SUMMARY
Azerbaijan has sporadically experienced organized violence since gaining independence in 1991, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The population primarily consists of ethnic Azerbaijanis. From the late Soviet period until 2023, Azerbaijan was embroiled in disputes with its neighbor Armenia and the Armenia-backed, self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, a struggle that ended when Azerbaijan retook the region in an offensive in September 2023 and the Republic of Artsakh dissolved on 1 January 2024. Since independence, Azerbaijan has witnessed various forms of organized violence, including intrastate state-based conflicts and one-sided violence, as defined by UCDP.
2025
For a second consecutive year, UCDP recorded no organized violence in Azerbaijan in 2025. With the Azerbaijan: Artsakh conflict terminated, the year was shaped instead by the peace process with Armenia and by a sharp deterioration in relations with Russia.
The peace process advanced further than at any point since the conflict began. In March 2025, Azerbaijan and Armenia announced that they had agreed on the full text of a peace treaty. On 8 August 2025, at a summit in Washington hosted by United States President Donald Trump, the two countries' foreign ministers initialed the agreed text, but Presidents Ilham Aliyev and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan did not sign the treaty itself, signing instead a joint declaration committing to work toward its eventual signing and ratification, alongside bilateral agreements with the United States that included a planned transit route through Armenia's Syunik region, the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, connecting Azerbaijan with its Nakhchivan exclave. The two sides also called for the dissolution of the OSCE Minsk Group, which the OSCE moved to disband. The treaty remained unsigned and unratified at year's end, with Baku demanding that Armenia amend its constitution to remove what it regarded as implicit claims to Nagorno-Karabakh.
Relations with Russia, meanwhile, deteriorated significantly. Tensions that began with the December 2024 crash of an Azerbaijani airliner, struck by a Russian air-defence system near Aktau in Kazakhstan, escalated after a June 2025 Russian police raid in Yekaterinburg in which two ethnic Azerbaijani brothers died, triggering a diplomatic crisis, though a full rupture was avoided.
Domestically, in February 2025 Azerbaijani security forces dismantled a religious-extremist cell in the northern Gusar district, killing several members and arresting others. As the cell had no stated incompatibility over government or territory, this did not constitute UCDP-coded state-based organized violence.
Organized Violence in Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan became part of the Soviet Union in the early 1920s, after its brief period of independence following the collapse of the Russian Empire. During World War II, in 1946, tensions flared when the Soviet-established "Azerbaijan People's Republic" in Iranian territories with Azerbaijani populations was taken back by the Iranian army. Azerbaijan remained under Soviet control until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan faced renewed and escalated conflicts over its government and the status of Nagorno-Karabakh (see Azerbaijan: Artsakh conflict), a region predominantly populated by ethnic Armenians but internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani Popular Front (APF) played a key role in the country's push for independence in 1990, which led to the establishment of a democratic government. However, this democracy proved fragile, with military coups in 1993 and 1995 causing significant political instability and violence.
Concurrently, intense conflicts erupted over Nagorno-Karabakh. During the Soviet era, attempts by the region's ethnic Armenians to unify with Armenia were strongly suppressed. Following the Soviet Union's collapse, these tensions escalated into a full-scale war in the early 1990s that left Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding districts under Armenian control. Azerbaijan recovered much of that territory in a second war in 2020, and in September 2023 it retook the remainder of Nagorno-Karabakh in a one-day offensive, prompting the flight of almost the entire ethnic Armenian population and the dissolution of the Republic of Artsakh on 1 January 2024.
Internationally, Azerbaijan has been involved in broader military efforts. In 2004, it provided secondary warring support to the Government of Iraq and also supported the Government of Afghanistan in its efforts against the Taleban before its takeover of the government in 2021.
Azerbaijan's geopolitical importance is also highlighted by its significant oil and natural gas reserves. The country leverages these resources to enhance its geopolitical standing and forge strategic partnerships, particularly with Western nations and regional powers, positioning itself as a key energy supplier and a pivotal player in the Caucasus region's politics. Its growing assertiveness has also strained ties with Russia, the region's traditional power broker, which by 2025 had been largely sidelined in the South Caucasus.
