Azerbaijan Democratic Republic Proclaimed
The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was proclaimed at Tiflis on 28 May 1918, the first parliamentary republic in the Muslim world. It emerged from the collapse of two empires. Russian rule ended with the revolutions of 1917; the Transcaucasian federation of Georgians, Armenians and Azerbaijanis lasted about a month before its members went their own ways; and Ottoman armies were advancing. The Musavat party, which led it, was nationalist and secular rather than pan-Islamic, and the constitution it produced was strikingly liberal for the time and place. It granted universal suffrage in 1918 — extending the vote to women in the same act, before Britain gave it to all women, and before the United States — established a parliament with Armenian, Russian and Jewish deputies, and founded Baku State University. Its territory was contested from the start. Armenia claimed Karabakh, Zangezur and Nakhchivan; the war between them killed tens of thousands on both sides and left a dispute that is still live. Baku itself was held by a Bolshevik-led commune until Ottoman and Azerbaijani forces took it in September 1918, with massacres of Armenians following the massacres of Muslims that March. The republic lasted twenty-three months. The Eleventh Red Army crossed the border in April 1920 with no serious resistance, and Azerbaijan became a Soviet republic; the oil at Baku, which supplied a large share of the world's production, is the reason it was worth taking quickly. Independent Azerbaijan in 1991 adopted its flag and dated itself from 1918. Its founders were executed or exiled under Stalin. The Karabakh question produced two full wars after 1991 and was settled by force in 2023.
- Year: 1918 CE
- Category: Political
