Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev approved sweeping constitutional amendments this week that eliminate the autonomous status of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, a landlocked exclave bordered by Armenia, Iran, and Turkey.
The amendments, detailed by OC Media, establish a presidential representative as the chief executive authority in Nakhchivan, home to approximately 500,000 residents. The president now gains direct power to appoint and dismiss local officials, who will report to Baku rather than to the region's own parliament, the Supreme Assembly.
Critically, the regional government will no longer answer to Nakhchivan's elected legislature but instead coordinate directly with Azerbaijan's president. Following approval, Aliyev issued a decree requiring the government to harmonize Nakhchivan's legal framework with the new constitutional order within three months.
Yalchin Imanov, a human rights lawyer, characterized the reforms as reducing the autonomy of Nakhchivan to zero. "These amendments are intended to minimise—or limit—the powers of the Supreme Assembly," Imanov told journalists. He emphasized the changes contradict democratic decentralization principles and demonstrate Azerbaijan's intent on "concentrating all power in the hands of one person—the president."
The constitutional preamble was amended to remove historical references to 1921 - treaties that originally defined 's borders and autonomous status—a symbolically significant erasure of the foundational documents establishing the region's self-governance.
