19/05/2026

Podcast

Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh: A Personal Perspective | Danube Politics

Gavin Haynes | Farid Shukurlu
For forty years, two countries have tested each other’s resolve over a mountainous black garden. The region in question, Nagorno-Karabakh, literally means "mountainous black garden". It is a rugged enclave that, under Soviet administration, was an autonomous oblast inside the Azerbaijan SSR, while being majority Armenian by population. This was standard Soviet practice in its day. In fact, Stalin made a point of nesting ethnic minorities inside other republics' territory. The conflict seemed intractable. Multiple short wars. Much ethnic strife. And then in a single day in September 2023, Azerbaijan did what three decades of European diplomacy couldn't: it resolved the Nagorno-Karabakh question. By force. Winning the final war in 23 hours. After a 2025 peace treaty, brokered by President Trump, the territory transfer appears to be baked in. The matter is settled. Or is it? This week on Danube Politics, we’re joined by a man who understands the Azerbaijani perspective on the war. Farid Shukurlu is a Visiting Fellow at the Danube Institute, working on three departments: Europe, the Middle East and the Turkic-Western Engagement. Farid is also Azerbaijani, whose ancestry is interconnected with this regional conflict, his grandparents having been expelled from Armenia at the time of the dissolution of the USSR. We wanted to ask him about how Azerbaijan sees the war and its aftermath.

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