Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has approved amendments to the constitution of the exclave of Nakhchivan, drastically curtailing the region’s autonomy, and allowing him further control over its administration.
Aliyev signed the amendments to the region’s constitution on Tuesday.
Nakhchivan and its some-500,000 residents have long enjoyed a great degree of autonomy, but with these amendments, an ‘authorised representation’ of Azerbaijan’s president would be established as an executive power in the region,
Azerbaijan’s president will also be allowed to appoint or dismiss local representatives in the region, who will now report directly to Baku. Additionally, the government of Nakhchivan will no longer report to the region’s parliament, or Supreme Assembly, and instead will coordinate its work with the president of Azerbaijan.
After Aliyev signed the constitutional amendments into force, he issued a decree asking the government of Azerbaijan to prepare proposals to ‘harmonise laws and regulations’ regarding Nakhchivan within three months.
Discussion around the adoption of the new amendments to the Nakhchivan constitution began in June 2025.
Human rights lawyer Yalchin Imanov told OC Media that these changes were intended to expand the central government’s powers over the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.
‘They are intended to minimise — or limit — the powers of the Supreme Assembly of Nakhchivan and its speaker. This effectively reduces the autonomy of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic to zero and contradicts the principles of its sovereignty’, Imanov said.
Imanov stressed that the amendments aimed at empowering the president’s office in contradiction to ‘counter-centralisation’ principles used ‘in normal democratic countries’.
‘These amendments demonstrate that the Azerbaijani authorities are interested in concentrating all power in the hands of one person – the president’.
Additionally, the preamble of the region’s constitution was amended to remove references to treaties signed between Russia and Turkey in 1921 which clearly defined Nakhchivan’s borders and autonomy.
