On October 29, the Israeli government granted a tender to the State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) for gas exploration in Israel’s Exclusive Economic Zone in the Mediterranean Sea (Azvision.az, October 30). The deal came two days after Turkish President Recep Tayyip... MORE

On November 8, the European Commission made the historic recommendation to award EU candidate status to Georgia (Ec.europa.eu, November 8). The final decision to officially grant that status will be made on December 14 and 15. This development is an important step for EU expansion... MORE

On October 26 and 27, Tbilisi hosted the fourth annual Silk Road Forum. The forum brought together about 2,000 guests from 60 countries to discuss global economic challenges and prospects for cooperation (Report.az,  October 26). International interest in the event skyrocketed after Russia’s full-scale invasion... MORE

Baku and Ankara have dropped plans to establish a land corridor to Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan exclave via Armenian territory. Yerevan’s reluctance to reopen the Zangezur Corridor and Western and Iranian opposition to any border changes in the South Caucasus largely motivated this pivot. The Azerbaijani government... MORE

Bulgaria has finally taken decisive measures to cease its dependence on Russian energy and undercut Moscow’s positions in the Balkan and Central European energy markets. On September 28, the Bulgarian National Assembly voted to introduce a new excise tax on the import and transit of... MORE

On October 4, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev canceled a meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, European Council President Charles Michel, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that was meant to take place at the European Political Community summit in Granada, Spain,... MORE

On October 14, Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Transport held talks via videoconference with the transport ministers from Kazakhstan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Iran regarding plans to develop new regional transit corridors (Azernews, October 14). This comes as Tashkent, Ashgabat, and Tehran have expanded cooperation in developing a... MORE

The violence in the Middle East has overshadowed the rise of a potentially explosive hot spot in the South Caucasus following Azerbaijan’s re-assertion of control over the Karabakh region. That is the Zangezur Corridor, a narrow strip of land inside Armenia (known as the Syunik... MORE

The talks between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, scheduled for October 5 in Granada, Spain, were abruptly canceled when Aliyev refused to take part. According to Baku, the main reason for this was the European Union changing the previous tripartite... MORE

On September 19, Azerbaijan launched an “anti-terrorist operation” in the Karabakh region against armed separatist forces. The operation followed three years of largely unproductive peace talks between Armenian and Azerbaijan following the Second Karabakh War in 2020 (TASS, September 19; see EDM, September 20). The... MORE