Azerbaijan's politics: a presidency rewritten by referendum

Who stands next in line to Azerbaijan's presidency

The question of who inherits the presidency has been settled three ways in three decades, and the first answer came out of a crisis. Abulfaz Elchibey won the presidential election of 7 June 1992 with 54% of the vote in a field of seven candidates. A military insurrection led by Colonel Surat Huseynov brought him down in 1993, and the route to power ran through the chair of parliament: the National Council conferred presidential powers on its new speaker, Heydar Aliyev, the former first secretary of the Soviet republic's Communist Party. Elchibey was formally deposed by a national referendum in August 1993, and Aliyev was elected to a five-year term that October. The history article carries the war and the coups around those months.

The constitution adopted by referendum on 12 November 1995 kept the speaker next in line. At the end of 2002 the text was changed so that the prime minister stood there instead. In August 2003 Heydar Aliyev's son Ilham Aliyev was appointed prime minister, and he won the presidential election held that October.

The third answer is the one in force. Article 103-1, added in 2016, creates a First Vice-President and further vice-presidents, all appointed and dismissed by the president. If the president leaves office early, Article 105 requires a new election within 60 days and hands the duties in the meantime to the First Vice-President. Behind that post the chain runs to the other vice-presidents, in an order the president sets, then to the prime minister, then to the speaker of the Milli Majlis, and finally to whichever official parliament names.

The Venice Commission of the Council of Europe, reviewing the draft in 2016, noted that vice-presidents are usually elected as running mates and called a president's power to appoint them "a rare, if not unique, constitutional phenomenon". It added that a vice-president acting as president while an election is organised would be "in a privileged position to win" it.

Leaving the office is also regulated. A president who retires sends the request to the Constitutional Court, which confirms it. Permanent incapacity on health grounds is confirmed by the same court on a majority of six votes, at the request of the Milli Majlis. Removal for a serious crime starts with a Supreme Court finding, passes through the Constitutional Court, and needs 95 of the 125 deputies, a resolution the Constitutional Court must then sign within a week.

How a referendum can bypass the Milli Majlis

Article 3 reserves two subjects to a popular vote alone: the adoption of the constitution and any change to it, and any change to the state's borders. It also forbids referendums on taxes and the budget, on amnesty and pardon, and on the choice of officials whom parliament or the executive appoint. Article 152 repeats the first rule in its shortest form: changes to the text "are adopted only by referendum".

A second route sits beside it. Chapter XII allows amendments to be adopted as constitutional laws by 95 votes in the Milli Majlis, voted twice with six months between the readings and proposed by the president or at least 63 deputies. An amendment may not contradict the main text. A change put to referendum can.

The procedure for the referendum route is short. Either the Milli Majlis or the president may propose a change, and the Constitutional Court must give its opinion beforehand. Article 154 then bars the court from giving any opinion on a change the voters have approved. Article 155 places six articles beyond any referendum proposal, among them the definition of the state in Article 7 and the state language in Article 21, together with any restriction of the rights in Chapter III beyond what Azerbaijan's international agreements allow.

The Venice Commission's opinion, dated in Strasbourg on 18 October 2016, read the two routes as a problem. It found the difference between a "change" and an "amendment" unclear, recorded that in 2009 the authorities of Azerbaijan had described the two procedures as interchangeable, and observed that on a presidential initiative the referendum route "does not involve Parliament at all". The timetable of 2016 is its example. The president sent the draft to the Constitutional Court on 18 July 2016, the court confirmed it on 25 July, and the next day the vote was set for 26 September, about two months for a reform touching 29 provisions with no debate in parliament.

What the last referendum gave Azerbaijan's president

The 2016 draft had two halves, in the Venice Commission's description. One modified human-rights provisions, adding the concept of human dignity and a principle of proportionality alongside limitation clauses on speech, assembly and association. The other rebuilt the presidency.

Article 101 now sets a seven-year term, where the 1995 text had five, and lets the president declare extraordinary presidential elections. The Commission compared the term with European practice and found that no presidential or semi-presidential system among the member states of the OECD used a seven-year mandate at the time. Combined with the removal of the two-term limit in 2009, it concluded, the change "concentrates power in the hands of a single person in a manner not compatible with the separation of powers". Of the power to call an early presidential election, it wrote that the outgoing president could "choose the most beneficial moment for the next elections", in a country "where an incumbent President has never lost an election".

The new Article 98-1 lets the president dissolve the Milli Majlis on three grounds. Two votes of no confidence in the Cabinet of Ministers within one year is the first. The second is a double refusal to appoint the president's nominees to the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court or the board of the Central Bank. The third is a failure, "due to unavoidable reasons", to carry out the legislative duties the constitution lists. A parliament elected after a dissolution may sit less than five years, and the next regular election then falls on the first Sunday of November of its fifth year.

The draft also removed the lower age limits for deputies, the president, vice-presidents, ministers and judges. The Commission pointed out that a 23-year-old graduate could in principle become president while still ineligible to be a lower-court judge, a post that requires a law degree and five years of legal work.

The government's side of the record is the Constitutional Court's finding of 25 July 2016 that the modifications complied with the constitution. Both new powers over the electoral calendar sit in the text now. Azerbaijan held an early presidential election on 7 February 2024 and early parliamentary elections on 1 September 2024, and the OSCE's election office observed both.

Why the cabinet answers to the president

Article 99 gives executive power to the president, and the Cabinet of Ministers exists to exercise it. Article 114 calls the cabinet subordinate and accountable to the president, who sets its agenda. When a newly elected president takes the oath, the whole cabinet resigns under Article 116.

The prime minister needs the Milli Majlis for appointment and nothing else. The president must propose a candidate within a month of taking office or two weeks after a cabinet resigns, and parliament has a week to approve. If it rejects the candidate three times, the president may appoint a prime minister without its consent. The Venice Commission read this as a suspensive veto, and it found no requirement of parliamentary consent for dismissal, which rests with the president alone.

Article 109 lists 32 presidential powers. Among them are appointing and removing ministers, annulling the resolutions of the national cabinet and of the Nakhchivan cabinet, approving economic and social programmes, calling referendums and declaring martial law or a state of emergency. The last item hands the president every matter the constitution has not assigned to parliament. General rules are made by decree under Article 113.

Three labels describe the result. The country's record classes it as a semi-presidential system, the Inter-Parliamentary Union files it under presidential-parliamentary, and the English Wikipedia article reads the constitution as establishing a presidential republic. Below the centre, local executive authorities are a continuation of the presidency: the president appoints the heads of the administrative units, and a regulation of June 2012 widened what those local authorities may do. The Security Council, set up on 10 April 1997, is a deliberative body under the president.

What the Milli Majlis can still refuse

The Milli Majlis has 125 deputies elected by majority vote in single-member constituencies for five years, with regular elections on the first Sunday of November. It holds a spring and an autumn session and can act once the mandates of 83 deputies have been confirmed. If war makes an election impossible, the Constitutional Court may extend the term until military operations end.

Eligibility rules keep the chamber separate from other institutions. A deputy may hold no post in the executive or the courts, no dual citizenship and no other paid work except scientific, creative or teaching work, and ministers of religion are excluded.

Legislative initiative is shared. Deputies, the president, the Supreme Court, the Prosecutor's Office, the Ali Majlis of Nakhchivan and any 40,000 voters may submit bills. A bill from anyone other than a deputy must be voted on in the form presented, can be changed only with its sponsor's consent, and must come to a vote within two months, or within 20 days if declared urgent. Laws go to the president within 14 days of passage. The president has 56 days to sign or return them with objections.

The chamber's composition is published by the Inter-Parliamentary Union. In September 2024 it seated 26 women among its 125 members, 20.8%, and the average age of its members was 56. On the 2023 population figure the union counts 82,544 inhabitants per deputy. At the parliamentary election of 2010 the opposition parties Musavat and the Azerbaijan Popular Front won no seat, and European observers reported irregularities before and on polling day.

Who appoints the judges who certify elections

The Constitutional Court has nine judges, appointed by the Milli Majlis on the president's proposal for a single fifteen-year term. Much of its work concerns elections. It verifies and confirms the results of the parliamentary election deputy by deputy, announces the result of a presidential election within 14 days, decides whether a war has postponed either election, and signs or withholds a resolution removing the president.

The president also proposes the judges of the Supreme Court and of the courts of appeal, appoints the judges of all other courts directly, and appoints the Prosecutor General with parliament's consent. The constitution places the Prosecutor's Office inside the judicial branch. Below the Supreme Court sit six courts of appeal and a first tier of district and city courts, serious crime courts, military courts and economic courts.

Parliament's approval of the top judges was the check the Venice Commission saw weakened in 2016. Once refusing a nominee twice becomes a ground for dissolution, it wrote, the appointment of every judge on the two highest courts moves "in the hands of the executive". A Judicial Selection Committee set up by law takes part in choosing candidates for vacant judicial posts, and the Commission recorded that its independence from the executive was unclear.

How Nakhchivan runs a parliament of its own

The Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, separated from the rest of the country by Armenian territory, is the one part of Azerbaijan with its own legislature. Chapter VIII of the constitution calls it "an autonomous State which forms part of the Republic of Azerbaijan". Its Ali Majlis has 45 members elected for five years, its speaker is the republic's highest official, and it has its own Cabinet of Ministers and courts.

Baku sets the limits of that autonomy. Nakhchivan's own constitution is submitted by the president of Azerbaijan to the Milli Majlis and confirmed by a constitutional law. National laws, presidential decrees and national cabinet resolutions are binding on its territory, and the president may annul the acts of its cabinet. The Ali Majlis in turn holds two powers that reach the capital: it may initiate legislation in the Milli Majlis and it may ask the Constitutional Court to review a law. Rulings of the Nakhchivan Supreme Court go on cassation to the Supreme Court of Azerbaijan.

Elsewhere the lowest elected tier is the municipality. Municipal councils are elected every five years, choose their own chair and approve local budgets, taxes and fees, and they report to the Milli Majlis. The constitution of 1995 abolished the local soviets on entering into force and gave their powers to local executive bodies, and required a law on local self-government and the first municipal elections within two years.

Why observers and the constitution describe different states

Article 7 of the constitution defines Azerbaijan as "a democratic, law-governed, secular, unitary republic" based on the separation of powers, and Article 1 names the people as "the sole source of State power". Article 6 calls the usurpation of power "the most serious crime directed against the people". Article 7 is among the provisions no referendum may touch.

International monitors describe the practice differently. Freedom House classed Azerbaijan as "not free" in 2024 and described its regime as authoritarian. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are cited alongside it for the view that elections have not been free or fair. The OSCE's election office had observed 13 elections in Azerbaijan by 2024. Its assessment of the presidential election of 1998 recorded "clear political will" by the authorities to improve election practice, citing the formal abolition of censorship in August 1998 and a new citizenship law that September. In 2015 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe noted the limited competence of the Milli Majlis and the vulnerability of non-governmental organisations and independent media.

The authorities' position is recorded in the same documents: the Constitutional Court's confirmation of each proposed change, the claim in 2009 that the two revision procedures are interchangeable. Britannica attributes the continuity of rule since independence to constitutional amendments, including the removal of term limits, to crackdowns on political activity and to media restrictions. A survey in 2025 found that respondents named unemployment, low salaries and poverty as the country's main problems.

Which alliances Azerbaijan has joined since independence

Turkey was the first state to recognise Azerbaijan's independence, and the relationship is summed up in the slogan "One nation, two countries". Azerbaijan belongs to the Organization of Turkic States, joined in 2009, and to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, joined in 1991. It also takes part in the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Economic Cooperation Organization, the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation and the D-8.

Its European ties run through the Council of Europe, which it joined in 2001, and through the OSCE and NATO's Partnership for Peace. Council of Europe membership is why the Venice Commission, a Council body, reviews Azerbaijan's constitutional drafts, and why its opinions of 2009 and 2016 are part of the political record. In the summer of 1992 Azerbaijan secured the full withdrawal of the Soviet army from its territory, and in July 1992 it ratified the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. The national armed forces had been formed by presidential decree in October 1991.

At the United Nations it was elected to the new Human Rights Council on 9 May 2006 and first won a non-permanent seat on the Security Council in 2011, with the support of 155 states. The conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, set out in the history article, shaped foreign policy for three decades. On 8 August 2025 the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a joint declaration at the White House committing both states to a peace agreement.