Azerbaijan Democratic Republic

The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was the first secular democratic republic of the Turkic and Muslim worlds, living twenty-three months from 28 May 1918 to 28 April 1920 between Russia, Georgia, Armenia and Iran with three million people. The National Council declared it at Tiflis as the Transcaucasian Federation broke; Ganja housed the ministers while Baku stayed Bolshevik, and the Ottoman Islamic Army's September entry carried the government to the oil city. Parliament sat by universal, free and proportionate vote with Musavat, socialists and twenty-one Armenian deputies among a hundred and twenty; Khoyski's ministers answered to it. The republic gave women equal votes before most of Europe, founded Baku State University, printed the manat, opened girls' schools, and flew the tricolour over the Caspian derricks. Armenia bled it over Karabakh and Zangezur through 1919; the Eleventh Army's April arrival closed the experiment after twenty-three months, and the tricolour waited seventy years.