President Aliyev was widely expected to be reelected after seizing the breakaway enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Azerbaijani voters are widely expected to give President Ilham Aliyev another seven years in office after last year's military offensive brought the Armenian separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh under Azerbaijani government control. I'm voting.
Wednesday's vote is seen as a foregone conclusion for Aliyev's fifth term, due in part to the crackdown on independent media and the absence of a real opposition.
Azerbaijan's military launched airstrikes in September to force the separatists, who have controlled the territory for more than 30 years, to disarm. Tens of thousands of Armenians were forced to flee to neighboring Armenia.
Hoping to capitalize on his victory, Aliyev announced that snap elections, originally scheduled for 2025, would be held in February. He said he wanted the vote to “signal the beginning of a new era” in which Azerbaijan would take full control of its territory.
“I will vote for the victorious leader Ilham Aliyev,” Sevda Mirzoeva, 52, from the capital Baku, told The Associated Press before the opening of her polling station.
The president last year ordered a blitzkrieg to regain full control of the breakaway enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh after a nine-month blockade.
Aliyev said when announcing the elections in January that voting would be held in the Karabakh region for the first time since the exodus of Armenians.
Aliyev, 62, was first elected president in 2003 after the death of his father, Heydar Aliyev, a former KGB official who ruled Azerbaijan from 1993.
He was re-elected in 2008, 2013, and most recently in 2018 with 86 percent of the vote. Opposition parties accused all elections of being fraudulent.
Mr. Aliyev amended the constitution in 2009 to allow him to run for president without restriction, a move criticized by rights advocates who say Mr. Aliyev could become president for life.
His time in power has been marked by the introduction of increasingly strict laws to suppress political debate and the arrests of opposition figures and independent journalists, including in the run-up to elections.
Aliyev faces no major challenges from the other six candidates, some of whom have publicly praised him.
Azerbaijan's two main opposition parties, the Mussavat Party and the Popular Front Party, are not participating in the vote.
Moussabat leader Arif Hajri told the AP that his party is not democratic and will not participate in the elections.
“Many journalists and political activists are in prison. There are more than 200 political prisoners. There are serious problems with the election law, and the election commission is basically under the influence of the authorities,” Hajri said. Told.
Ali Kerimli, head of the Popular Front party, said the call for early elections without public debate showed authorities feared political competition.
In theory, if a candidate did not receive more than 50% of the votes in the first round, the vote could be held twice, but Aliyev was re-elected in a landslide, as in previous elections. It is widely expected that
Around 6 million people are registered to vote in the election, which is being monitored by observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).