The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and its influence on the State-Building Process in Azerbaijan

Abstract

Contemporary state-building process is inexorably linked to conflicts in most of the countries, which experience serious hardships in ensuring stability and smooth functioning of state authorities. Today’s reality is that conflicts pose real threats to the modern state-building process. Regardless of the nature of conflict, be it territorial, ethnic or religious, countries suffering from this problem encounter instability and a fragile security situation that pose a threat to smooth state-building initiatives. Although a bulk number of academic sources deal with conflict and state-building issues, we see that some states have not received proper attention in academic research. Azerbaijan is one of those countries. It is an undeniable fact that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict had heavily influenced the political, social, economic life of Azerbaijan. Taking into account this fact, this article will focus on discussing the impacts of the Nagorno-Karabakh problem on the state-building process in Azerbaijan. The article starts with a brief overview of the conflict, its roots, and the current stance of the problem. Then it tries to find the mutual links between the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and state-building processes in Azerbaijan. The article identifies that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is the major source of threat to security and stability in Azerbaijan. In addition, it is concluded that state-building efforts in Azerbaijan have been considerably influenced by the violation of territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country.