Five years after the COVID-19 pandemic began, Azerbaijan remains the only country in the region to keep its land borders closed, not only to foreign nationals but also to its own citizens. 

The policy, originally framed as a temporary health measure, has now taken on the weight of permanence. Despite the return of open borders across Europe and Central Asia, and even after hosting COP29 and welcoming hundreds of international delegations, Azerbaijani citizens still cannot cross into or out of their country by land. The rationale has shifted over time, from virus containment to national security. But what the policy reveals is not a strategy of defence, but a mechanism of control.

In its current form, the border regime is deliberately asymmetrical. Azerbaijani nationals are barred from entering or exiting the country via land. Foreigners, too, are prohibited from entering. Yet the border is not entirely sealed. Just days ago, as Iran faced Israeli airstrikes and tension mounted across the region, the Azerbaijani government quietly opened the Astara crossing to allow foreign citizens to transit from Iran to Russia, Belarus and other destinations. What was declared a zone of danger in peacetime suddenly became safe during wartime, provided you held the right passport.

Azerbaijanis in Iran were not granted the same option. One Azerbaijani woman, who found herself in Tehran the night Israeli missiles fell, recounted her experience trying to return home. "I called the consulate yesterday," she said. "They said, did you put your name on the list? I responded, what list? Where should a citizen learn about this? If you're doing this, create a hotline, and share it so people know about it. I don't know anymore… It's hard for me to travel for a week for a three-hour trip, to spend a lot of money," she told bne IntelliNews. She was eventually forced to leave Iran via Turkey, incurring extra cost and delay, simply to reach Baku by air. The route through Astara, which foreigners were using freely, remained off limits to her.

This policy architecture makes no internal sense if judged by security logic. If the Astara land crossing is secure enough for international evacuees in wartime, it is surely secure enough for Azerbaijani citizens returning home. If regional instability is too severe to permit land entry, it should apply to everyone. Instead, the rules are precise in their discrimination: foreigners may leave by land, Azerbaijanis may not. Air travel is unrestricted in both directions, despite being a softer target for terrorism, harder to trace in terms of passenger scrutiny, and far more expensive. There is no credible explanation but only contradictions. There isn't a war in Georgia and Turkey either; however, borders remain shut. 

The border closure operates less as a national shield than a national filter. It restricts movement not based on threat level but on identity. It targets Azerbaijanis themselves. The government offers no data to support the idea that land crossings present a heightened risk. It has not presented a single incident of cross-border infiltration that justifies such extraordinary restrictions. It has outlined no criteria for reopening. The vague language of "external threats" persists, but what the regime is defending itself against is never specified. I claim that this vagueness is deliberate. It allows the government to extend emergency conditions indefinitely while retaining full discretion over who can move and who cannot. It insulates the state from legal challenge and public scrutiny. It preserves the fiction of a crisis while extracting both political and economic value from its management.

By funnelling movement exclusively through air travel, the state reinforces a closed economic loop. Flights are controlled by the state airline, Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL). Ticket prices remain prohibitively high. Low-income citizens and border-region residents, who once relied on road transport, are disproportionately affected. A trip from Tbilisi to Baku and back, once a six-hour drive or a $30 train ride, now requires a plane. This means that five years ago, a lady from the Kirach-Mughanlo border village of Georgia could pass the Red Bridge and sell her products to fellow villagers in Azerbaijan. But now, she has to be a proper businesswoman, invest in weekly trade convoys or just visit Tbilisi airport to fly to Baku, take an hours long ride to the border, sell the apples and return through the land border to her own village.

The political utility of this arrangement is clear. It keeps citizens grounded. It restricts spontaneous migration and weakens cross-border ties. It should be noted that, except for Armenia, all bordering countries of Azerbaijan have a sizeable Azerbaijani minority (Dmanisi and Marneuli in Georgia, Derbent in Russia, Igdir in Turkey and the whole East/West Azerbaijani provinces of Iran) who largely maintain kinship relations and intermarriages. Defenders claim that border closure reduces the state’s exposure to the unpredictable dynamics of regional transit. Above all, it ensures that every movement in and out of the country occurs on the government’s terms, via channels it fully controls. However, one must ask: how come trucks and cargo can freely travel but not humans?

I believe that this is not about protecting the country from external dangers. It is about protecting the regime from internal exposure. It is a policy that suspends the basic right of mobility for an entire population, while offering selective exceptions for foreigners when geopolitics demand flexibility. The rhetoric of "stability" conceals a deeper aim, which is to define who has the right to move, and under what circumstances. The fact that citizens of Azerbaijan are denied access to their own land borders while foreign nationals transit freely must raise questions. It is a signal. The border exists not as a barrier between Azerbaijan and the world, but as a lever between the state and its citizens.

As war simmers to the north and south, the logic of closure becomes harder, not easier, to defend. The longer the restriction remains in place, the clearer it becomes that this is not a defensive measure. It is a domestic policy of immobility, draped in the language of sovereignty, maintained by silence, and enforced by the simple fact that no one can leave, unless the state allows it. While international attention often focuses on Azerbaijan’s energy policy as an alternative to Russia, its role in the Middle Corridor, military posture, or diplomatic balancing, the quiet erosion of citizens’ rights to mobility has gone largely unchallenged. 

Western partners, namely the EU and others, may view border policy as a sovereign matter. But it is regional countries such as Georgia and Turkey, where large Azerbaijani populations live, study, work, and transit, that bear the social and logistical burden of Baku’s indefinite closure. These states should be alarmed by a policy that strands citizens, fragments families, and entrenches a tiered system of movement where only foreigners are allowed to leave. 

What’s at stake is not only Azerbaijan’s border management, but the integrity of regional mobility itself. Left unaddressed, this risks setting a precedent, and others may follow Azerbaijan to shut their own borders. In a region marked by authoritarian drift, border closures under the guise of security could become the next convenient tool of control, exported from Baku, normalised by other dictators and upstart autocrats.