Azerbaijan breaks stereotypes in Middle East politics

By Rufiz Hafizoglu 

The Middle East has always been a center of almost all the world developments. And everything that happened there was directly reflected on the neighboring regions.

Both the West, and the Middle East’s major powers, such as Turkey and Iran, never hid their ambitions in the region. It is worth noting that almost all the countries in the Middle East, except for Turkey and Iran, have no historical traditions of statehood.

The Arab-Israeli conflict, which was once considered the main conflict in this region, has now acquired a local nature.

After the emergence of political unrests in a number of Arab countries, which later became known as the ‘Arab Spring’, the situation in the region changed drastically. Earlier, an idea was implanted in Arab countries that the ‘Arab Spring’ is the only way to restore democracy and human rights, but over time these processes fell under control of some interested forces in the region, and beyond it.

And today, the consequences of the ‘Arab Spring’ are obvious. Today, radical groups are active in all countries that have been previously engulfed with the “Arab Spring”, and only Egypt, at the cost of a military coup, was able to keep relative stability within the country.

The interests of the West, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries meet exactly in the countries where the ‘Arab Spring’ developed into armed conflicts.

There is a split among some Muslim countries on the ways of settlement of the Syrian, Iraqi and Yemeni crises and each country acts based on its own interests in this issue.

The remaining Muslim countries are located far from the region.

Moreover, anyway, almost all the countries of the region are involved in these military conflicts.

But there are also exceptions. For instance, today, with its economic and political potential, Azerbaijan has close ties with all the countries the interests of which intersect in the region.

Azerbaijan has close economic and political ties with Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Iraq, as well as Saudi Arabia, which are considered the main players in the Middle East. Thus, Azerbaijan broke the stereotypes that allegedly the country's foreign policy with respect to the Middle East is tied exclusively to the policy of Iran and Turkey in the region.

Additionally, Azerbaijan has a clear position on the military conflicts in the Middle East.

Azerbaijan is one of the important energy centers of the region and we can say that it plays a key role in ensuring Europe’s energy security.

Of course, this fact can not be left without attention.

Taking into account Azerbaijan’s role and its clear policy and economic growth, we can say that Baku can be a mediator not only between the West and the Islamic world, but also between the Muslim countries, especially, to settle the military conflicts that is currently very important for the Islamic world.

/By Trend/