Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan is a unitary semi-presidential republic in the South Caucasus, at the boundary of Western Asia and Eastern Europe on the Caspian Sea, with Baku as its capital and largest city. The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic declared independence on 28 May 1918, becoming the first secular democratic Muslim-majority state in the world, before the Soviet Union conquered it on 28 April 1920 and absorbed it as the Azerbaijan SSR. Modern Azerbaijan declared independence on 18 October 1991, officially recognized on 26 December 1991 as the Soviet Union dissolved, and the country is described in reference sources as functioning today under an authoritarian hereditary dictatorship led by President Ilham Aliyev. With a population of about 10.35 million as of 2022, Azerbaijan is about 97.3 percent Muslim as of 2020, and it maintains diplomatic relations with 182 countries and belongs to the United Nations, the Council of Europe and NATO's Partnership for Peace program.