Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, in a presidential decree issued on Friday, decided to hold early parliamentary elections on September 1, a widely expected move that seems unlikely to fundamentally change the composition of parliament.
Aliyev, in power since 2003, won presidential elections in February and his New Azerbaijan party is expected to win 69 seats in the 125-seat parliament when its term expires, giving it a new majority in the oil-rich country that has attracted interest from the West, Russia and Turkey.
Opposition lawmakers in parliament are loyal to Aliyev, but some opponents outside parliament say they are being persecuted after a string of arrests of independent journalists and political activists ahead of this year’s presidential election, in which Aliyev won 92 percent of the vote.
Some of those detained were accused of politically motivated crimes, including smuggling. Authorities said the arrests were not political.
Aliyev boasted of the success of his September blitzkrieg, Recaptured the formerly breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region According to Baku, they were leaders of an illegal ethnic Armenian group.
Most of the region’s more than 100,000 Armenians have fled, and Baku is now rebuilding the area as part of a plan to relocate Azerbaijanis.
Western energy companies such as BP have operations in Azerbaijan, which is a member of OPEC+, a pact between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other major exporters such as Russia that limits production to support world prices.
