English om Azerbajdzjan, Kaviardiplomati
Column: Don’t taste the Caviar during COP-29
In the lead-up to this year's climate summit, COP29 in Azerbaijan, the host country's lobbying efforts have intensified. Rasmus Canbäck writes about his own experiences of being subjected to influence attempts and advises COP29 participants to be vigilant about them.
Av Rasmus Canbäck 3 oktober, 2024
”We’ll buy the tickets, hotels. Everything. We’ll take care of it. We have money,” says the Azerbaijani lobbyist over the phone. He just explained that “lots of journalists” are set to join the trip from Sweden to Azerbaijan and wants me to come along as well.
It’s the summer of 2021, and the trip is planned for early autumn. A few weeks later, the lobbyist sends an email saying the trip is canceled due to the COVID pandemic. The cancellation coincided with the fact that I had just been blacklisted from entering Azerbaijan as a result of my trips to Nagorno-Karabakh.
However, the trip did happen.
One of the ten Swedish journalists who went on the trip contacted me afterward. He explained that he didn’t even know the name of the country’s currency: everything was paid for. They weren’t allowed to move freely, and all meetings were prearranged for them. He also mentioned that Azerbaijani representatives had even accused Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch of being ”bought by the Armenian lobby.”
The accusation was cynical, given that an all-expenses-paid trip to Azerbaijan can itself be seen as a form of bribe.
Even though it may seem serious from a Swedish perspective that two groups of Swedish journalists went on all-expenses-paid trips to Azerbaijan, it’s just a drop in the ocean in the larger context. Since the war in Nagorno-Karabakh ended in the fall of 2020, Azerbaijan has invited about a thousand journalists, politicians, and academics on similar trips, most of them from Europe (according to statistics from the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs). The purpose has been to influence their views on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and on Azerbaijan.
The country, which Freedom House has ranked as more repressive than Belarus as of the beginning of this year, has quite a bit of image repair to work on.
The term ”caviar diplomacy” comes from reports by the German think tank European Stability Initiative from 2012 and 2016. These reports detailed how Azerbaijan systematically engaged in bribery in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to the extent that critical resolutions against the country were voted down.
“Caviar diplomacy” is a term that Azerbaijani lobbyists themselves used informally.
In my investigations, which really gained momentum after the 2020 war when Azerbaijan needed to repair its damaged reputation, I’ve defined caviar diplomacy as follows:
Caviar symbolizes an expensive gift, and the term diplomacy implies an expectation. The act of giving a gift creates an expectation of reciprocation, which can either take the form of a direct demand or an indirect loyalty built over time.
For an investigative journalist, the connection between a bribe (or a gift) and a political impression or positive statement is what constitutes the components of a completed act of caviar diplomacy.
In other words, a journalist who writes an article that has been clearly influenced by a trip to Azerbaijan has been subjected to caviar diplomacy. Believe me, there are plenty of such articles, and any journalist who thinks they are immune to such influence can forget it. Even those who haven’t written articles have, in conversations with me, repeated Azerbaijani propaganda.
Since 2016, it has become clear that Azerbaijan has favored a violent resolution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict over a peaceful one. Here, it is the conflict journalist’s job to see through the propaganda, not to uncritically repeat the Azerbaijani state’s perspective on the conflict. Additionally, many newcomers to the conflict mistake the state’s perspective for the ”Azerbaijani side,” when the truth is that the regime has suppressed all plurality of opinion by imprisoning or silencing those who haven’t advocated for violence.
The challenge lies in reporting on the conflict and its suffering without being influenced by the regime’s propaganda.
Even though I have been subjected to both hatred and threats from the Azerbaijani state for my investigations, the attempts at influence have continued. If the invitation to a trip to Nagorno-Karabakh was somewhat subtle, the proposals to write for Azerbaijan were more direct.
Imagine my surprise when, in the fall of 2022, I received a message on Facebook from a communications officer for Azerbaijan’s Diaspora Committee. He suggested that I write a few positive lines about Azerbaijan on my social media. In exchange, I would be offered a contract to work for them. According to him, they have several similar arrangements.
Ahead of Cop29 in Azerbaijan this November, Azerbaijani lobbying efforts have ramped up once again. Azerbaijan is organizing numerous guided trips to Nagorno-Karabakh, which they claim to have ”liberated.” The fact that 100,000 Armenians were forced to flee in what many call ”ethnic cleansing” doesn’t seem to deter those flattered by being selected for such trips. Meanwhile, hundreds of dissidents and journalists remain imprisoned in the country.
The traps at the climate summit are many. It could be a small handwoven rug given as a gift upon arrival, or a paid dinner in a luxurious venue in central Baku. Sitting next to you might be an eloquent host who casually slips in something that sounds logical about Nagorno-Karabakh, and suddenly that perspective represents the ”Azerbaijani view” for you.
What is certain is that even the most experienced journalists or politicians have demonstrably failed to resist the propaganda. Remember, the caviar served at dinner signals an expectation of loyalty upon your return home.
Top Picture: A collage with the Azerbaijani flag, president Ilham Aliyev and a jar of black caviar.
