Azad Isazade: “Economic crisis in Azerbaijan may lead to nervous breakdown among most of our citizens”

- What can you say about the past year of 2008 in the psychological sense it had for the Azerbaijani citizens?

- First of all, Azerbaijan held presidential elections last year. Moreover, the elections were also held in a number of countries, with which our country have important relations including the United States, Russia, Armenia, Georgia, Turkey.

In other words, the year was full of events in the sense of electoral processes, whose results could influence our country. But as the results of these elections were predicted, they did not have any influence on the deterioration or improvement of the overall psychological state of the citizens of our country. It all occurred as it was expected to occur, which means that there were no grounds for excessive hopes or disappointment. The August Russian-Georgian war and the global financial crisis became more important in the sense of influence on the overall psychological state of our citizens. Both these events carried a negative impact on the citizens of Azerbaijan.

For example, after the August Russian-Georgian war a part of our citizens, who hoped for the return of the Armenian-occupied Nagorno Karabakh, clearly understood that in this changing world there occur situations when little depends not only on the simple citizens of Azerbaijan but also on the leadership of Azerbaijan and Armenia for peace can always be sacrificed in the geopolitical confrontation between superpowers, tending to establish their hegemony in our region. The clear understanding of this fact caused the worsening of the psychological state in our country.

The global financial crisis, which has started to be felt in Azerbaijan, even worsened all negative tendencies. Its expectation has an extremely negative influence on the psychological state of our citizens.

- What implications can this expectation of all negative consequences of economic crisis have?

- On the first stage everything may content with the review of the family budget and the striving to finish all economic accomplishments. But this is only on the first stage. Further, the expectation of economic crisis in Azerbaijan and its negative implications for each of our citizens will naturally toughen and strain, creating a negative psychological background for the citizens of the country. But if the economic crisis comes to Azerbaijan and turns out to be serious enough, it may cause a nervous breakdown among most of our citizens.

- How will the understanding of the inability to resist not only possible significant deterioration of their material state due to economic crisis but also understanding of their inability to settle a number of housing problems including problems with electricity, gas and water in our flats influence the psychological state of the residents of our country?

- First of all, there are definite, though not significant, positive changes in the issue of supply of gas, elecricity and water to the population. Though no one can guarantee that all these insignificant achievements will not disappear easily. But the overall complex situation promotes adjustment of our people to hard life collissions. Therefore, an average Azerbaijan is not depressed with his own inability to change the situation for better. He starts to adjust to this situation and live in his own, often a parralel world. And by our national “duzeler” (“everything will be o'k”) I can explain the fact that local restaurants and other festivity houses and filled, though implications of global financial crisis are obvious throughout the world.

/Day.Az/