What do the people of Azerbaijan think about operations against armed groups in Karabakh? / Poll

The Social Research Center continues to study the processes and trends occurring in the social-political, socio-economic, and other fields in the country, conducts surveys about the new changes in important fields; measures public opinion; and provides analysis to the relevant state bodies.

The Social Research Center surveyed the public's perceptions of the military operations that Azerbaijan carried out on August 22nd against the illegal Armenian armed groups on its soil, as well as their military-political nature and degree of public awareness in the country.

Within the framework of the survey, the opinions of 384 respondents covering the economic regions of Baku, Absheron-Khizi, Nagorno-Shirvan, Ganja-Dashkasan, Gazakh-Tovuz, Lankaran-Astara, Guba-Khachmaz, Sheki-Zagatala, Karabakh, Central Aran, Mil-Mugan, Shirvan-Salyan learned. The survey was carried out using a telephone interviewing technique. The margin of error of the results was 5% in the 95% confidence interval based on the total number of survey respondents.

According to the analysis of the survey results, the absolute majority of the respondents are aware of the military operations carried out by Azerbaijan against illegal Armenian armed groups on its territory. The main part of the respondents, i.e., 64.6%, said that they got information about it from television. Among the sources of information, social networks ranked second with an indicator of 43.5%. Furthermore, 27.9% of respondents, or nearly one in four, claimed that they had learned about it from websites.

9.9% of respondents received information about military operations from people around them. 7.0% of people indicated that they listened to the radio for information on the mentioned military actions. Only 2.1% of respondents claimed not to have received any information about any military action that happened recently.

The respondents' positions were examined in order to evaluate the military-political nature of Azerbaijan's military operations against the unrecognized Armenian armed organizations in Karabakh. The descriptive analysis of the survey data in this direction indicates that around half of the respondents (49.2%) think that military operations are the major assurance that Armenian terrorists will be removed from Karabakh.

According to 17.2% of the survey participants, military operations are a sign that there is only one real army existing in Azerbaijan. 13.3% of people believed that military activities by Azerbaijan pushed Armenia to negotiate peace.

Approximately the same number of respondents believe that military operations against Armenian illegal forces will result in the establishment of a new contact line in Karabakh (9.1%) and the possibility of a new war (9.6%).

Nearly one in five respondents (22.4%) connected the military-political nature of the military operations in Karabakh with other different dots.

15.9% of the respondents found it difficult to express their position on this question.

According to the results of the poll, the respondents expressed their support for Azerbaijan to continue military operations if Armenia does not comply with the terms of the joint statement that was dated November 10th. Furthermore, the absolute majority of the respondents—80.5%—think that Azerbaijan should carry on with the military operations. 84.1% of the respondents who saw the military operations as the main guarantee of the removal of Armenian terrorists from Karabakh also supported the continuation of these operations.

The statistical analysis of the results from the gender perspective suggests that men, compared to women, are most likely to want Azerbaijan to continue its military operations against illegal Armenian armed groups in its territory.

Respondents who took the opposite position (6.8%), as well as those who had difficulty answering this question (12.8%), mainly attributed their position to the fact that they do not want people to die