Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Azerbaijan on Sunday to attend Victory Day celebrations. The visit aims to ease an unusually public rift between the two close regional allies.
Tensions flared in September when Baku revised school uniform regulations to prohibit additions deemed incompatible with secular education. The move effectively barred Islamic headscarves from classrooms in the mainly Shiite Muslim country, which emerged as one of the most secular states in the Muslim world after decades of Soviet rule.
Erdogan’s government has previously dismantled restrictions on hijabs in Turkiye. Baku’s new rules sparked protests at home and drew criticism from Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted ruling Justice and Development Party, including presidential adviser Oktay Saral, who demanded that Azerbaijan reverse the restrictions.
Aliyev’s ruling party, Yeni Azerbaijan, denounced those comments as interference in internal affairs. Baku also declared 31 Turkish nationals, including an opposition lawmaker and party leaders, persona non grata over critical social media posts.
Erdogan subsequently dismissed Saral, but Aliyev stayed away from an October summit of Turkic leaders in Ankara despite a personal invitation. Instead, the Azerbaijani leader sent Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov to the meeting.
On Sunday, Erdogan landed in Azerbaijan’s Fizuli district, which Baku recaptured in 2020 from Armenian separatist forces. A guard of honour lined up at the local airport, where President Ilham Aliyev and First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva welcomed Erdogan and his wife Emine, according to Azerbaijani media reports.
Ahead of his trip, Erdogan congratulated Aliyev on Azerbaijan’s victory in the 2020 war with Armenia. Baku retook part of the breakaway Karabakh region and surrounding districts during that conflict, before seizing the rest of Karabakh in 2023.
In a letter, Erdogan expressed confidence that the two countries would continue to work in close cooperation and solidarity, drawing strength from their friendship founded on the principle of one nation, two states. He told reporters on Thursday that he hoped the trip would provide an opportunity to take necessary steps, adding that no obstacle can overcome Turkish-Azerbaijani brotherhood.
Analysts say the quarrel also reflects deeper disagreements over Baku’s diplomatic independence and its ties to Israel. Elkhan Shahinoglu, head of the Baku-based Atlas Research Center, told AFP that tensions stemmed from the fact that Azerbaijan does not see itself as the younger brother in the alliance and insists on relations between equal partners.
Gonul Tol, an analyst at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, wrote on social media that the hijab dispute is a symptom of a deeper rift. Tensions have long simmered over sovereignty, Ankara’s influence, diverging policies toward Israel, and Turkiye’s rapprochement with Armenia.
Baku has forged strong military and economic ties with Israel, which supplied Azerbaijan with weapons during the 2020 war. That relationship has angered Ankara, which has grown increasingly hostile toward Israel over the war in Gaza, with Erdogan accusing the Israeli state of genocide.
