Re: Gta Vice City Baku Mod
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Azerbaijan,[a] officially the Republic of Azerbaijan,[b] is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and West Asia.[9] It is a part of the South Caucasus region and is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia's republic of Dagestan to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia and Turkey to the west, and Iran to the south. Baku is the capital and largest city.
By the late 19th century, an Azerbaijani national identity emerged when the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic proclaimed its independence from the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic in 1918, a year after the Russian Empire collapsed, and became the first secular democratic Muslim-majority state. In 1920, the country was conquered and incorporated into the Soviet Union as the Azerbaijan SSR.[12][14] The modern Republic of Azerbaijan proclaimed its independence on 30 August 1991,[15][16] shortly before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the same year. In September 1991, the ethnic Armenian majority of the Nagorno-Karabakh region formed the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh,[17] which became de facto independent with the end of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1994, although the region and seven surrounding districts remained internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.[18][19][20][21] Following the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020, the seven districts and parts of Nagorno-Karabakh were returned to Azerbaijani control.[22] An Azerbaijani offensive in 2023 ended the Republic of Artsakh and resulted in the flight of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians.[23]
The vast majority of the country's population (97%) is nominally[26] Muslim,[27] but the constitution does not declare an official religion and all major political forces in the country are secular. Azerbaijan is a developing country and ranks 91st on the Human Development Index. The ruling New Azerbaijan Party, in power since 1993, has been accused of authoritarianism under president Heydar Aliyev and his son Ilham Aliyev, and deteriorating the country's human rights record, including increasing restrictions on civil liberties, particularly on press freedom and political repression.[28]
The name Azerbaijan was first adopted for the area of the present-day Republic of Azerbaijan by the government of Musavat in 1918,[38] after the collapse of the Russian Empire, when the independent Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was established. Until then, the designation had been used exclusively to identify the adjacent region of contemporary northwestern Iran,[39][40][41][42] while the area of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was formerly referred to as Arran and Shirvan.[43] On that basis Iran protested the newly adopted country name.[44]
Early settlements included the Scythians during the 9th century BC.[36] Following the Scythians, Iranian Medes came to dominate the area to the south of the Aras river.[34] The Medes forged a vast empire between 900 and 700 BC, which was integrated into the Achaemenid Empire around 550 BC.[47] The area was conquered by the Achaemenids leading to the spread of Zoroastrianism.[48]
The Sasanian Empire turned Caucasian Albania into a vassal state in 252, while King Urnayr officially adopted Christianity as the state religion in the 4th century.[49] Despite Sassanid rule, Caucasian Albania remained an entity in the region until the 9th century, while fully subordinate to Sassanid Iran, and retained its monarchy. Despite being one of the chief vassals of the Sasanian emperor, the Albanian king had only a semblance of authority, and the Sasanian marzban (military governor) held most civil, religious, and military authority.[50]
In the first half of the 7th century, Caucasian Albania, as a vassal of the Sasanians, came under nominal Muslim rule due to the Muslim conquest of Persia. The Umayyad Caliphate repulsed both the Sasanians and Byzantines from the South Caucasus and turned Caucasian Albania into a vassal state after Christian resistance led by King Juansher was suppressed in 667. The power vacuum left by the decline of the Abbasid Caliphate was filled by numerous local dynasties such as the Sallarids, Sajids, and Shaddadids. At the beginning of the 11th century, the territory was gradually seized by the waves of migrating Oghuz Turks from Central Asia, who adopted a Turkoman ethnonym at the time.[51] The first of these Turkic dynasties established was the Seljuk Empire, which entered the area now known as Azerbaijan by 1067.[52]
The pre-Turkic population that lived on the territory of modern Azerbaijan spoke several Indo-European and Caucasian languages, among them Armenian[53][54][55][56][57] and an Iranian language, Old Azeri, which was gradually replaced by a Turkic language, the early precursor of the Azerbaijani language of today.[58] Some linguists have also stated that the Tati dialects of Iranian Azerbaijan and the Republic of Azerbaijan, like those spoken by the Tats, are descended from Old Azeri.[59][60]Locally, the possessions of the subsequent Seljuk Empire were ruled by Eldiguzids, technically vassals of the Seljuk sultans, but sometimes de facto rulers themselves. Under the Seljuks, local poets such as Nizami Ganjavi and Khaqani gave rise to a blossoming of Persian literature on the territory of present-day Azerbaijan.[61][62]
Qajar Iran was forced to cede its Caucasian territories to Russia in the 19th century, which thus included the territory of the modern-day Azerbaijan Republic, while as a result of that cession, the Azerbaijani ethnic group is nowadays parted between two nations: Iran and Azerbaijan.[91]
Despite the Russian conquest, throughout the entire 19th century, preoccupation with Iranian culture, literature, and language remained widespread among Shia and Sunni intellectuals in the Russian-held cities of Baku, Ganja and Tiflis (Tbilisi, now Georgia).[92] Within the same century, in post-Iranian Russian-held East Caucasia, an Azerbaijani national identity emerged at the end of the 19th century.[93]
After the collapse of the Russian Empire during World War I, the short-lived Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic was declared, constituting the present-day republics of Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia.It was followed by the March Days massacres[94][95] that took place between 30 March and 2 April 1918 in the city of Baku and adjacent areas of the Baku Governorate of the Russian Empire.[96] When the republic dissolved in May 1918, the leading Musavat party declared independence as the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR), adopting the name of "Azerbaijan" for the new republic; a name that prior to the proclamation of the ADR was solely used to refer to the adjacent northwestern region of contemporary Iran.[39][40][41] The ADR was the first modern parliamentary republic in the Muslim world.[12][97][98] Among the important accomplishments of the Parliament was the extension of suffrage to women, making Azerbaijan the first Muslim nation to grant women equal political rights with men.[97] Another important accomplishment of ADR was the establishment of Baku State University, which was the first modern-type university founded in the Muslim East.[97]
On 13 October 1921, the Soviet republics of Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia signed an agreement with Turkey known as the Treaty of Kars. The previously independent Republic of Aras would also become the Nakhchivan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic within the Azerbaijan SSR by the treaty of Kars. On the other hand, Armenia was awarded the region of Zangezur and Turkey agreed to return Gyumri (then known as Alexandropol).[100]
During World War II, Azerbaijan played a crucial role in the strategic energy policy of the Soviet Union, with 80 percent of the Soviet Union's oil on the Eastern Front being supplied by Baku. By the Decree of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in February 1942, the commitment of more than 500 workers and employees of the oil industry of Azerbaijan were awarded orders and medals. Operation Edelweiss carried out by the German Wehrmacht targeted Baku because of its importance as the energy (petroleum) dynamo of the USSR.[12] A fifth of all Azerbaijanis fought in the Second World War from 1941 to 1945. Approximately 681,000 people with over 100,000 of them women, went to the front, while the total population of Azerbaijan was 3.4 million at the time.[101] Some 250,000 people from Azerbaijan were killed on the front. More than 130 Azerbaijanis were named Heroes of the Soviet Union. Azerbaijani Major-General Azi Aslanov was twice awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union.[102]
Following the politics of glasnost, initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev, civil unrest and ethnic strife grew in various regions of the Soviet Union, including Nagorno-Karabakh,[103] an autonomous region of the Azerbaijan SSR. The disturbances in Azerbaijan, in response to Moscow's indifference to an already heated conflict, resulted in calls for independence and secession, which culminated in the Black January events in Baku.[104] Later in 1990, the Supreme Council of the Azerbaijan SSR dropped the words "Soviet Socialist" from the title, adopted the "Declaration of Sovereignty of the Azerbaijan Republic" and restored the flag of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic as the state flag.[105] As a consequence of the failed 1991 Soviet coup d'tat attempt in Moscow, the Supreme Council of Azerbaijan adopted a Declaration of Independence on 18 October 1991, which was affirmed by a nationwide referendum in December 1991, while the Soviet Union officially ceased to exist on 26 December 1991.[105] The country now celebrates its Day of Restoration of Independence on 18 October.[106]
In 1993, democratically elected president Abulfaz Elchibey was overthrown by a military insurrection led by Colonel Surat Huseynov, which resulted in the rise to power of the former leader of Soviet Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev. In 1994, Surat Huseynov, by that time the prime minister, attempted another military coup against Heydar Aliyev, but he was arrested and charged with treason.[115] A year later, in 1995, another coup was attempted against Aliyev, this time by the commander of the OMON special unit, Rovshan Javadov. The coup was averted, resulting in the killing of the latter and disbanding of Azerbaijan's OMON units.[116][117] At the same time, the country was tainted by rampant corruption in the governing bureaucracy.[118] In October 1998, Aliyev was reelected for a second term.
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