Azerbaijan 🇦🇿

Azerbaijan lies in Western Asia, part of Asia. The long form of the name is Republic of Azerbaijan. Baku is the capital.

Around 10.2 million people live there, placing it 95th of 250 by population — between Greece above it and Israel below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 8th of 17 in size and 8th in population.

By land area it covers 86,600 km², which ranks it 115th of the 250 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Serbia and just ahead of Austria. For scale, it is a fraction smaller than Jordan.

Azerbaijan has no coastline of its own, so every ship-borne import and export crosses somebody else's border first. The good news is that the sea is only one frontier away: Russia, Iran, Türkiye and Georgia have coastline, which makes them the obvious routes for freight heading to a port.

That geography has practical consequences. Landlocked countries carry higher freight costs than coastal ones because goods change hands, transport mode and jurisdiction more often, and because a neighbour's road, rail or customs problem becomes Azerbaijan's problem too. It is also why transit agreements with bordering states, and access to their ports, tend to matter more in Azerbaijan's foreign policy than the distance on a map would suggest.

Of the countries on Azerbaijan's borders, Armenia is landlocked as well, so a route in that direction only moves the problem along. The remaining borders are the ones that lead, eventually, to salt water.

Coastal countries on the border:

• 🇷🇺 Russia
• 🇮🇷 Iran
• 🇹🇷 Türkiye
• 🇬🇪 Georgia

Plotted on a globe it falls at 40.5° north, 47.5° east, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 4,508 km from the equator, in what geographers would call temperate latitudes.

Follow that same latitude east or west and you reach Spain, North Korea and Portugal — places that share its distance from the equator but little else.

It borders 5 neighbours: Armenia, Georgia, Iran, Russia and Türkiye. The largest of them by area is Russia, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 327.4 million people.

It has no sea coast of its own. That is true of 45 of the 250 entries here, which reliably raises the cost of trade, because port access depends on a transit agreement with a neighbour. One of its neighbours, Armenia, is landlocked too. You can see the full picture on the landlocked countries page.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 118 people per square kilometre, which makes it more crowded than the typical entry on this list. Half the entries in this dataset fall below roughly 90 per square kilometre.

Someone from Azerbaijan is an Azerbaijani.

2 languages carry official status: Azerbaijani and Russian. Azerbaijani is listed for no other entry in this dataset, which makes it effectively unique to Azerbaijan.

Inside Asia it places 30th of 50 by population, and it accounts for 3.3% of everyone living in Western Asia.

Zoom in from the world to Western Asia and Azerbaijan sits 8th of 17 by population and 8th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is United Arab Emirates just above and Israel just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

Türkiye is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Western Asia has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates
• 🇮🇱 Israel
• 🇹🇷 Türkiye

Money there is the Azerbaijani manat (₼, AZN). It is issued for Azerbaijan alone.

If a quiz asks for the capital of Azerbaijan, the answer is Baku.

Websites there use the .az domain. To phone it from abroad you dial +994. Standard country codes: az and AZE.

Azerbaijan is one of the 193 UN member states in this dataset. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 250 rather than the familiar 195.

The Azerbaijani manat (AZN) is used only in Azerbaijan among the 250 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Language reaches wider still. Russian is listed for 8 entries here, Azerbaijan among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.