Translated material
Iran against Baku
Eurovision quoted neighbors
The Eurovision Musical Competition, which had just completed in Baku, cost Azerbaijan, according to official estimates, $ 50 million, and eight times more in unofficial. Baku did not particularly count on financial dividends from the event - the state in recent years fights for the right to conduct the “Eurovision” mainly for the right for the image. But with this, a bummer came out too. Well, what the organizers of the competition did not expect is a sharp exacerbation of relations with Iran 
When last year the Azerbaijani group Ell & Nikki (Eldar Gasimov and Nigar Jamal) became the first at Eurovision in Dusseldorf, Baku literally roared with joy. But when, after a few months, the authorities began to resettle people who lived next to a new “Crystal Hall” for the Caspian Caspian, which were hastily built for the competition, intoxication from success quickly passed. Baku Boulevard was lengthened by three kilometers for a year, and a new road was built to the hall. And while it was built, they again began to resettle the surrounding residents. And since mid -May, all schools in the center of Baku closed ...
For the sake of democracy
The last six months of the newspaper, the newspapers together reported on the scope of the construction projects and the volume of procurement on the occasion of the “main song contest of the continent”. The account, given the current prices for the construction and reconstruction of the actually the whole metropolitan quarter, went to tens of millions of dollars. Therefore, when the Minister of Finance Samir Sharifov announced the figure of 40 million budget manat (about $ 50 million) spent on the competition, many music experts have just not laughed *** The most expensive Eurovision Supporting Competition in Moscow, according to official data, cost $ 55 million ..
As soon as foreign journalists illuminated the competition, the Azerbaijani opposition was activated in Baku. The Musavat party at its headquarters organized a press center, which regularly called representatives of foreign media. And local human rights defenders began the Sing for Democracy campaign (“go for the sake of democracy”), preparing and sending the competition participants and members of delegations, journalists and guests a video about human rights violations in Azerbaijan.
True, they did not receive a large resonance of the shares of a few opposition: the official Baku tries not to notice them, accustoming, moreover, fully controlled main television channels and radio stations. The threat was in wait for the Azerbaijani authorities from a completely different side.
Eye for the eye
It all started with rumors that a certain group of foreigners intends to organize a gay parade in Baku during Eurovision. Following this in neighboring Iran, a wave of anti-Azerbaijani speeches with calls to ban the gay parade swept and not to hold a competition at all, which supposedly contradicts Islamic values. True, even earlier, at the beginning of April, one of the Islamist sites financed by Iran was published, the author of which warned that the participants of Eurovision (in the text they were called the “forces of Shaitan”, “perverts” and “homosexuals of the world”) attacks will be organized.
The official Baku had to make excuses. “Azerbaijan is not going to conduct a gay parade in the framework of the Eurovision Song Contest in Baku and is perplexed about Iran’s criticism on this regard,” said Ali Hasanov, head of the Department of Social and Political Affairs of the Presidential Administration of Azerbaijan, who convened foreign journalists who came to cover Eurovision. Iran, Gasanov said, “zealously perceives the strengthening of Azerbaijan’s positions in the region, and therefore, before the competition, using a far -fetched reason, launched a real anti -azerbaijani campaign.”
These statements only added oil into the fire. A few hours later, Iran revoked his ambassador from Azerbaijan in connection with “insults of the highest clergy of the Islamic Republic of Iran by the authorities of Azerbaijan”. On May 22, the Ambassador of Azerbaijan to Iran Javanshir Akhundov was invited to the Iranian Foreign Ministry, where he protested against “disrespect for religious values” by Azerbaijan.
He did not remain in debt. The official Azerbaijani news agency AP immediately issued a message about a large-scale police operation in Sumgait *** in Sumgait in February 1988. Cruel Armenian pogroms took place: “A group of people who distributed discs, the contents of which were directed against Eurovision-2012 and promotes radical Islam. During the operation, the owner of the Islam store was detained, where discs, Ali Aliyev and another ten people were sold. “It is assumed that these discs were made in Iran,” Apa summed up.
Court correction
“Azerbaijan is the second Muslim country taking“ Eurovision ”in his own account, the first in 2004 was Turkey,” the independent Baku expert Farid Akhmedov recalled in a conversation with The New Times. “But then the Ayatollah did not say a word.” It is clear that Eurovision is just an occasion to provide political pressure on Azerbaijan. 30 million ethnic Azerbaijanis live in Iran - three times more than in Azerbaijan itself. Ayatolles, in fact, use them as hostages of their regional policy. ”
A longtime subject of Tehran’s discontent is the active contacts of Baku with the USA, NATO and Israel, including in the military field. At the beginning of this year, Azerbaijani-Iranian relations sharply aggravated due to the scandal around the arrest in Baku of two “Iranian agents”, which, according to the Azerbaijani special services, “planned terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens working in Azerbaijan” (more in The New Times No. 4 of February 6, 2012). What so angry Tehran now? “According to my reports,” the analyst Akper Mammadov shares with The New Times, “Iransev was out of the rut to review Azerbaijan as a“ erroneous ”doctrine of“ active neutrality ”in foreign policy. This was stated in the latest report close to the official structures of the Baku Center for Political Studies of Atlas: “Neutrality will not save Azerbaijan from aggression by Tehran. Foreign policy should be adjusted towards NATO and Turkey. ” “The essence of the former doctrine in relation to Iran was as follows: a friend of Iran is not necessarily a friend of Azerbaijan, and the enemy of Iran is not necessarily our enemy. In addition, Azerbaijan proceeded from the fact that its territory, borders and politics can never be used against Iran, ”explains Akper Mammadov. - And what? Through the fault of Tehran, bilateral relations are so spoiled that there is no way back: either Iran should become secular, or we - to take the path of Sharia. Since neither one nor the other is visible on the horizon, it remains to us, like Israel with Syria, to learn how to live with a hostile neighbor. ”
According to unconfirmed reports, the president of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, who participated in the Majsk Summit in Chicago, discussed there the Iranian topic with the leadership of the alliance and Turkish President Abdullah Gulle. And in early June, two visits of the high -ranking Turkish military - the commander of the Army General Khaira Kyvrykoglu and the commander of the forces of the gendarmerie, general of the army general Bakir Kalienchu, were expected to be at once in Baku. Did the correction of the course have begun?
The Eurovision Contest opened in Baku on May 19, and on the eve of the hacker group, called the Cyberteans for Freedom, attacked the resources of Eurovision.az, Eurovisionaz.com, esstoday.com and Ann.az, which covered the competition. Attackers posted their requirements on the sites, one of which was to prevent a gay parade in Baku.