(The article was prepared by the "Khar Center" within the framework of research on Azerbaijani authoritarianism)
Introduction
Before the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, made another of her increasingly frequent visits to Azerbaijan in early July, she received letters from imprisoned journalists, political prisoners, and activists. The appeal in the letters was the same: the prisoners of Azerbaijani authoritarianism wanted von der Leyen to talk to Ilham Aliyev not just about energy and trade, but also about the issue that once defined the core value of the European Union—human rights and democracy (OC Media, 2026). The Chair of the European Parliament's Subcommittee on Human Rights, Mounir Satouri, made a similar appeal to the President of the European Commission—an appeal to bring the situation of political prisoners, the media, civil society, and the opposition in Azerbaijan to the agenda at the highest level (2Eu.Brussels, 2026).
Whether Ursula von der Leyen spoke about these issues in her meeting with Ilham Aliyev is unknown to anyone, but in the statements made to the public, she acted as if these appeals had never been made. Ignoring the raised topics as if she were in the most problem-free, most democratic country in the world, she talked about allocating a 200 million euro grant for transport, energy, and digital connectivity in the South Caucasus, proposed the launch of an EU-Azerbaijan Connectivity partnership, stated that they would work to hold a Regional Connectivity Investment Conference in Baku, mentioned allocating money for peacebuilding, and presented the "energy marriage" that grew particularly strong after the Russia-Ukraine war as a success story, offering her subsequent thanks to Ilham Aliyev (EC, 2026). Yet, exactly during those days, Amnesty International stated the following in its report regarding Azerbaijan, where more than 300 people are imprisoned: "The 2013 legislative amendments laid the groundwork for the virtual destruction of civic space in Azerbaijan. Since that year, the Azerbaijani authorities have systematically dismantled independent civil society: hundreds of human rights defenders, activists, journalists, and political opponents have been arrested on politically motivated charges, and many have been forced to flee the country. This repression is no longer confined within Azerbaijan's borders. Amnesty International has documented an increasingly expanding campaign of repression against government critics living abroad—journalists, human rights defenders, activists, and the family members of government critics... These measures constitute a large-scale and severe attack on human rights, including freedom of expression, freedom of association, the right to peaceful assembly, the right to a fair trial, and freedom of movement" (Amnesty International, 2026).
As emphasized in Amnesty International's report, repression in Azerbaijan has not consisted of isolated facts, incidents, or violations for many years; it is a coordinated state governance process. Azerbaijani authoritarianism is established upon a repressive bureaucracy, and this has gained momentum, especially following the dramatic loyalization of the West's relations with the Ilham Aliyev regime.
In this analysis, the "KHAR Center" will look at the bureaucracy of Azerbaijan's repressive system and try to answer the question: How does repression in Azerbaijan operate from isolated rights violations into an institutionalized, bureaucratic, and hybrid mechanism of state governance?
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
By its most popular definition, repression is the actual or threatened use of physical sanctions against an individual or organization by a state within its territorial jurisdiction. The purpose of such sanctions is to impose a certain cost on the target, as well as to deter specific activities and/or beliefs perceived as a challenge to government representatives, practices, or institutions (Goldstein, 1978). According to most approaches, repression is mostly associated with applications of state power that violate fundamental freedoms such as speech, assembly, and organization, rules of legal procedure, as well as the rights to personal integrity and security. These types of rights include the following:
- Freedom of speech, assembly, and movement; freedom of the press regardless of the views expressed, up to the very narrowly defined threshold of a "clear and present danger."
- Freedom to associate and believe without state punishment, stigmatization, or investigation, as long as it is not explicitly linked to possible violations of existing laws.
- Freedom to boycott, hold peaceful pickets, or strike without being subjected to criminal or civil sanctions (Goldstein, 1978).
Christian Davenport, however, believes that while this definition of repression is correct, it is incomplete. Because the definition of repression used here is important not only in terms of what it includes, but also what it leaves out. For instance, according to Davenport, the popular definition ignores the detrimental consequences of structural features experienced over a long period, such as the unfair distribution of resources—the concept of "structural violence." At the same time, it does not encompass second-generation rights—economic, social, and cultural privileges—and third-generation rights—the right to peace and a clean environment. The definition does not strictly require the presence of an absolute behavioral threat as in "protest policing" approaches. Likewise, it does not set the violation of any law as an absolute condition, as in the "human rights violations" approach. Finally, this definition does not predetermine what purposes the repressive action serves and to what extent the authorities achieve these purposes. Davenport highlights that authorities can have the following purposes:
- To define the general boundaries within which citizens can operate;
- To control or eliminate real or imaginary challenges against existing political leaders, institutions, and/or practices;
- To move society in a certain direction—for example, to guide it along a preferred development strategy or ideological line (Davenport, 2007).
In this regard, the researcher believes that repression is a broader system of sanctions—it encompasses the broad coercive tools that political authorities use to influence people within their territorial jurisdiction. This broad "repertoire" includes overt and covert; violent and non-violent; successful and unsuccessful repressive activities carried out by the state, state-sponsored actors—such as militias—or state-affiliated groups—such as death squads (Davenport, 2007).
In other words, according to this approach, repression is not merely a punishment; it is a governance technology used by authorities to maintain political order, keep the opposition under control, and determine the behavioral boundaries of society. Repression is not a "disease" or an impulsive behavior of the system, but a rationally calculated policy of decision-makers—political leaders weigh the costs and benefits of repression, alternative control mechanisms, and the probability of success. If the benefits appear to outweigh the costs and alternative means of control are deemed insufficient, repression becomes expected (Davenport, 2007).
The need for repression in authoritarian regimes
The need for authoritarian regimes to repress primarily stems from their structure. Since authoritarian regimes limit the real impact of the majority of the population on the formation and replacement of the government, that majority remains a constant potential threat to the regime. In this sense, repression is not an accidental tool or one triggered only in moments of crisis; it is a necessary control mechanism to prevent the organization, mobilization, and regime-change-oriented activities of the population excluded from power. The absence of popular consent is the "original sin" of systems ruled by a minority over a majority; in this regard, no dictatorship or authoritarian regime can renounce repression (Svolik, 2012).
Regardless of the subtype they belong to, the stability of autocracies rests on three main pillars—legitimation, repression, and co-optation. These three pillars, which have a strong complementary relationship with one another, serve to prevent three threats that could lead to the collapse of the regime: the threat coming from ordinary citizens, usually emerging in the form of popular uprisings and rebellions; the threat coming from opposition actors organizing resistance; and the threat coming from intra-regime splits where strategically important elites diverge from the ruling elite's course (Gerschewski, 2013). The authorities co-opt those who are ideologically close to them and subject those who are further away to repression. Thus, co-optation and repression become two complementary tools of authoritarian control: the regime binds accommodating actors to the system, while politically and organizationally excluding those who do not accommodate (Svolik, 2012). Repression alone cannot explain the longevity of autocracies, because maintaining stability in the long term is an extremely costly path. Therefore, it must institutionalize over time together with the other two pillars—that is, it must become a behavioral pattern. Institutionalized repression in this sense means structurally preventing opposition actors from rebelling. The limits of this institutionalization are determined by power and material resources (Gerschewski, 2013). One of the most important reasons necessitating institutionalization is the probability that the need for repression creates a threat to the regime. According to Svolik, the resources given to repressive agents to suppress the opposition can turn into political power that these agents could use against the regime. Therefore, an authoritarian regime feels the need to keep not only the population but also the bodies carrying out the repression under control. Thus, the bureaucratic institutionalization of repression bears a dual function: on the one hand, it restricts the political activity of society, and on the other hand, it subordinates the security and coercive apparatus to the ruling political center through hierarchy, cadre control, and organizational coordination (Svolik, 2012). Levitsky and Way divide repression into two categories as "high and low intensity," and they make this division based on the targeted people, institutions, and the form of violence used. According to this reasoning, high-intensity coercion can be defined as visible actions aimed at prominent figures such as opposition leaders, larger numbers of people, or major opposition organizations. Specific measures include the violent suppression of mass demonstrations, violent campaigns against parties, and the attempted murder or arrest of opposition leaders. Low-intensity coercion, on the other hand, targets less significant groups, is less visible, and often takes more subtle forms. Specific measures can include the use of formal and informal surveillance apparatuses, low-intensity physical harassment and intimidation, as well as non-physical forms such as the denial of certain employment and educational opportunities and the restriction of political rights like freedom of assembly (Levitsky and Way, 2002). In modern authoritarian regimes, repression does not always operate in the form of overt violence (mass murders, mass violence, explicit torture, etc.); in many cases, it is carried out through legal and administrative procedures. Tom Ginsburg and Tamir Moustafa call this "rule by law." This concept differs greatly from the "rule of law"—here, the issue is not about the law restricting the authorities, but about the authorities managing the state, neutralizing rivals, and legitimizing repression through the law. In these systems, the repressive decisions of the authorities do not manifest in an overt political form but as criminal prosecution, tax audits, administrative procedures, court verdicts, registration problems, or national security investigations (Ginsburg, Moustafa, 2008). Ginsburg and Moustafa consider the traditional view that courts in authoritarian regimes are simply "toys" of the authorities to be insufficient. In their opinion, courts fulfill real administrative functions in authoritarian politics: on the one hand, they advance the interests of the regime, and on the other hand, they sometimes turn into a space of political struggle between the regime and citizens. Creating social control and eliminating political rivals, strengthening the regime's "legal" claim to legitimacy; consolidating administrative obedience within the state's own bureaucratic apparatus and creating coordination among factions within the regime; and keeping the core political center of the regime away from responsibility by transferring controversial decisions to the courts are among the main functions of courts in authoritarian regimes (Ginsburg, Moustafa, 2008). In other words, the task of bureaucratic repression here is not only the punishment of the citizen; it is also the control and coordination of the state apparatus itself. Judicial repressions in authoritarian regimes do not operate only by direct instruction from the authorities. The self-censorship of judges, their prior knowledge of the regime's red lines, and their cautious behavior in politically sensitive cases create a quieter, but effective bureaucratic form of repression. On the other hand, not only the targeted individuals but also the legal infrastructure that could defend them becomes the target of judicial repression—pressure on lawyers, NGOs, independent media, and human rights defenders becomes an integral part of judicial repression (Ginsburg, Moustafa, 2008).
This system called "rule by law" is mostly resorted to by "legalistic autocrats" who use electoral mandates, constitutional and legal changes to strengthen their control mechanisms. That is, modern "legalistic" autocrats consolidate power not often through open lawlessness, but by changing the laws themselves, manipulating legal procedures, and weakening oversight institutions under the guise of formal legality. In other words, they build authoritarianism not outside the law but within the law, and use laws for repression—to limit political competition, control the media, weaken civil society, and maintain the dominance of the executive branch. For this reason, in the early stages, impending authoritarianism may not be openly visible in these regimes. (Scheppele, 2018). One of the most obvious examples of rule by law and autocratic legalism is Turkey—where, unlike Russia, one of the world's most authoritarian states, those who "disrupt the order" are not punished with "sudden deaths" of unknown causes, but a new order is created through the hands of law enforcement agencies (Khar Center, 2026).
THE NATURE OF HARSH REPRESSION IN ALIYEV'S AUTHORITARIANISM
In Azerbaijan, however, a more complex model of repression bureaucracy exists. Here, repression is not based solely on the legal procedures of "legalistic" authoritarianism, nor is it limited simply to the jurisdiction of the authorities, as expressed by Davenport. There is a more hybrid, more mixed, and harsher system here. Along with the legal form, elements such as "black-masked attacks," overt police violence, direct intervention of the security apparatus, gross misuse of administrative resources, pressure on family members, smear campaigns, threats, ill-treatment in prisons, discrimination, and even pressure, surveillance, and violence abroad—outside its own jurisdiction—actively participate in the process.
Criminalization of socio-political and media activity - the law in the role of a repression tool
The most visible part of Azerbaijan's bureaucracy of repression is the criminalization of all activities that the authoritarian regime considers a potential threat—political and civic activism, independent journalism, civil society initiatives, etc. The authorities view these activities as a threat to themselves, but in the punishment mechanism, journalism is presented as "currency smuggling," public activity as "illegal entrepreneurship," foreign grants as "money laundering," political protest as "hooliganism," peace appeals as "treason," and criticism of the authorities as "open calls against the state." That is, repression manifests in a legal guise. This also forms the basis of the thesis that the Azerbaijani authorities have used for years regarding the issue of political prisoners: "There are no political prisoners, there are only individuals accused of specific criminal acts." What has happened in the last few years are clear examples of this—media organizations like "Abzas Media," "Toplum TV," and "Meydan TV," their founders, managers, and employees, as well as civil society activists who conducted investigations into the wealth of high-ranking government officials and the Aliyev family, state procurement, and corruption allegations, and who criticized the regime, were sentenced to long-term imprisonment on charges such as currency smuggling, illegal entrepreneurship, money laundering, tax evasion, and document forgery (Amnesty International, 2025a, CPJ, 2025, HRW, 2024a). In the criminalization of political and social activity, the "repertoire" of the repressive bureaucracy is even broader. The sentencing of Musavat member Tofiq Yaqublu to nine years in prison on charges of "fraud causing extensive damage" and "document forgery" (Amnesty International, 2025 b), the eight-year prison sentence for Afiaddin Mammadov, head of the Workers' Desk Trade Unions Confederation, on charges of "hooliganism" and "deliberate infliction of serious bodily harm" (OC Media, 2025a), and the sentencing of peace activist and researcher Bahruz Samadov to 15 years in prison on a charge of "treason" due to his calls for peace and dialogue with Armenia (HRW, 2025a) are just a few of the latest examples of this "repertoire." These methods resorted to by the authorities are not chosen by chance—by presenting the journalist as a financial criminal, the NGO head as a "grant-receiving foreign agent," the trade union activist as a violent hooligan, the oppositionist as a fraudster, and the peace activist as a traitor to the state, the state not only punishes them but also tries to alter their public identity, stigmatize them, and classify them politically. As a result, even if political activity, civil society initiatives, civic activism, or journalism are not explicitly banned, they turn into dangerous spheres of activity. This can be evaluated as the Azerbaijani model of "rule by law"—where the law acts as a repressive tool that divides political activity and activism into criminal categories.
Administrative restrictions as the "preventive weapon" of repression
Repression in Azerbaijan is not limited merely to arrests; a massive administrative mechanism operates to neutralize the potential "threat" before it leads to arrest. The authoritarian regime tries to prevent the "threat" from "growing" here—it brings the legal and financial infrastructure under control. In Azerbaijan, the foundations of this mechanism regarding civil society were established particularly in 2013–2015. NGOs had to register all donations and grants with the Ministry of Justice, the requirement for grant registration was applied to individual natural persons in 2014, and the provision of funding by foreign donors in Azerbaijan was tied to additional permission and registration procedures. The rules for the registration of grants adopted by the Cabinet of Ministers in 2015 turned this control into a separate procedure. All these changes became a weapon against independent NGOs—these laws were used to keep independent organizations unregistered, and then this non-registration was used for criminal charges against their members. The government froze the personal bank accounts of dozens of NGOs, as well as organization leaders, conducted searches in offices, and opened grant and tax cases. In fact, these laws played the role of a mechanism set up to destroy civil society (HRW, 2024 b). With new amendments adopted in 2025, receiving funding based on service contracts from foreign sources was also tied to prior state approval. Thus, one of the last avenues through which independent organizations could obtain foreign funding was closed (OC Media, 2025b). The authorities applied the same method to the media—with the Law on Media that came into force in 2022, a Media Registry under state control was created. The criteria set for the inclusion of journalists and media entities in this registry served specifically to keep freelancers and independent journalists outside the system (CPJ, 2022). With amendments made in 2025, additional restrictions were brought to the registration and operation of foreign media entities. This further increased the risk of an information blockade (RSF, 2025). Political parties and political activity were not left out of these administrative restrictions either. With the new law "On Political Parties" that came into force in 2023, the minimum number of members required for state registration of a party was raised from 1,000 to 5,000, and this law forced all registered parties to undergo the registration procedure anew (CDN OSCE, 2023). The more far-reaching repressive potential of the law was hidden in another article—according to it, parties were required to submit their member lists along with names, surnames, dates of birth, and contact information to the Ministry of Justice. In a country where opposition political activism carries risks for employment, education, and social opportunities, it is not difficult to guess the risks of this. The freedom of peaceful assembly, one of the measurable areas of political struggle, has for many years been merely a formality in Azerbaijan. Although the legislation explicitly defines procedures for peaceful assembly, this procedure is operated as a permission regime. The state does not directly "ban" the rally. It relocates it to a place and time where it will lose its public impact, declares it unauthorized, summons the organizers to the police, detains participants before the rally, and then applies administrative articles such as disobeying the police or participating in an illegal gathering. For this reason, rallies have effectively turned into a prohibited type of activity in Azerbaijan. In a country where even single-person protests are punished with administrative detention (Amnesty International, 2025c), these restrictions and punishments serve the fear-generating function of the repressive bureaucracy. This form of repression is more enduring than visible overt violence. Because this form aims to preemptively take away, restrict, and destroy the opportunities for the activity that the authoritarian regime considers a threat.
Institutional repression
One of the main characteristics of repression in Azerbaijan is precisely that it is institutional—this is not about the arbitrariness of individual officials or extraordinary political decisions, but about a system in which state institutions are integrated into a repressive working regime. Similar methods are repeated in almost every incident—different journalists, activists, human rights defenders, and opposition members are first detained using a similar method, charged with criminal articles unrelated to their activities, the prosecutor's office prepares acts in accordance with the political will, courts choose arrest as a preventive measure, extend this measure repeatedly, then hand down a long-term sentence, the penitentiary system continues the pressure in prison, and pro-government media tries to distract attention from the political nature of the process. The target and political outcome of this continuous and repetitive activity is the deprivation of freedom, civic activity, and the opportunities for defense and struggle.
Hybrid repression
Azerbaijani repression is not carried out only by the hands of official state actors. Alongside repressions with a known address and carried out through formal state procedures, attacks whose author "cannot be determined," pressure on family members, exposure of private life, dismissal from work, smear campaigns, digital surveillance, and troll attacks also work as components of this apparatus. These tools are sometimes applied in parallel with a criminal case, sometimes before it, and sometimes to achieve a result that arrest and court cannot create. Physical annihilation and death stand at the harshest form of the hybrid repression repertoire. Elmar Huseynov, editor-in-chief of the "Monitor" magazine, who harshly criticized the authorities, was gunned down in front of the building where he lived in 2005 (Amnesty International, 2008), and journalist and writer Rafiq Tagi died in the hospital a few days after a knife attack in 2011 (CPJ, 2011). Both murders remain unsolved to this day, and those who ordered them have not been brought to justice. Another example of the hybrid repression model is the campaign against investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova. Using intimate footage taken in 2012 by a hidden camera planted in her apartment, it was demanded that she cease her journalistic activity, and later the footage was disseminated on the internet (HRW, 2013). When no result was achieved, the smear campaign was expanded, and later law enforcement and judicial mechanisms came into play. Ismayilova was arrested in 2014 and subsequently convicted on charges such as tax evasion, illegal entrepreneurship, and abuse of power (HRW, 2014). This was not just an isolated act of repression applied to Ismayilova; it was merely one of the examples showing how the repression bureaucracy works. In the ensuing years, initiatives of defamation and silencing, blackmails, and incidents of the dissemination of personal information regarding women activists or women who are the spouses of male activists have been systematically observed (Amnesty International, 2021). Physical attacks committed by "unknown individuals" have also long been part of the authorities' repression repertoire. Journalists, activists, and opposition representatives are attacked by unknown individuals, their property is damaged, and their filming materials and phones are taken away. In such cases, it is not always possible to legally prove the direct link between the attackers and the state. However, this proof is often unneeded—the state does not effectively investigate such attacks, does not punish the attackers, and sometimes continues to blame the target in its own media, thus maintaining the political consequence of the violence. One example of this is the case of Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizada in 2009—two young activists were attacked by two unknown individuals in a Baku restaurant, and their attempts to complain to the police about the incident resulted in their own detention. Later, Emin Milli was sentenced to two and a half years in prison, and Adnan Hajizada to two years, on charges of hooliganism and inflicting minor bodily harm. In other words, the attack by "unknown" individuals resulted not in the clarification of the act, but in the punishment of the victims (HRW, 2010). Pressure on family members is also among the hybrid repressive tools of the authoritarian regime in Azerbaijan. This method draws more attention as part of one of the main directions of the forms of the Azerbaijani repression bureaucracy that has expanded in recent years. As the space for independent media, civil society, and political activity shrinks within the country, a portion of journalists, activists, and researchers has decided to continue their activities abroad. The authorities have responded to this by expanding the borders of repression. Cases of trial in absentia, arrest warrants, extradition requests, the risk of detention during international travel, surveillance, smear campaigns, and physical attacks are separate tools of this new control system. At the same time, the authorities exert pressure on their critics living abroad, who are beyond the direct reach of law enforcement bodies, through their parents and relatives remaining in the country—via methods such as interrogation, summoning to the police, employment and social pressure, and blackmail. This is used as one of the functional forms of pressuring foreign critics (Amnesty International, 2026).
CONCLUSION
The Azerbaijani example shows that in authoritarian regimes, repression is not only a means of punishment that the authorities resort to from time to time against individual critics. We are talking about a massive bureaucratic mechanism here. In this mechanism, political, civic, and journalistic activities are criminalized, independent organization is preemptively weakened by an administrative control system—through registration, grant, finance, media, and party laws—the law is used as an instrument of punishment, law enforcement bodies play a central role in the institutionalization of the repressive bureaucracy, and at the same time, unofficial methods such as blackmail, smear campaigns, pressure on family, and unknown attacks serve the authorities' goal of creating an environment of impunity and fear. The main goal of this mechanism, which determines the rules of the bureaucracy of repression—such as who can speak, on what topic they can speak, which organization can receive funding, which party can exist, where one can protest, how far the authorities can be criticized, and what the punishment for this criticism could be—is to draw the possible boundaries of political activity in society. In the Azerbaijani model, the law is an important tool of repression, but it is not the only tool in the repertoire. There exists a hybrid bureaucracy of repression in the country that is attempted to be clothed in a legal guise, but which does not shy away from extra-legal means either. The most dangerous aspect of this repression model is that it also possesses "international immunity." In the newly forming world order, the "blindness" of international partners, or their turning a blind eye (like the European Parliament adopting resolutions regarding Azerbaijan, while the European Union turns a blind eye to them), is one of the main guarantees of this repression mechanism turning into a long-term governance procedure and the authoritarian stability of the Ilham Aliyev regime.
Note: The article you have read was originally written in the Azerbaijani language. Artificial intelligence tools were used only in the translation.
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