President Ilham Aliyev’s meeting with families relocating to the first residential complex in Zangilan was far more than a ceremonial handover of apartment keys, which brought a smile of joy to many people's faces. The meeting in Zangilan was also a subtle political and historical statement about the future of Azerbaijan and, more broadly, the future geopolitical order of the South Caucasus.

Here, of course, the symbolism of Zangilan matters enormously.

For nearly three decades, Zangilan stood as one of the clearest examples of the destruction and demographic rupture caused by the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. Occupied in 1993, the district became part of a broader geography of displacement, devastation and frozen conflict that defined the post-Soviet South Caucasus. Today, however, Baku is attempting to transform Zangilan into the exact opposite: a symbol not of occupation, but of return; not of separatism, but of restored sovereignty; not of stagnation, but of reconstruction and connectivity.

This explains why President Aliyev chose Zangilan as the venue for one of his most politically significant speeches since the 2023 anti-terror........

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