Azerbaijani presidential election

Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev's party has won snap parliamentary elections, the poll commission announced Monday.

Aliyev had called Sunday's snap legislative election ahead of schedule to avoid the poll coinciding with the COP29 climate conference that Baku is to host on November 11-22.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan congratulated his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, on Wednesday for securing a fifth consecutive term in elections.

More than 6.5 million Azerbaijani voters on Feb. 7 are set to head to the ballot boxes to elect their next president a year ahead of the previously scheduled elections.

President İlham Aliyev, nominated by the New Azerbaijan Party, will compete against six other candidates.

The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) has withdrawn from the monitoring of the upcoming elections to the State Duma lower house of parliament, and its further assessments concerning the September election will hardly deserve attention, Russian Foreign Ministry stated at a briefing on Thursday. 

An 18-member delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), led by Alfred Heer (Switzerland, ALDE), will observe the conduct of the parliamentary elections in Bulgaria, the organization wrote on its website, https://pace.coe.int/, on Monday.

Turkey on Feb. 9 welcomed the peaceful voting in Azerbaijan.

"We wish that the parliamentary elections held today will be auspicious for brotherly Azerbaijan," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

It also congratulated President Ilham Aliyev and the New Azerbaijan Party (YAP) under his leadership, for their election success.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry on June 26 urged the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's (OSCE) election observation missions to "avoid making political analysis" and "biased comments" on the country's recent snap parliamentary and presidential elections, which took place under an ongoing state of emergency. 

Azerbaijan strongman Ilham Aliyev has secured a fourth consecutive term in a snap election boycotted by the main opposition parties, near-complete results showed.

Azerbaijan’s strongman Ilham Aliyev called on Feb. 5 a snap presidential vote for April, six months ahead of schedule, as opposition politicians slammed the surprise move.

Turkey slammed a recent report by international observers on the April 16 constitutional referendum, calling it "biased" and "unacceptable" on April 17.