Azerbaijani Women, Online Mediatized Activism and Offline Mass Mobilization

Abstract

Despite its post-Soviet history, Azerbaijan is an under-investigated country in academic research-compared with the other former constituencies, such as the Baltic countries or Russia, of the USSR-and gender questions of the contemporary Azerbaijani society are even less touched on. Within the current context of the post-"Arab Spring" era of mediatized connectivity and collective political engagement, this article looks into and analyzes how Azerbaijani women participate in different online and offline social and political movements, and if (and how) they are impeded by the increased state authoritarianism in Azerbaijan. Using data, obtained from online information resources, yearly reports of human rights organizations, focus group discussions, and interviews, the study detects four major activist constellations within the Azerbaijani field of gendered politics. Based on the analysis of conditions of detected groups, the article claims that flash mobs, a tactic employed mainly by liberal activists, emerge as the promising way in overcoming the normative nature of Azerbaijani patriarchal society, thus providing an opportunity for normalization and internalization of the feeling of being on the street and acting in concert with others-the practices which might lead towards an increasing participation of (especially young) women in the political processes of the country.Keywords: Azerbaijan; oppressive politics; political opposition; surveillance; women activists IntroductionThe turbulent "Arab Spring"-which took place mainly during the years of 2011 and 2012 and has dramatically changed the political geography of the Middle East-has also inspired other insurgent oppositional movements around the world. The Azerbaijani online opposition of 2011, enthused by the seeming success of revolutions in North Africa, and organized mostly on social networking sites, was not an exception. As the transformation of mostly Muslim geographies was in its heyday, it did not take long for Azerbaijani activists to become impressed by the possibilities brought with online organizational capacities of social media and to start organizing their protests on these platforms.The response of the Azerbaijani government to these developments was very harsh. Police forces violently dispersed activists at their every attempt, and legislative bans on further dares of conducting any form of oppositional protest "effectively criminalized the protests . . . and led to imprisonment for many of those who organized and took part in them" ([1], p. 70). As the calls to turn Azadlıq Meydanı (Azadliq Square) into "Baku's Tahrir", placed through Facebook posts and Twitter tweets, resulted in arrests of opposition protesters even before the events took place, it became obvious that the state surveillance had "significantly increased its monitoring of internet activity and clamped down on social-media sites, news outlets, and blogs" ([2], p. 68).We live in an era of mediatization, a meta-process by which everyday communication practices become inc...

Resisting the Irresistible: ‘Failed Opposition’ in Azerbaijan and Belarus Revisited

“…Previous research related to the issue of opposition in Azerbaijan and Belarus shows the need to go beyond the notion of political parties (e.g. Korosteleva 2009; Marples 2009; Matonytė and Chulitskaya 2012; Mehrabov 2016; Pearce 2014, 2015). This narrower concept of opposition is not particularly useful for these contexts as opposition parties do exist but in reality cannot act as such.…”

“… 15 Research by Pearce and Kendzior (2012), Pearce (2014, 2015) and Mehrabov (2016) indicate that in Azerbaijan online activities can in some cases have offline consequences.…”

Assessment as a quality indicator of education

“…Analysis of major research and publications. In various aspects related to research, A. Ahmadov [5], A. Agayev [1], A. Alizade [6], A. Mehrabov [8], A. Abbasov [2], H. Alizadeh [7], and other Azerbaijani educators emphasized innovations in this field. The views of E. Beylarov [4], Z. Veysova [10] are of particular importance for monitoring the assessment process in interactive (active) training.…”

When States Strike Back: Failures of Mediatized Activism in Azerbaijan and Turkey

“…This data source was combined with thorough searches I conducted in the online newspaper archives of Azadlıq Radiosu, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Yeni Müsavat in Russian, Azerbaijani and English languages. This constituted database is not unique to this article, and was used for other studies as well (Mehrabov 2015b;Mehrabov 2016).…”