of journalists and of people who are in exile - they are being called in the police stations and being questioned... This is not a kind of image that you want to have if you're concerned about what the rest of the world thinks.

And I would even go back to December of 2014, when Ramis Mehdiyev [head of Presidential Administration] issued his rather long polemic and from that point, it became clear to me that this current regime really wasn't going to care much about what the West thought, and what the United States thought, and it pursued a path that unfortunately has led to where we are today - the appearance of the increasingly autocratic regime.

Q: Just to clarify, do you see possible connections between the VP appointment and recent attacks on activists and their relatives? Is this all about the fear of criticism?

A. I think, they become more fearful of what people say outside of Azerbaijan. To me, it's interesting that some of the family members of those who are working outside of Azerbaijan and posting things on Facebook that are critical of the government have been arrested. It's just taking a step further: arresting journalists inside Azerbaijan, who may have tried to pursue freedom of expression, is one thing but now, they are going after the families of people who haven't been convicted on anything but are outside of the country. This is also a sign of a greater concern about the vulnerability of the regime to criticism.

To me, nothing like this happens by accident in Azerbaijan. I don't understand precise connections, but I would imagine, there is a connection that the government is saying "look, we are going to do this and we will not allow any criticism... And if you do criticize us from abroad, we will touch your families."

Q. In the meantime, there is no real criticism coming out of the West these days, isn't it?

A.  That's another interesting thing about the timing [of the VP appointment] and maybe the fact that the U.S. government is going through this rather lengthy transition period made Ilham Aliyev feel "well, I can do this and I will not face any criticism." He is assuming that the Trump administration will be less concerned about human rights and democracy issues than the Obama administration. But I recently saw a piece in the Washington Post where they were congratulating the Trump administration for the hard-line it was taken on human rights and democracy violations in Venezuela... Therefore it may be incorrect to assume that in this transition period, where we aren't paying this much attention to whole range of other problems, if going to continue.

So, these is a certain risk associated with assuming that they are going to be able to continue along with path of greater and greater repression.

Q. President Trump has offered praise to a number of authoritarian regimes, which was music to some ears in, for instance Russia, but he also criticized petro-dictatorships like Venezuela, Iran, and others. Yet it seems like the Baku officials aren't really concerned about the mixed signals coming from Washington...

A. I think, there is a real risk of that, because if you look at examples, such as Israel, [you'll see] that the apparent decision very early on [was] that the Trump Administration was going to move our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but when PM Netanyahu came to Washington and that didn't seem to be an issue that was discussed.

Or the fist foreign policy issue was the apparent decision to abandon "the one China" policy but yet less than a month later, president Trump says he still pursues "the one China" policy. Well now you've got confusion. Now Beijing maybe doesn't know what the U.S. is going to do and therefore it has to be very careful: if they move too quickly one way or another, there are going to be consequences.

So, it is in other places as well, and Azerbaijan may be one of those.

t's just too soon to assume what will be the pattern behavior and what will be different than what was done under the Obama administration.

Q. President Trump appears to have picked his first foreign policy fight - Iran, while cozying up to Russia. I'm interested in your reflections on how this all is going to play out in the Caucasus...

A. Again, there is ambiguity in what the Administration has said. My assumption was, given everything that has been said during the campaign and during the transition period,  that the U.S. will quickly move to abandon the 5+1 agreement [with Iran] on nuclear. That hasn't happened yet. Israel is pretty confident that the U.S. is gonna take a harder line. Let's say we did do that. Well, it would put Azerbaijan in  a very difficult position because they are seen as being not only pro-Israeli, but at certain degree pro-American and if suddenly we reimpose sanctions on Iran or even worse, if there was some kind of military action, Azerbaijan will be a very vulnerable to Iranian retaliation.

We recently was just a small example of that after Netanyahu came to Baku. Not that long after officials of the Iranian embassy met with REAL - that's something Iranians had been very careful about. Yet, as an outsider looking that, I see that is a way of sending a message... Now if you go to the mark-stream situation of reapplying sanction or some sort of U.S.-Israeli coalition against Iran, then Azerbaijan becomes even more vulnerable. So, that would be the firt place.

I don't think, even if there was a closer relationship between Moscow and U.S., there would be much change on how the U.S. viewed the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the role of Russia. Frankly, Moscow has been very consistent in its engagement in the Minsk Group.

I'm not sure if there would be a whole interest in a strategic relationship with Azerbaijan [in the U.S.] beyond the level of what we have today. Energy is not important. But again, the real think to watch will be the Iranian part of this...

Q. What practical differences can Baku make or expect in current crossroads to boost its image in the West?

A. The steps that have been taken last days [against activists and their relatives] are aimed at solidifying an autocratic regime and there is no other way to describe it. I find it hard for them to somehow, kind of, control the levers in a way as if accelerator is going forward on that rather than opening opportunities for freedom of expression and building democracy... They are shutting them down even to a level which, outsiders would look and say "why are you worried about what's somebody is putting on their Facebook page" - unless you really are worried.

Q. Will the human rights still be among major priorities for the U.S.? If not, what are the knowns and unknowns of Washington's policy in Azerbaijan?

A. It's hard to answer that question because we still don't have people in the key positions in the Department of State to navigate the policy as it directed by the president. I don't, at this point, see human rights ans democracy as major priorities by the administration but I could be saying something quite different six months from now.

But it will not be the policy of the Obama administration - that's for sure. I think, we are entering a period where you will not see even statements coming out from a press spokesman - if we even have press conferences at the State Department - about human rights violations... But as I said, there is a Venezuela case that is kind of interesting.

The second area that I'm worried about is the Armenian-Azerbaijan conflict. It's going to be hard to sustain the Minsk Group process without some very high level engagement or push. It's good that the U.S. Ambassador to UN recently said in New York that the Unites States will continue to support the Minsk Group.

But it's now a too risky situation which, I'm worried when spring comes and the weather is not a factor, and we could end up in an April-2016-like situation either by choice, or by accident, just at the time when the U.S. is not as fully engaged and French election is going to take place this year, it would be very hard to have a coherent hard push on Nagorno-Karabakh this time.

So those are the two things that I would be most concerned about: the lack of leadership at the implementing level in the State Department, and the lack of political commitment necessary for the Nagorno-Karabakh issue to keep it very visible.

A.Raufoglu

Washington, D.C.