3. First crackdown on civil society
In the early 2010s, the aftermath of the Arab Spring accelerated the restrictive trend. Sporadic protests were met with excessive force, and political activists were routinely detained, usually based on fabricated charges such as drug possession or hooliganism. The arrest in February 2013 of Ilgar Mammadov, presidential candidate, leader of the REAL movement and head of a Council of Europe-affiliated political leadership school, and political activist Tofig Yagublu, marked the beginning of a particularly repressive phase. A sweeping crackdown on civil society culminated in 2014, when legislative changes severely curtailed NGO activities and tightened administrative measures for registering NGOs and receiving foreign grants. The office of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s (RFE/RL) Azerbaijani Service was raided, and its journalists were forced to relocate. Through politically motivated prosecutions on charges such as tax evasion and the forced exile of key rights defenders and journalists, the Azerbaijani authorities have effectively decimated the country’s civic space.
The CoE‘s response during this period was widely criticised as inadequate. Despite mounting evidence of human rights abuses, the institution often appeared reluctant to confront the Azerbaijani authorities. In 2010, the mission of the PACE, headed by Polish MP Tadeusz Iwinski, downplayed widespread irregularities and issued only muted criticism of Azerbaijan’s conduct. The report declared that Azerbaijan’s parliamentary elections showed ‟progress in meeting OSCE standards and commitments”, even though not a single opposition candidate secured a seat.
Furthermore, a month before the arrests of Mammadov and Yagublu in 2012, in January 2013, PACE rejected a landmark report on political prisoners in Azerbaijan, prepared by German MP Christoph Strãsser on behalf of the PACE Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights. The report had been commissioned in 2009, following a resolution that mandated the appointment of a special rapporteur to examine allegations of political imprisonment in the country – an initiative strongly opposed by the Azerbaijani authorities.
Throughout his mandate, Strässer faced systematic obstruction. The Azerbaijani government repeatedly denied him entry, preventing direct access to detainees or opportunities to carry out fact-finding on the ground. Despite these restrictions, Strässer completed his work, drawing on extensive documentation from human rights organisations, lawyers, and the families of detainees. His report identified dozens of political prisoners in Azerbaijan and called for their immediate release.
The presentation of the report to PACE triggered a heated debate. The Azerbaijani delegation, backed by political allies within PACE, engaged in a coordinated campaign to discredit both the rapporteur and his findings. Arguments centred on Strässer’s lack of access to the country – an obstacle created by the Azerbaijani authorities themselves – and on attempts to question the definition of “political prisoner”.
In the end, PACE voted against the report by a margin of 125 to 79, with 20 abstentions. The decision marked a severe blow to the CoE’s credibility, effectively silencing institutional recognition of political prisoners in Azerbaijan at a time when repression was already deepening. According to some analysts, the rejection of the Strässer report could have also emboldened the authorities in their crackdown against dissenting civic groups and greenlighted the wave of upcoming arrests.
PACE’s unusually favourable approach toward Azerbaijan was later found to be influenced by hidden motives. Investigations carried out by the German think tank European Stability Initiative (ESI) in 2012 and 2016 uncovered a systematic corruption scheme, in which Azerbaijani authorities offered luxury gifts and financial incentives to PACE members in exchange for softening or hiding criticism of Azerbaijan’s deteriorating human rights record. This practice, which came to be known as “caviar diplomacy”, ultimately discredited PACE and forced a reassessment of the CoE’s approach to Azerbaijan.
The turning point came in 2015, when the European Parliament (EP) adopted a resolution unequivocally condemning politically motivated arrests in Azerbaijan. International human rights organisations intensified the pressure with coordinated campaigns such as Sport for Rights, making the deepening crisis impossible to ignore. In December 2015, the Council of Europe Secretary-General, Thorbjørn Jagland, launched a formal inquiry into Azerbaijan’s implementation of the European Convention on Human Rights. He justified the move, citing mass arrests of civil society actors and what he described as “an arbitrary application of the law”.
A central issue was the government’s persistent refusal to comply with the 2014 European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) judgment in the case of Ilgar Mammadov. The Court had found that his arrest and detention were unlawful, and that the actual purpose was “to silence and punish” him for criticising the government. Despite this ruling, Mammadov remained in prison for years.
Azerbaijan has had a pattern of selectively executing ECtHR rulings – although some compensation was paid to individuals who won their cases, the underlying issues remained unaddressed.
By 2017, as a result of international pressure, Azerbaijan had released most of the prominent human rights defenders from jail, but Mammadov remained behind bars. Facing persistent non-compliance on the matter, Secretary-General Jagland called on the CoE Committee of Ministers to launch infringement proceedings against Azerbaijan. This procedure, introduced in the 2010 reforms of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) system, grants the Committee of Ministers the authority to act against Member States that refuse to execute ECtHR judgments. Often referred to as the institution’s “nuclear option,” it can, in extreme cases, lead to suspension or expulsion from the CoE.
In the meantime, the announcement triggered a backlash in Azerbaijan. Pro-government media outlets threatened withdrawal from the Council and launched a smear campaign against Jagland personally. Nevertheless, in December 2017, the CoE Committee of Ministers, for the first time in the institution’s history, voted to initiate infringement proceedings to determine whether Azerbaijan had failed to meet its obligations under the ECHR.