About

Nakhchivan is an autonomous republic and an exclave of Azerbaijan. Its official name is the 'Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic'. The capital is Nakhchivan City. It shares borders with Armenia, Iran, and Türkiye. It is also known as 'Nakhichevan', which is a transliteration of the Russian name Нахичевань. While it does not have its own official flag or coat of arms separate from the mainland, it previously used an unofficial symbolic flag. The flag used from 1991 to 1993 was similar to the national flag of Azerbaijan. It has an area of 5,502 km² and a population of 461,530 as of 2020. According to 2019 statistics, Azerbaijanis make up 99.7% of the population, with Russians and Armenians being a tiny minority. The urbanization rate is less than 30%. Except for the plains in the west and southwest, the region is mostly mountainous and is located east and north of the middle reaches of the Aras River, which forms the border with Iran and Türkiye. It is a seismic zone where earthquakes occur frequently, and steppes are well-developed due to low rainfall. On the map, it shares a very small border with the Aralik district of Iğdır in eastern Türkiye, where a road connects Türkiye and Azerbaijan. Since Azerbaijan and Türkiye are friendly nations of the same Turkic descent, there is significant exchange. It consists of seven districts and one city. Agriculture, Nakhchivan's main industry, is practiced in the irrigated plains. A railway connecting the Armenian capital Yerevan and the Azerbaijani capital Baku passes through this republic along the Aras Valley, but since reaching the mainland requires passing through Armenian territory, the rail link to the mainland has been severed since the Nagorno-Karabakh War. Domestic flights connecting to mainland Azerbaijan have been allowed to pass through Armenian airspace since 2021; prior to that, they bypassed through Iranian airspace. A railway connects here to Iran, and a rail link between mainland Azerbaijan and Iran was established in 2017. However, the Iranian section of the line is not yet fully connected. Roads extend from Nakhchivan to Yerevan, Julfa on the Iranian border, and Azerbaijan. Like the railway, the roads toward Armenia are cut off. During the Nagorno-Karabakh War, the economy suffered significantly due to the lack of major roads connecting to Türkiye, but now that major roads are connected to Türkiye, the economic situation and living conditions are greatly improving.