Nurfer Tercan, PhD
15 October 2026
How rich, truly, is a country that carries wealth beneath its soil and anxiety about the future above it?
This is not Azerbaijan’s question alone. It is a question that tests every claim of our age’s thinking about development. Measuring wealth is easy: barrel prices, reserve tables and growth rates report it to us anew every quarter. What is difficult is measuring what that wealth becomes in the life of a society. Wealth usually arrives as an opportunity. Its transformation into civilisation, however, can only be the work of labour, of awareness and of patience.
On the shores of the Caspian, on the Absheron Peninsula, where the earth bursts into flame of its own accord, people have for centuries gazed into fire and reflected. The undying flame of Yanar Dag and the stone walls of the Ateshgah remind us that this land’s relationship with energy is far older than the age of oil. The name “Land of Fire” is not a metaphor but a memory. Yet the history of fire teaches us something more: a flame warms, illuminates and transforms. But held the wrong way, it also burns.
Today Azerbaijan stands between these two faces of fire. The towers rising along Baku’s waterfront, the energy corridors and the international investment form the visible face of modernisation. Yet every transformation also has a face that goes unseen: plans postponed behind closed doors, young people lingering over a foreign university’s advertisement, parents in the village waiting for children who have moved to the city, shifting expectations and lives being quietly rewritten.
A country’s true story is often hidden between the lines of its statistics. Development is not merely the rise of numbers. It is the deepening of people’s trust in life.
Wealth Below Ground, Questions Above
Azerbaijan’s modern economic history has largely been written in oil and natural gas. These resources have given the country strategic weight, financial accumulation and the means to renew its infrastructure. On the road from the fragile early years of independence to the present day, energy has been both the backbone of the state and its gateway to the world.
Natural resource wealth, however, carries a paradox all its own. Wealth that flows easily from beneath the ground tends to defer the value that must be laboriously produced above it. What economists call the “resource curse” is in truth not a curse but a temptation: the quiet erosion, by easy income, of the will to do what is hard. The appreciation of the national currency in years of high oil prices, the loss of competitiveness in agriculture and manufacturing, and the drift of talent from productive sectors towards rent-seeking ones are the familiar forms this temptation takes.
The International Monetary Fund’s 2026 assessment shows that the Azerbaijani economy’s growth of 4.2 per cent in 2024 slowed to 1.4 per cent in 2025, and that momentum also weakened in the non-oil sectors. At the same time, the country possesses substantial fiscal reserves accumulated from energy revenues.
Set these two facts side by side and the picture that emerges is not one of scarcity but one of choice. Azerbaijan’s test concerns not the absence of means but their presence. The real question is how accumulated capital is to be translated into the future: into scientific research, agricultural productivity, value-added industry, or merely into preserving today’s stability?
The market sets the value of oil. The limit of the value that human beings create, however, is set by their knowledge, their imagination and the institutions they are able to build. The one is dictated from outside; the other is built from within. That is why a country’s greatest achievement is to discover the potential of its people above ground before the resources below ground run out.
Underground wealth has an expiry date. Human intelligence does not.
Demography: A Nation’s Letter to Time
Every society, without realising it, writes a letter to the future. Its ink is births, marriages, migration and ageing. Demography is the most honest record of a nation’s confidence in its own future. People may say one thing in surveys and another in the decisions of their lives. But the decision to have children, to stay or to leave, does not lie.
Azerbaijan’s population of more than 10 million points to one of the most dynamic societies in its region. Yet the decline in fertility, a slow but steady trend towards ageing and the flow of people into the large cities are reminders that this potential will not endure of its own accord. A demographic advantage is like a window: it stays open only for a limited time, and what is done during that time determines how the day it closes will unfold.
A young person’s future is a real possibility only to the extent that he or she believes the education received will count for something in his or her own country. When the bond between knowledge and opportunity, labour and reward, talent and recognition weakens, the future gradually becomes a hope sought in other lands.
Here, however, a fine distinction must be drawn. Not every departure is a loss. A mind that travels the world brings knowledge, experience and networks back to its country when it returns, or when it keeps its ties to home. The real issue is not whether people can leave, but whether, should they wish to stay, they can find the ground on which to do so. To leave freely is a right. To leave out of necessity is a wound.
Azerbaijan’s demographic future, therefore, does not depend on population policy alone. It depends on the quality of education, the dignity of employment, access to housing, the opportunities women find in working life and the security of the elderly. The fertility rate is, in the end, an index of confidence.
More sobering than a society growing old is the sight of its young people’s hopes growing old before they do.
The Invisible Architecture: Institutional Trust
Every economic transformation, sooner or later, confronts the question of institutional quality. Azerbaijan’s post-independence journey has been shaped by the pursuit of statehood, sovereignty, security and stability. The priorities of a state founded in the shadow of wars, uncertainty and entrapment between great powers must be understood. In this part of the world, stability has been experienced not as a luxury but as a matter of existence.
Yet the institutional framework that an energy-centred development model requires is not the same as the one a diversified, innovative economy requires. An oilfield can be run with a handful of large contracts and a strong centre. But an economy made up of thousands of start-ups, research laboratories and creative enterprises needs a different soil. The entrepreneur wants legal predictability. The university wants freedom of thought and a sound research environment. The investor expects transparent rules; the young expect opportunities based on merit.
Here the concept of asabiyyah, which Ibn Khaldun developed in the Muqaddimah, takes on renewed meaning. What sustains societies is not economic resources alone. It is people’s belief that they can live together within a shared order, and that this order belongs to them as well. According to Ibn Khaldun, states begin to unravel not when this bond weakens, but when its weakening goes unnoticed.
When the institutional strength of the state and the creative capacity of society complement each other, development becomes resilient. When opportunities accumulate in narrow circles and the perception of merit erodes, however, even the soundest economic indicators cannot conceal the crack in social trust. These risks are not peculiar to Azerbaijan. Every rapidly modernising society faces the same structural test. The difference lies not in whether the test exists, but in how it is confronted.
Economic capital can be depleted and regained. Social trust, once damaged, may take a generation’s lifetime to rebuild.
The Light of Baku, the Silence of the Provinces
Modern cities are the most visible symbols of development. But the height of skyscrapers is not the same as the depth of social welfare. A country’s shop window is one thing; its living room is another.
The weight Baku has gained in trade, finance, culture and services is an undeniable advantage for Azerbaijan. Yet the concentration of opportunity in the capital risks turning into a silent wait across the rest of the country. The brighter the centre shines, the deeper the shadow over the periphery may grow.
And yet every region of Azerbaijan has a heritage capable of speaking in its own voice. Ganja, as the city of Nizami, could become a centre of science and thought. Shaki, with its caravanserais and its memory of silk, could become a home for cultural production and craftsmanship. Lankaran, with its tea, its citrus and its fertile soil, could become a model of agricultural innovation. Nakhchivan, for its part, could become a gateway for trade and connectivity. This diversity is not merely an economic strategy; it is also a guarantee of social cohesion. A person who sees no future in his or her own region looks first to the capital, and then beyond the borders.
The reconstruction of Karabakh should also be considered in this light. Building roads, housing and infrastructure is a great undertaking. But for a place to become a homeland once more is a longer and subtler process than the pouring of concrete. A way of life in which people can live in safety, take part in production, raise their children and reweave the bonds of neighbourliness is the true complement of physical development.
A city’s architecture can be built of stone, steel and concrete. But a city’s soul is formed by the presence of people who wish to go on living there.
Geography as Opportunity, History as Trust
Azerbaijan stands on a threshold where the routes linking Europe and Central Asia, Türkiye and the Caspian basin intersect. The development of the Middle Corridor, investment in railways and ports, and the expansion of energy and digital links are giving this ancient land a new economic meaning.
But geography is not destiny. Geography is only an opportunity. Not every country crossed by trade routes has grown rich. Some have remained mere transit points, while others have turned the routes passing through them into centres of production and knowledge. The difference lies in what a country invests in its own human capital, technological capability and productive capacity.
For Azerbaijan, the aim is not merely to be a corridor through which goods pass, but a stopping place where knowledge, production and innovation take root. The difference between being the place where caravans rest and the place that loads the caravans has, in every age of history, marked the difference between wealth and civilisation.
Realising this potential also depends on regional peace and cooperation. The durability of economic corridors rests not only on rails and ports but on predictable relations between countries. Without trust, a road is merely a line. Throughout history, trade routes have enriched cities. But what made civilisations flourish was the encounter of the ideas, cultures and people carried along those routes. The true cargo of the Silk Road was not silk but the stories humanity told one another.
Not the Economy of Culture, but the Culture of the Economy
In reflecting on Azerbaijan’s future, the deepest element that must not be overlooked is its cultural memory.
The profound wisdom of Nizami Ganjavi, who saw the human being as the subject of a moral journey; the poetic language of Fuzuli, which turns even pain into grace; the aesthetic universe of mugham, moving between stillness and rapture; the symbols woven into the knots of carpets; and the memory of ancient cities inscribed in stone… These are values that belong not only to Azerbaijan’s past but also to its future.
Perhaps the deepest voice of this heritage is mugham. The word comes from the Arabic “maqam”: a place, a stance, a halting place. Before it is a melody, mugham is a space; an inner country in which the soul takes up lodging and the voice searches for itself. Where Western music passes the world of sound through the two gates of major and minor, mugham transforms it into a succession of stations stretching from Rast to Shur, from Segah to Chahargah. Each mode is another climate, another state of being, another human condition.
The khanende, framed by the daf in his hands, the tar and the kamancha, does not merely sing; he makes the ghazals of Nizami, Fuzuli, Nasimi and Vahid breathe once again. There, poetry is not recited; it is reborn within the voice. That is why mugham is one of the rare thresholds where written culture and oral memory meet. A nation keeps its books not only on its shelves but also in its voices. This is why Shusha is called “the conservatory of the Caucasus”, and why the reconstruction of Karabakh is, in this sense, a voice returning to its home.
On the Golden Record carried by the Voyager probes launched in 1977, among the sounds chosen to introduce humanity to unknown listeners, is an Azerbaijani mugham played on the balaban. A melody born on the shores of the Caspian has now passed beyond the edge of the solar system and travels through interstellar space. Inscribed by UNESCO among the intangible cultural heritage of humanity, this art is the quietest and most enduring treasure Azerbaijan has given the world.
Yet the relationship between culture and development cannot be reduced to turning culture into a tourism product or an export item. To see culture solely as an economic resource is to turn it into yet another oilfield: something extracted, packaged and exhausted.
The real power of culture lies elsewhere. Culture determines what a society holds valuable, how it defines success, how it regards labour and what it wishes to entrust to future generations. That is why the real issue is not the economy of culture but the culture of the economy: the ethics, the values and the vision of the human being on which we build an economy.
Oil may one day run out. But a nation’s voice, once entrusted to the memory of humanity, never does.
Where respect for knowledge is growing, productive labour is esteemed, merit is gaining ground and a sense of responsibility between generations is deepening, development is taking place not only at the economic level but at the level of civilisation.
Here al-Farabi’s al-Madina al-Fadila, the Virtuous City, takes on a contemporary meaning. The virtuous city is not a place where wealthy people live. It is a social horizon in which people live within an order that makes the common good possible, each contributing to the maturing of the others. For al-Farabi, a city’s worth is determined not by its wealth but by the quality of the happiness it brings its inhabitants.
Put in today’s language, the point is not simply higher incomes. It is better education, fairer opportunities, stronger institutions and a more meaningful common life.
What Does a Country Leave Its Children?
Azerbaijan has formidable opportunities before it: financial strength accumulated from energy revenues, a strategic location, expanding connections, a deep-rooted cultural heritage and a young population. At the same time, dependence on a single resource, demographic change, regional inequalities, weak productivity and the need for institutional reform make up the harder stretches of the road.
A mature outlook requires seeing both at once: not denying the problems while recognising the opportunities, and, while debating the problems, not underestimating a nation’s historical depth and its capacity for renewal. Countries mature not only through their achievements but also through the courage to confront their problems.
If Azerbaijan can convert the opportunities energy has afforded it into the knowledge, productive and prosperity-generating capacity of future generations, it will have crossed a historic threshold. Otherwise, wealth may remain a precondition for development, but it can never be its guarantee.
And here a deeper question emerges, one that transcends every debate on development:
What should a country leave its children?
More buildings? Larger reserves? Longer roads, more spectacular cities?
All of these have value. But there is a legacy more precious than all of them: a society in which people can rise through knowledge, find reward for their labour, live together with their differences and dream without fear of their future.
Caspian oil has enriched one era of Azerbaijan’s history. Now history is putting a greater question to this ancient land of fire: can this wealth be transformed into a store of humanity, knowledge and civilisation for generations to come?
Oil can give a country power. What will turn that power into a lasting civilisation is the respect it shows its people, the value it places on knowledge and the responsibility it bears towards the future.
The flame rising from the soil of Absheron has burned for thousands of years. But the fire that will truly illuminate a country rises not from beneath the ground, but from within its people.
True development is the story not of how rich a country has become, but of how much its people have come to be valued.
Notes from the Blue of the Windy City