Extending authoritarianism through dynasty in Azerbaijan

By Vafa Naghi

Since 2020, a notable transformation has unfolded in the agenda of pro-government media in Azerbaijan. While the focus was previously on President Ilham Aliyev’s official meetings, political decisions, and state events, more recently, the First Family’s daily religious, charitable, and symbolic activities have begun to gain news value.

The Aliyev family’s Iftar tables, mosque visits, and humanitarian trips are no longer presented in the media space as ordinary social events; rather, they are featured directly under the rubric of domestic policy. This shift is not coincidental. The trend in question can be interpreted as a visual and communicative manifestation of the government’s transition from a leader-centered political representation model to a family-centered or dynastic representation model.

The fact that this model has become more apparent in recent years indicates that the government has begun to build its legitimacy not just through the figure of an individual leader, but through the integrity of the family unit. In this context, a crucial question arises: Is the shift of the media’s political focus from official cabinets to religious ceremonies and symbolic family spaces a demonstration of sincerity, or a process of incrementally embedding the idea of a “family state” into the deeper layers of public consciousness?

The rise of the “family state”

Research conducted on modern autocratic regimes allows for this question to be answered within a theoretical framework. When analyzing hereditary succession mechanisms in modern authoritarian regimes, Jason Brownlee, professor at the University of Texas, cites the transfer of power in Singapore and Azerbaijan’s 2003 transition from President Heydar Aliyev to his son, Ilham, as examples. However, while Brownlee’s analysis focuses primarily on biological succession, a more complex model is taking shape within Azerbaijan today.

Ilham Aliyev is not settling for traditional father-to-son succession; instead, he appears to be transforming the government into a family-based monarchy model during his own lifetime, whereby power is transferred not to a single individual, but to a collective family brand.

First Lady and Vice President Mehriban Aliyeva, along with Aliyev’s daughters and daughter-in-law, are becoming permanent actors in the sociopolitical space, made clearly visible during the president’s international visits.

At foreign political events, Ilham Aliyev is presented to the public not as a head of state, but collectively, alongside his family. In January 2026, during events held within the framework of the Davos Forum, the president’s son, Heydar Jr., wore a badge with the SOCAR logo. SOCAR is a state-owned oil and gas company that is the primary source of revenue for the authoritarian regime. It is a detail that appears not merely as a protocol coincidence, but as an attempt to symbolically link family members with the state’s primary strategic institutions.

Photos and videos circulating from the forum emphasize the extent to which the president often moves alongside his spouse, Mehriban, daughter Leyla, and daughter-in-law Alyona, attending meetings and key events together.

These types of visual strategies are observed in other international events as well, carrying a political message that transcends the boundaries of traditional diplomatic protocol.

Implications of an Aliyev dynasty

This family-centered legitimacy strategy is not merely symbolic; it carries profound economic implications. The centralized resources of state capitalism, ranging from oil revenues to strategic industrial sectors, are no longer managed through classic bureaucratic institutions but are consolidated directly under the family brand.

This process operates in parallel with the dispossession of the old oligarchy within the ruling elite, serving to concentrate wealth within an even narrower, more exclusive circle. Consequently, the image of the charitable and humanistic family presented by state-run media functions as an aesthetic veil, obscuring the deep class inequality and skewed distribution of resources in the country. The ultimate stage of neoliberal authoritarianism is often the complete transformation of state functions into a single, corporate-family holding.

Comparatively, during Heydar Aliyev’s presidency, only his granddaughter Leyla would occasionally appear in the media; in fact, Ilham was rarely seen on the public stage with his father. Now, however, the consistent media presence of family members is being normalized and rendered commonplace. On February 25, 2026, for instance — just one day — a government-funded media outlet published eight separate reports about the president’s daughter and daughter-in-law, despite the content consisting primarily of symbolic, religious, and social activities.

Set against the backdrop of the presidential family’s high media visibility, the harsh political “cleansing” mechanisms currently being employed in Azerbaijan are being presented in a softer, more psychologically effective manner. When juxtaposed with administrative arrests or sentencing of citizens who criticize the government on social media, visits of the president’s daughters and daughter-in-law to orphanages or social enterprises employing youth with disabilities, and their participation in Iftar tables, create an alternative narrative at a symbolic level.

Such parallel imagery appears to be a soft power mechanism designed to balance the negative impact generated by harsh repressive practices — so while the coercive tools of the government remain operational on one hand, values of empathy, care, and family values are emphasized on the other. Consequently, without directly denying the repressive nature of the political system, its public perception is softened and compensated for on an emotional level.

In the context of a weak economic agenda and rising social discontent, such symbolic activities may aim to divert ordinary citizens’ attention from structural problems and neutralize political dissatisfaction through emotional proximity and moral gestures. In this sense, the continuous presence of family members in charitable and religious spaces can be evaluated not merely as an individual initiative, but as a component of a broader legitimacy strategy in which repression and empathy are managed within the same political space.

Lessons in dynasty building

Comparing Azerbaijan’s family-centered presentation model with Kazakhstan’s, Nursultan Nazarbayev also positioned his daughters — particularly Dariga — and other family members at the core of the state’s economic and political management.

The Nazarbayev model demonstrated that presenting family members as a national brand in the media and appointing them to strategic posts did not increase the institutional stability of the regime but rather made it more personalized and fragile. The Kazakhstan example also revealed the greatest risk of this strategy: dynastic legitimacy is limited solely to the physical presence and power of the leader. The image of invincibility and the symbolic mother/father figure that the Nazarbayev family built over decades collapsed within just a few days during the events of January 2022, when the family emerged as the clear losers in an internal power struggle that played out against widespread social unrest. The citizenry often does not accept such family-state unity, artificially created through the media, as legitimate, particularly during moments of political crisis.

In the Azerbaijani context, the soft power of family members, built upon charitable and humanitarian activities, is calculated to fill the vacuum created by the paralysis of official state institutions, such as parliament, an imbalanced judiciary, and a lack of free and fair elections.

While family visibility is the common thread linking the Nazarbayev regime to Ilham Aliyev’s family-based governance model, the approach also serves as a tool to neutralize other groups within the political elite, such as the old oligarchy or bureaucratic clans. The symbolic family spaces frequently shown in the media essentially function as a form of collective insurance for the government, which — if it remains heavily dependent on the classic bureaucratic apparatus — may face greater challenges to internal stability. However, when power is consolidated within the family, the chain of loyalty appears more closed and unshakeable.

Nevertheless, the Kazakhstan experience demonstrates that no matter how solid such systems may seem, they fail during historical trials because they lack institutional roots. As Samuel Huntington emphasized, hereditary power and plebiscitary institutions cannot coexist in the long term.

Ultimately, while political theory underscores that republicanism and heredity are in contradiction, the Azerbaijani media is attempting to reconcile and legitimize this contradiction through the image of a family state, wherein the ruling family is presented as the only force capable of keeping the country stable and safe.