Incumbent Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev is widely expected to win the presidential election in the country on Tuesday for a third term.
Ten candidates are in the running - including Aliyev who is the candidate of the ruling New Azerbaijan Party, but pre-vote exit polls are currently predicting that Aliyev will secure as much as 86% of the national vote.
The most credible challenger to Aliyev is Jamil Hasanli, who was nominated by a union of opposition parties, the National Coalition of Democratic Forces.
Few observers would be surprised by a landslide victory. Since taking office in 2003, President Aliyev is widely credited with boosting the country’s economy while also overseeing a period of rapid modernization and national development, fuelled by the nation’s Caspian Sea energy wealth.
Under Aliyev, the nation of 9 million, the largest country in the Caucsus region at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, has basked in oil riches that have more than tripled its gross domestic product and transformed the once-gritty capital, Baku, into a shining modern city.
The presidential election will be closely watched by international democracy watchdogs, with over 30,000 election observers from 87 different countries expected in Azerbaijan to monitor the vote. An interim report from the OSCE noted that the election campaign has so far been generally calm.
Azerbaijan has further strengthened its relations with the West by contributing troops to the US.-led missions in Afghanistan and Iraq and serving as a key supply route for US. forces in Afghanistan.
It has also developed close strategic and economic cooperation with Israel. The Muslim former Soviet republic supplies Israel with vast amounts of oil and Israeli arms protect Islamic Republic’s northern neighbor.
“The partnership between Israel and Azerbaijan is complicated by political factors, but ultimately it is moving forward because it makes sense from an economical point of view,” said Oded Eran, a former Israeli ambassador to the European Union and ex-director of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. “Azerbaijan is reliable enough as a supplier of oil for Israel, and Israel is a reliable supplier of high-tech and arms.”
Israel has long cultivated ties with this Muslim nation, which has enormous reserves of oil and natural gas and a 380-mile southern border with Iran.
Israel opened an embassy in the capital Baku in 1992, just one year after Azerbaijan gained independence from the former Soviet Union.
According to observers, Israel sees Azerbaijan as a replacement for Turkey, whose once-close partnership with Israel hasn’t recovered from the 2010 storming by Israeli commandos of a Turkish ship that tried to illegally break the naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.
But personal ties between Jews and Azerbaijanis over the centuries has helped cement today’s bond between Jerusalem and Baku.
“Jews here have always been perceived as promoters of progress, part of the elite, as something which holds potential,” an Azerbaijan government spokesman told JTA recently.
Although around 95% of the population are Muslims, Azerbaijan is a seculare state and ensures total freedom of religion.
From the late 19th century Baku became one of the centres of the Zionist movement in the Russian Empire.
The first Ashkenazi Jews began to settle in Baku in 1810. In 1832 the first synagogue was built in the city. There are three synagogues today.
Another synagogue is the one of the Mountain Jews' in Krasnaya Sloboda, a small town in northern Azerbaijan.
For nearly three centuries, 2,000 Jews have lived there in their own 'shtetl.' It is one of the world’s few remaining all-Jewish towns outside Israel.
Moreover, contrary to Western and Eastern Europe, there are no anti-Semitic traditions in Azerbaijan.
Over 80,000 Jews from Azerbaijan live in Israel. The Jewish population of the country is around 8,000.