secular azerbaijan to regress like so many muslim majority countries.
President Ilham Aliyev said Azerbaijan won’t seek closer integration with Europe, which he accused of discriminating against Muslims and undermining his country’s traditional values.
“Where shall we integrate?” Aliyev said in a rare public criticism of the West in a speech to university students and teachers in the capital, Baku, on Tuesday. “Shall we integrate with those who are saying ‘Stop Islam’? Shall we integrate to a place where there’s no difference being made between men and women? We definitely shall not.”
The president is “quite sincere” in his opposition to European integration because “Europe means democracy, free elections, rule of law, universal human rights and social welfare,” Altay Goyushov, an opposition politician who heads the Baku Research Institute, a think tank in the city, wrote on Facebook. “Aliyev wants to see a medieval monarchy in Azerbaijan,” he said.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-27/-anti-islam-europe-is-no-place-for-azerbaijan-president-says