Azerbaijan marks 35 years since independence — and its once-closed corners are finally opening to travellers

Azerbaijan has just marked a big milestone: 35 years since 18 October 1991, when its Supreme Council voted to leave the Soviet Union and restore the independence first declared back in 1918. A December 1991 referendum confirmed the move with near-unanimous support. Türkiye, the first country to recognise the new state, led the congratulations, with President Erdoğan greeting his "brother" Ilham Aliyev and the Azerbaijani people.

For anyone following the South Caucasus, the anniversary is more than ceremony. The intervening decades reshaped the map: Armenia occupied Karabakh and surrounding districts in the early 1990s, displacing around a million Azerbaijanis, before Azerbaijan's 44-day counteroffensive in 2020 — the "Patriotic War" — reclaimed five cities, four towns and 286 villages. A September 2023 operation ended remaining armed-group control, and peace talks have since gained momentum, with an agreement text initialed at a Washington summit.

That last point is the one travellers should sit up for. Places that were off-limits for three decades are now reachable. Shusha — a historic cultural capital in Karabakh and the site of the 2021 declaration that formalised the Türkiye–Azerbaijan alliance — has become a symbol of the reopening, while Baku itself continues its trajectory as a glossy Caspian hub with a medieval old town at its core.

Azerbaijan's oil-and-gas story also explains its modern face. The 1994 "Contract of the Century" on the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli field, plus the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, TANAP and the Southern Gas Corridor, turned a struggling post-Soviet state into a country exporting gas to 16 nations and oil products to more than 30. Much of Baku's striking skyline — the Flame Towers included — was funded by that boom. The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway has, meanwhile, made overland routes through the region more viable for adventurous travellers.

Why care? Because the South Caucasus is having a moment: visa-friendly, relatively affordable, and with newly accessible territory that almost no foreign visitor has seen in 30 years. If you've already done Georgia and Armenia's classics, Baku plus the recovered districts is the region's next frontier — best explored once peace terms are finalised, and ideally with a local guide in Karabakh given the sensitivity and occasional landmine risk in rural areas.