The cartoonish, racist wax caricatures that it is most infamous for look like a relic from Nazi Germany, yet Azerbaijan’s Military Trophy Park opened in April 2021. Apart from the ghoulish, dehumanizing characterizations of Armenians, visitors can also gaze upon a macabre collection of helmets recovered from dead Armenian soldiers, captured equipment, and reconstructed trenches and bunkers from the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War. Upon its opening, the park horrified international observers; particularly, the images of young children touring a site where they are taught to hate and encouraged to choke or beat depictions of Armenians revolted many. This weekend, Formula One will race around the streets of Baku, just blocks away from the monument which embodies anti-Armenian hatred.
Formula One has raced in Baku since 2016, but this year’s race will be the first since 2019 and the first since F1 embraced its #WeRaceAsOne slogan. In response to the anti-racism movements of 2020 and pressure from its top star Lewis Hamilton, the series began the campaign seeking to promote inclusion and better opportunities for minorities in the sport. Formula One has voiced these sentiments while continuing to add events in authoritarian countries. In addition to the season opener in Bahrain, the series also races in China, Russia, and beginning this year will travel to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for an event. Critics reasonably argue that the series cannot claim to support human rights and equality while giving validation to some of the world’s cruelest regimes. For authoritarian states such as Azerbaijan, the chance to project soft power through an entertainment or sporting lens is too good to pass up.
Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev rules over one of the harshest dictatorships in the world. Azerbaijan scores a 10 out of 100 on Freedom House’s scale of political rights and civil liberties, lower than any other country Formula One races at except for Saudi Arabia. Perhaps the best example of the country’s lack of political freedom is exiled vlogger Mirzali Mahammad, who has survived multiple assassination attempts including a shooting, a knife attack that left him with sixteen stab wounds, and an attempted break-in earlier this week. In addition to suppressing internal dissent, Aliyev shows genocidal intent towards Armenians.
Vowing to chase Armenians out “like dogs,” Aliyev launched a military campaign to retake the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh in September 2020. The majority Armenian territory was handed over to Baku by Stalin and became a flashpoint during the collapse of the Soviet Union. A war between the newly independent republics in the 1990s saw Armenian forces succeed, driving out Azerbaijan and taking control of the region and several districts around it. With diplomatic solutions lacking in the decades since the first war, Aliyev launched an armed campaign to retake the territory. This time, Baku’s military proved too strong for the Armenians. With drones supplied by Turkey and Israel, Azerbaijan picked apart Armenia’s ground defenses and came to dominate the sky. Further helping its cause, Azerbaijan’s ground losses were mitigated by the use of mercenaries from Turkish-backed Syrian armed groups, who suffered some of the highest casualties in the fighting. Unable to match Baku’s technical advantage, Armenia agreed to a ceasefire after 44 days of brutal fighting, ceding most of the territory it once ruled over in Karabakh. The pain for Armenians did not end there.
Events since the war have shown that Aliyev has no desire to make peace. In the weeks after the ceasefire, several videos were released on Telegram showing beheadings and torture of Armenian prisoners and civilians. Despite the war’s conclusion, 200 Armenian prisoners of war remain captive and 19 have been executed. Making things worse, war remains a possibility between the two nations. Not content on just retaking Karabakh, Azerbaijan encroached into Armenian territory in May and has yet to leave despite international condemnation. The situation remains tense and could easily explode at any moment. And then there is the Military Trophy Park, an outrageous symbol of discrimination adjacent to the Baku City Circuit.
Armenian activists intend to boycott Sunday’s race and flood social media hashtags with messages to raise awareness on the issues of POWs, Baku’s aggression, and anti-Armenian sentiment. Simply put, the grand prix is used to whitewash the crimes of the Azerbaijani regime. Formula One personalities and teams will tweet pictures of Baku’s skyline, various tourist sites around the city, or make tired references to the “well done Baku” line that the FIA marched out on its first trip to the city in 2016. And it would not be surprising if Aliyev appears on the podium Sunday as he has done before, projecting an image of a powerful leader — but one that appears almost benevolent by virtue of participating in the glamourous festivities of Formula One.
The government in Baku does not want to be associated with killing dissidents or genocidal rhetoric. When you hear “Azerbaijan,” it wants you to think of an Ariana Grande inspired performance at Eurovision, Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen colliding, or Valtteri Bottas’ tire blowing and giving Lewis Hamilton victory. Formula One will carry on this weekend with its #EndRacism and #WeRaceAsOne tag lines attached to cars, helmets, and billboards. By doing so, it will be washing over the reality of the country it is racing in. When Formula One says #WeRaceAsOne in Baku, right next to a monument of racism and ethnic cleansing, that “one” will not include Armenians. That is exactly what the government in Azerbaijan wants.
