Alright, we finally reached the last country beginning with with an A..and that only took about I don't know..
like 3 months?...alright, here we go - Azerbaijan!
It's time to learn geography...NOW!!!
Hey everybody, I'm your host Paul Barbato, you know the drill...let's dissect the flag!
The flag of Azerbaijan is a tri-color banner of blue, red and green with a white crescent and star emblem in the center
the blue represents the Turkic heritage of the people, the red represents progress and social democracy
and the green represents the Islamic civilization.
The crescent, of course you would think means Islam and it does kind of..however the Azerbaijanis and Turks
will tell you that the symbol originated from the Turkic people and not the Arabs.
So the symbol could also refer to Turkic heritage and the 8-pointed star, some people will tell you
that the star represents the 8 tribes like the Dumbuli, Kizilbasch etc. but it actually represents
the 8 letters of the word Azerbaijan written in Arabic even though Azerbaijan has adopted a Latin based alphabet.
Moving on!
To make things short, if you look at Azerbaijan's borders, it kinda looks like a crazy bird flying while it's losing one big feather.
Located in the central Caucasus region of Eurasia, Azerbaijan is bordered by 5 other countries,
you would think 4, but we'll talk about this little guy in a sec...
and the mighty Caspian Sea to the east.
The capital's Baku right along the coast of the Caspian and the country is divided into 9 regions
and one interesting autonomous republic, we'll talk about that soon, but first..
now as we mentioned in the Armenia video, we did talk about the Nagorno-Karabakh region and how there's a lot of tension and conflict.
First of all do not call it a republic to an Azerbaijani, they will get mad at you.
The Nagorno-Karabakh region is not recognized as a sovereign state by any other country in the world
and today it's kinda considered as a "Dejure" region of Azerbaijan, even though Azerbaijanis avoid going there.
Also in the Armenia video I did talk about the Armenian Genocide which did kinda ruffle up a lot of feathers
with the Azerbaijani and Turkish viewers and so I think it's maybe only fair if I talk about the Azerbaijani side of the perspective.
The Azerbaijanis will mention the Khojaly massacre in which hundreds of the Azerbaijanis were attacked by Armenian troops.
It's estimated somewhere around 300 to 600 people were killed during the massacre.
Both sides have attacked each other in a conflict.
I'm gonna move on before things get a little bit more awkward.
Then you have this strange but quirky seperated exclave known as the Nakchivan autonomous republic
in the west bordered by Armenia and Turkey.
By the way, the Nakchivan autonomous republic is not a seperate country, it is a part of Azerbaijan, they don't want to be seperated.
Remember how in the Armenia video I told you that Mount Ararat was kind of considered the area where Noah's Ark landed?
Well, the Nakchivan autonomous republic is kinda considered the area where Noah's family lived.
This area is the only part of Azerbaijan that has access to Turkey for a very very narrow 8 or so kilometer border
along the Aras river, the only problem is because of the whole border blockade, if someone from Nakchivan
wants to go to the rest of Azerbaijan by road, they would have to literally cross over into Iran
and drive along the 12 highway paralleling the Aras river, all the way to the nearest main crossing
at the Mil Mugan dam nearly 50 miles from the technical border of Armenia
and you could probably guess why.
And as you can guess, the Nakchivan region is another area of controversy between Azerbaijan and, you guessed it, Armenia.
Now although Armenia isn't "fighting for ownership" of Nakchivan.
Essentially this what each side of the argument is saying:
"Nakchivan, stop destroying the ancient Armenian sites and monuments in the Nakchivan region
as a means to erase all the Armenian culture from the area."
"Those claims are nothing more than just Armenian propaganda based on no actual evidence
and plus those aren't even Armenian, those are Caucasian Albanian."
"Oh yeah, well I'm gonna take this to the EU Court."
"GO AHEAD!"
I'm not telling you who is right or wrong, I'm just saying this is what they're saying.
Let's go back to Baku, shall we?
Located on the Abşeron peninsula or the bird's beak of Azerbaijan that juts out into the Caspian.
The capital Baku is not only the largest city and the best harbor in the Caspian Sea,
but is a breathtakingly beautiful architectural wonder with its world-famous Flame Towers completed in 2012.
Also keep in mind, Baku has the world's largest KFC.
So anway...the interesting thing though is that Azerbaijan was actually the first muslim-majority
democratic secular country in the world and they were also the first muslim-majority country in the world
to have theaters, operas and modern-day universities.
Nonetheless, Azerbaijan still holds on to its ancient artifacts and historical sites,
such as the famous Maiden's Tower and the even more captivating underwater Sabayil Castle
known as the "Atlantis of the Caspian".
But to really understand how this land works, we need to talk about the...
Now this is where things get a little interesting because the landscape of Azerbaijan
has some pretty cool tricks up its sleeve.
For one, the land is about half mountainous with the Caucasus Mountain ranges dominating
the north and west parts of the country and the Talysh Mountain range in the south Lankaran region
with Nordic wind patterns streaming down the Caucasus yet the mild Caspian Sea effect,
the climate can be quite drastically opposing depending on where you are.
Azerbaijan has this kind of strange terrain phenomena in which it has cold Alpine mountains
right next to these dry subtropical zones right next to the coast in which where you can find things like
orange and lemon groves and tea plantations which kind of need a warmer climate to grow in.
By the way, Azerbaijanis love tea, they're kind of obssesed over it.
They even made multiple monuments to tea.
But the place where things get really interesting though would have to be the Gobustan region
south of Baku, one of the world-renowned landforms that Azerbaijan would have to be known for
would have to be its famous mud volcanoes.
About half of all the world's mud volcanoes are found right here in Gobustan.
Another cool thing is that Azerbaijan is rich in natural gas and petroleum deposits which make about
80% of the economy and because of this overtime Azerbaijan has built a mind-bogglingly
complex and elaborate yet strikingly mesmerizing system of trestles, pipelines and causeways
that connect the oil reservoirs offshore in the middle of the Caspian.
In fact, in 1949 Azerbaijan actually built the world's first offshore oil platform in Neft Daşları.
Speaking of countries of the oil developing world, let's talk about...
Now very few people actually understand what an Azerbaijani is, let alone where they came from
or how to even pronounce Azerbaijan, we'll discuss more about that in a bit, but first...
Azerbaijan has roughly 9 and half million people or roughly the same size as Sweden
and ethnically it's quite homogenous with 91% of the people identifying as ethnically Azerbaijani
and the remainder of the 9% minority coming from a slew of other nationalities and people groups,
the largest populations coming from Russians, Lezgins, Talysh
and believe it or not Armenians, however that's more in reference towards the Armenians
living in Nagorno-Karabakh region as it's pretty much impossible or incredibly rare to find any
Armenian living anywhere else in Azerbaijan.
But who are the Azerbaijanis? Some people will tell you that they are descended from the Persians,
others might tell you the Caucasian Albanians...
Not to be confused with modern-day Albanians, that's a completely different thing.
Well, the general consensus is that the Azerbaijani people today are Turks or Turkic people.
Not to be confused with Turkish people from Turkey, although they are very close cousins.
Yeah, in the world of geographical sociology, a lot of things sound like other things,
but they aren't exactly the same things as those things.
This means that the Azerbaijani language is very close to the Turkish language and people can travel
interchangeably between both countries and relatively understand each other.
It's like Spanish and Portugese.
Now what's really interesting is that Azerbaijan is one of the few Muslim Shia majority countries in the world.
They also have a very interesting culture dynamic in which the majority of people identify
as culturally Muslim rather than consistently devoutly observant Muslim.
This type of social coherence really permeates throughout the population of the country
as it's very noticeably secular in the way how it operates.
Women are allowed to wear whatever they want and are not required to wear hijabs or burkas
and religious freedom is allowed.
Alright, well moving on...
To put it simply, Azerbaijan has a long long history of friends, but also some surprising new people
that they just started to kinda click with.
Today Azerbaijan has diplomatic relations with over 160 countries mostly centralized in Europe and Asia.
Azerbaijan's immediate neighbors to the north and south - Georgia and Iran
have always had cordial relations with Azerbaijan and have open borders and trade agreements.
When it comes to Russia though, things are little hit-or-miss.
Yes, as a former Soviet state Azerbaijan does have "ties" to Russia
and they have been working on the diplomacy and partnerships.
However, most Azerbaijanis disapprove of the relations with Russia
mostly because they are more supportive of Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
and even took part in fights like the Khojaly massacre.
Pakistan is kind of like the fan girl of Azerbaijan.
Pakistan cheers for Azerbaijan and recognizes their side of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
and has even gone so far as to even unrecognize Armenia as a state.
Strangely enough though, Azerbaijan is actually one of the few Muslim-majority countries
that actually gets along pretty well with Israel.
They provide Israel with fuel and Israel provides them with agricultural and technological assistance.
The Jewish community has lived peacefully within Azerbaijan for over 1500 years,
persecution was virtually uknown to the Jewish community in Azerbaijan,
which also served as a safe haven for Jews fleeing from the holocaust.
And finally, we get to Turkey.
Turkey, as you can probably guess is without a doubt Azerbaijan's best friend.
Despite the Sunni / Shia difference they have the closest ties culturally, linguistically and diplomatically.
Turkey also supports Azerbaijan in nearly all of their disputes and conflicts like a proud older brother.
There's a saying between them - the two of them are one nation, two countries.
In conclusion, I can guarantee you there's pretty much no place like Azerbaijan.
I mean it's a Shia-Muslim majority yet kind of secular country that drinks wine and gets along with Israel
and has mud volcanoes...what??
Stay tuned, our first country starting with a B ... the Bahamas is coming up next!
Hey peeps, just wanna say a quick thank you to all the native Azerbaijani subscribers
that helped me with this video, some of you guys are listed in credits
and a...so the next country is the Bahamas, if you are from the Bahamas contact me at Geographylater at gmail.com
and let's make that next video, subscribe to this channel, click on this box that I'm in right now,
hope you have a good one!