The distribution of gifts is a part of traditional Azerbaijani culture, but most often it costs them too much. The book on the customs and culture of Azerbaijan says that generosity towards guests and friends implies a return recoil, and this logic underlies the policy, which Azerbaijani officials in private conversations call “caviar diplomacy.” It began in 2001, after Azerbaijan’s admission to the Council of Europe, and gained a special scope with Ilham Aliyev‘s coming to power. After the Baku-Tbilisi-Jeyhan pipeline was put into operation in 2005, when state officials began to “swim” in oil revenues, “caviar diplomacy” became dominant, the authors of the report write.
As an evidence, two Azerbaijani sources in Strasbourg are brought. “One kilogram of caviar costs 1300-1400 euro. Each of our friends in PACE receives each session, four times a year, at least 0.4-0.6 kg. The main friends of Azerbaijan in PACE are 10-12 people, there are several more in the secretariat,”,- they told. For some of these “friends”, caviar is only the beginning, as during visits to Baku they receive a large number of other gifts. “Many deputies are regularly invited to Azerbaijan and are paid generously. Usually in a year 30-40 people are invited, some of them more than once a year. They are invited to conferences, events, sometimes for summer holidays. This is a real holiday with a lot of expensive gifts. Mostly they are given expensive silk carpets, gold and silver products, drinks, caviar and money. The usual gift in Baku is 2 kg of caviar”,- the report says.
According to the authors themselves, the report describes how the authoritarian regime of Baku managed to circumvent the fulfillment of its commitments to the Council of Europe, silence critics and turn international monitoring of elections into a political show. “This is a story about how one of the oldest human rights organizations in Europe was neutralized (it is interesting that the word neutrée in English has one more meaning – castrate)”,- the ESI authors state. They also add that the result of all this was the tragedy of Azerbaijani citizens particularly those activists who were imprisoned and became political prisoners. At the same time, it was a tragedy for Europe, the values of which were trampled, because PACE deputies, who enjoy the products of “caviar diplomacy”, serve in the national parliaments of European countries. Finally, this is a real tragedy for the Council of Europe, underlining the urgent need to restore the values on which this organization was founded, in order to justify its further existence.”
FURTHER AUTHORS OF THE REPORT MENTION THE “WORST” PACE ELECTIONS IN THE HISTORY OF PACE in 2010. In AZERBAIJAN, they call them “stolen”, and bring the table of Baku’s undone commitments to the Council of Europe. And most importantly, they follow the real struggle of the “critics” and “defenders” of the Baku regime in detail, including the names of Mevlut Chavusoglu and the English MP Mike Hancock with the scandalous reputation.