BBC Accused of ‘Whitewashing’ Autocratic Azerbaijan in BP-Sponsored Film

It has long faced criticism from human rights and climate activists for its ties to the ruling Aliyev regime, which has been accused of “electoral fraud,” the silencing of dissenting voices and benefiting disproportionately from Azerbaijan’s oil and gas wealth.

“BP needs to keep the [Azerbaijani] government onside and this [film] is a low-cost way of doing it,” said campaigner James Marriott, co-author of Crude Britannia: How Oil Shaped a Nation.

BP told openDemocracy it aims to work for the “effective and responsible” development of the Caspian Sea’s energy resources for the benefit of Azerbaijan and the company.

It added that it has a net zero ambition and is working to decarbonize operations and develop renewable energy in Azerbaijan.

“We do not support individuals or political groups in any country,” a BP spokesperson told openDemocracy.

A BBC spokesperson said: “Hosting advertising and sponsorship outside of the UK, which is clearly labelled as such and is completely separate to our editorial output, allows us to invest in the BBC’s world-class journalism, which provides independent and impartial news across all topics, including climate change, the energy crisis and geopolitics.”

BBC World News aired the two-part program to its viewers outside the UK over a week in August — the same week that British audiences saw the BBC broadcast extensive coverage of the energy crisis and soaring household fuel bills.

Ads aimed at the “curious, eco-conscious traveler” were shown alongside the BP-sponsored film, as part of a brand deal between BBC Global News (one of the BBC’s commercial subsidiaries) and Azerbaijan’s official tourist board.

“Wonders of Azerbaijan” is part of a wider editorial series, also presented by Bettany Hughes, which explores areas of natural, artistic and cultural interest around the world.

The BBC licensed the content for the two-part program from Hughes’s production company, SandStone Global. The BBC edited the material, but the copyright remains with SandStone. The production itself was funded by BP, whose sponsorship was made clear on screen when the program aired.

Each of the two episodes was broadcast globally five times in late August, flanked by travel ads for Azerbaijan. It was not broadcast in the UK.

A representative of SandStone Global told openDemocracy that it was “standard practice” for production companies to get support from “local organizations” for on-location services.

Baku Media Centre provided logistics support to SandStone, while the Heydar Aliyev Foundation helped the UK company secure filming permits and access to unique heritage sites, the representative said.

The Baku Media Centre is run by Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev’s youngest daughter, Arzu Aliyeva. It works closely with the family-run foundation.

SandStone’s representative said: “[The organization’s involvement] does not amount to editorial influence, as all decisions relating to our productions are made by the SandStone Global team.” Arzu Aliyeva was not personally involved in the production process, they added.

The BBC spokesperson said: “Whilst the original programme was not made by the BBC, the BBC alone has full editorial control over everything broadcast on its channel, in line with its robust editorial guidelines.”

BP supported the program as a “contribution to Azerbaijan’s global promotion” in partnership with the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, named after the former president, who led the country both before and after it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Heydar Aliyev was succeeded in 2003, after ten years of rule, by his son, the current autocratic president Ilham Aliyev.

The foundation is chaired by Ilham’s wife Mehriban Aliyeva, who is also the country’s vice president.

The Heydar Aliyev Foundation is tasked with promoting Azerbaijan’s image abroad, including by advancing the government position over Nagorno-Karabakh. But government critics say this work extends to diverting attention from the regime’s relentless crackdown on dissent and its systemic corruption.

“The foundation was set up by the ruling family to whitewash Azerbaijan’s image,” Arzu Geybullayeva, an Azerbaijani journalist living in exile, told openDemocracy. She added: “It can by no means be described as independent of the state.”

The Heydar Aliyev Foundation did not respond to requests for comment.

Speaking at a launch event for the film in Baku in September, presenter Bettany Hughes said: “I understand history not through politics… I don’t get involved in politics at all.

“But I do go to places which have been extraordinary in culture. So it was exceptional for me to get access to places which when I came last time I couldn’t go to because there was too much conflict there.”

Hughes was speaking about Nagorno-Karabakh, which is internationally recognized as Azerbaijani territory – but had been under ethnic Armenian control since the early 1990s.

That was until 2020, when Azerbaijan started a 44-day war to take control of part of the disputed territory – as Ilham Aliyev himself recently admitted. Thousands were killed in the fighting as Armenian forces attempted to protect it.

Indeed, the BBC series featured a segment where Bettany Hughes travelled to the city of Shusha, in Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan seized the city in November 2020 as part of its brutal military offensive. Prior to that, Shusha — known as Shushi to Armenians — had been in the hands of ethnic Armenians since the first Nagorno-Karabakh war three decades earlier.

Azerbaijan has now declared Shusha a “cultural capital,” and major efforts are under way to restore Azerbaijani culture in the city. The Heydar Aliyev Foundation is leading restoration works in Shusha. Some of these works featured in the BBC program, including a sequence shot inside a reconstructed Soviet-era mausoleum to the 18th-century Azerbaijani poet and statesman Vagif. The monument fell to ruin when the city was under Armenian control.

Speaking in Shusha in June 2022, BP’s regional president Gary Jones said Nagorno-Karabakh had the country’s “best solar and geothermal resources” – making it a “perfect opportunity for a fully net zero system”. BP is planning a solar power plant in the city of Jabrayil, which Azerbaijan regained control over during the 2020 war.

‘Wonders of Azerbaijan’, which did not address Armenia’s connections to Shusha or Nagorno-Karabakh’s bitterly contested history, was broadcast in the last week of August.

A fortnight later, Azerbaijani forces made further incursions into Armenian territory – the worst escalation in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict since the 2020 war.

BP’s Jones took to the stage at the Baku premiere of the film in late September to praise the “unwavering support of the [Azerbaijani] government” for his company and its co-venturers’ operations in the country.

Jones also spoke of the “joint effort” that went into creating the documentary. He thanked the Heydar Aliyev Foundation for its support and paid personal homage to the president’s daughter, Arzu Aliyeva, and to the Baku Media Centre she heads, “for their outstanding technical support” on the production.

This isn’t the first time BP has collaborated with the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, or that the foundation has cropped up on the BBC.

Last year, BBC StoryWorks, the in-house content studio for the commercial BBC Global News, ran a separate tourism-focused campaign for Azerbaijan to mark the 30th anniversary of the country’s independence from the Soviet Union.

The campaign included a paid-for advertorial that invited readers to “discover more” about Azerbaijan by following a link to an external website run by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation. The ‘Azerbaijan’ portal claims (among other things) that Azerbaijan’s current president Ilham Aliyev “has always focused on ensuring a fuller provision of human rights and freedoms in the country”. It also contains information about the so-called “Armenian problem”.

Azerbaijani officials have a long record of using dehumanising language and imagery about Armenians, including opening a “war park” last year containing weapons, armour and vehicles seized from Armenian forces and wax figures of Armenians – as the BBC reported in the UK.

The link was removed after openDemocracy contacted the BBC for comment.

BP, meanwhile, has signed a cooperation agreement with the Heydar Aliyev Foundation to jointly implement some of its social investment projects.