In early January, the sudden outbreak of massive anti-government protests in Kazakhstan and subsequent intervention by the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) reverberated across the entire post-Soviet space, including Azerbaijan. These events on the other side of the Caspian Sea are of great importance to Azerbaijan for several key reasons.
Above all, Kazakhstan is a major transit country along the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), also known as the “Middle Corridor,” a multimodal transportation linkage between China and the European Union through Central Asia, the South Caucasus, Turkey, and Europe’s East (see EDM, April 27, 2020). The Kazakhstani crisis was initially seen in the region as a potential threat to this route (Commersant.ge, January 10, 2022); however, as the political situation there looks to have largely stabilized, the crisis would have only a temporary impact on the transportation along the TITR.
Azerbaijani Perspectives on the Recent Unrest in Kazakhstan – Jamestown
