Key Takeaways:
- Azerbaijan’s progressive hijab ban for pupils and teachers in state schools sparked large, sustained protests, arrests and social-media curbs, driven by concerns over Iranian-influenced radicalism.
- The move has strained the “one nation—two states” partnership with Türkiye, where Erdoğan’s Islam-integrated model clashes with Aliyev’s secularism; Aliyev rejected Turkish criticism and Turkish demonstrators protested at the Azerbaijani consulate.
- The rift risks affecting ties with Central Asia, Israel, Europe, China and the United States, though Aliyev’s history of course corrections leaves the ban’s permanence uncertain.
Baku decided on September 21 to ban pupils and teachers from wearing the hijab in Azerbaijani state schools. The protests that the move has sparked have had a profound impact not only on Azerbaijani society but also on Azerbaijan’s relations with Türkiye (RTV Online, October 17). Azerbaijanis have been prompted to ask more questions than ever about the proper relationship between secularism and freedom of religion, and Baku has been forced to recognize that the balance Baku seeks and the one Ankara does are beginning to be at odds (Svobodnaya Pressa, October 16; The Caspian Post, October 20).
Because the two countries have hitherto been the closest of allies, this division will have significant consequences not only for them and their relationship but for the region around them and beyond (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, October 18). Consequently, what may seem to some outsiders like a minor issue is major, and its resolution will affect the situation and policies of even powers distant from the South Caucasus (Voyenno-politicheskaya analitika, October 16).
Since the Azerbaijani republic was founded just over a century ago, secularism has been a core value of its leaders. They saw it as essential to maintaining stability in a country with many religions and as a necessary feature of a modern state (RFI, October 14). That commitment strengthened during Soviet times, albeit for different reasons, and re-emerged as a centerpiece of post-Soviet Azerbaijan’s construction. Maintaining a balance between secularism and freedom of religion, however, has never been easy.
When Baku has intervened on that question in recent years and tilted toward secularism, such actions have sparked protests, most notably in 2010–2011 (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, May 6, 2011). As a result, until earlier this year, the Azerbaijani government moved cautiously, especially in handling the issue, since it affected schools and, given how many people in the country are part of the education system, had wide-ranging consequences.
Baku has long been worried about Iranian efforts to promote radical Islam in Azerbaijan and thus destabilize the regime there. Given the growing conflict between Iran, on the one hand, and Israel and the United States, on the other, Baku moved further and faster to ensure that Azerbaijani schools would be purely secular and thus could not become seedbeds of Islamist radicalism. Senior Azerbaijani officials, however, were careful not to publicly name Iran as the proximate cause of their actions (OC-Media, October 16).
Since the start of this year, the Azerbaijani government has moved step by step to do so, establishing dress codes for pupils and teachers on July 7, tightening those codes on September 21 as far as pupils were concerned—an action that did not mention the hijab but was interpreted by school officials as targeting that in particular—and, on October 6, extending such restrictions to teachers as well (RTV Online).
These moves prompted hundreds of pupils, their parents, and rights activists to take to the streets to protest. Authorities have arrested dozens of them and restricted social media so they could not organize more protests. (For a sampling of the enormous reporting about the protests and about the arguments of those that the wearing of the hijab does not interfere with secular education, see Kavkaz Uzel, October 12, 18; Minval.az, October 12, 13; Aktsenty, October 12; OC-Media, October 13, 16; AsiaNews; Novaya Gazeta Evropa, October 15.) In these articles, the most impressive features of the protests were their size and length in a country whose government typically blocks any protest and shuts it down almost instantly, but that was not what made them most noteworthy.
From the outset of the protests in Azerbaijan, participants and observers focused on what these actions meant for Azerbaijan itself and for its relations with other countries. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they began by focusing on Baku’s relationship with Muslim countries in general, and Central Asian ones in particular, with which Azerbaijan has sought to expand its ties (Aktsenty, October 14). They quickly shifted to the impact of these events on the relationship between Azerbaijan and Türkiye, two countries that for more than 30 years have described themselves as “one nation—two states.”
Ever more observers even suggested that Azerbaijan’s ban had highlighted the limitations of that formula. The ban had appeared at a time when Türkiye too was committed to secularism, which has long passed given that Ankara is integrating Islam into the ideology of the Turkish state (Svobodnaya Pressa, October 16; Nesavisymaya Gazeta, October 18; The Caspian Post, October 20). As Israeli Caucasus specialist Abraham Shmulyevich noted in his commentary the formula “one nation—two states” still reflects the profound historical, linguistic, and cultural affinity between Azerbaijan and Türkiye.
It does not, however, change that under Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the two countries have developed along fundamentally different political and state models. They share ethnic kinship, strategic interests, and a common historical memory, but they differ on the role of religion in society, the limits of state intervention, and the very logic of national development (The Caspian Post, October 20). That scholarly judgment was echoed in the streets of Istanbul, where Turkish demonstrators at the Azerbaijani consulate against the hijab ban by Baku declared, “Such a state cannot be our brother!” (akcent.site/novosti/46235).
As this controversy has continued, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has repeatedly lashed out at Türkiye for criticizing his policies. Türkiye does not have the right to try to teach Baku how to live, he has said, adding that while there is no question that Turks and Azerbaijanis are one people, they are different countries with different values and that each must respect the other (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, October 15; Svobodnaya Pressa, October 16). Some Azerbaijani officials and scholars have tried to downplay the obvious implications and argue that this is not a break and that the two countries will still operate as one on many issues. That seems increasingly unlikely the longer this war of words goes on. That in turn is something that will affect both countries, their relations with each other, and their relations with third countries including, but not limited to, Israel, where there are already signs of a break; Central Asia, where a division between the two will affect trade across the Caspian; and Europe, the People’s Republic of China, and the United States, each of which has a stake in issues on which the presence or absence of cooperation between Ankara and Baku depends.
Aliyev has a record of changing course relatively quickly when he judges that it is necessary. Whether he keeps the hijab ban in place is yet to be seen. Such a change will depend not only on what he has said but also on how Turks in general have reacted to it. Consequently, what may seem to many like a small internal matter in Azerbaijan casts a large shadow over the world as a whole, one that must factor into considerations of all such issues.
