Azerbaijan is an oil republic whose territory does not connect

Azerbaijan is a republic on the Caspian whose land does not come in one piece. Oil explains the capital. The gap on the map explains why the state is built as it is.

Baku stands on the Absheron peninsula, where the sea meets the last ridges of the Caucasus. The state has 10,246,996 people on 86,600 square kilometres. That sounds like a compact country. It is not. The territory includes Nakhchivan, an autonomous republic cut off from the main body by Armenian land. Draw the border only around Baku and part of the state is missing.

Baku stands on the oil

The modern city grew out of wells. Oil and gas from the land and from the Caspian shelf pay for the state and shape how it sees itself. From Baku a pipeline runs across Georgia to the Turkish Mediterranean coast at Ceyhan. The oil does not have to cross Russia, and it does not have to cross Iran. The route is geography used as foreign policy: an inland sea gains an outlet to the Mediterranean, and the capital sits at the start of the line.

Absheron is narrow, windy and industrial. The old city is the historical layer. Wells, terminals and harbour basins are the layer that carries the budget. The constitution sets up a presidential republic, and that power sits in the same city, not in a distant mountain valley. Baku is therefore more than a capital on the water. Energy and the state meet here.

Nakhchivan lies beyond the gap

Nakhchivan has its own city of the same name and its own status in the constitution. It borders Armenia, Iran and Turkey. The main body borders Russia, Georgia, Armenia and Iran. Azerbaijan's land border with Turkey is the border of the separated part, not the border of Baku. That shapes roads, trade and the knowledge that the state has to live with a gap it did not fill itself.

Nagorno-Karabakh lies inside the internationally recognised territory of Azerbaijan, in the main body, not in the exclave. The conflict with Armenia over that region has shaped security, the army and relations with the neighbours for a long time. Baku treats the region as its own country. The map of the republic is therefore political at the exclave, and along a border with Armenia that for a long time was not an ordinary border.

Oil explains Baku. The gap on the map explains the state.

— TerraTally · Countries desk

One state language among larger neighbours

The official language is Azerbaijani, a Turkic language. It links the country, in speech, to Turkey, and it marks a break with the Russian of the Soviet period. Russian is still heard in the city. It is not the official language. The constitution allows other languages and still sets one language of state. In Nakhchivan the same language applies, and the same currency, the manat of the central bank. The separated territory is not another state.

Set between Russia, Iran, Turkey, Georgia and Armenia, Azerbaijan is neither a buffer without a will nor an empire. It is a Caspian state that looks for its way into the world through pipelines, through the port of Baku and through Nakhchivan's border with Turkey. The area says little if the territory is read as one continuous piece. Read the gap as well, and the state appears.

Azerbaijan begins in Baku, with the oil and the sea. It does not end there. It also ends in an exclave that appears on the map only when the gap is drawn in.