Turkey clashes with traditional ally Azerbaijan over headscarf ban in schools, close ties with Israel

The Azerbaijani government recently moved to ban the wearing of the hijab in public schools by both teachers and pupils, leading to some public outcry, as well as sharp attacks from neighboring ally Turkey. 

Last week, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev appeared to criticize several Turkish officials who had protested the ban on clothing, which violates the principles of secularism and has been used to ban women wearing hijabs from entering schools. 

Protests against the law were reported in both Azerbaijan and in Turkey. 

🧕🇦🇿 WATCH: AZERBAIJANI STUDENT CHALLENGES SCHOOL AFTER BEING BARRED FOR WEARING HIJAB “I scored 335 points. I don’t have a single B on my report card. Is this the respect I get?” The student asks school officials why she should have to choose between her education and her Hijab. Azerbaijan is a Muslim-majority but constitutionally secular country. New school-uniform rules adopted in September do not explicitly mention the hijab, but they prohibit clothing deemed incompatible with the “principle of secularism,” and schools have since barred some hijab-wearing students and teachers from entering. The restrictions have already triggered student boycotts, protests and arrests. Video credit: Clash Report.

— Mossad Commentary (@MOSSADil) October 13, 2026

Turkish media compared the Azerbaijani law to a similar law passed in Turkey in the 1980s, which also prohibited women in hijabs from attending public schools and universities while wearing the headscarves. Later regulations also prohibited women in public sector jobs from wearing the head coverings. 

Oktay Saral, an adviser to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, called the move by Azerbaijan “unacceptable,” in a message on social media. 

📌 28 Şubat Bakü’de hortlatılıyor: İstanbul’da Azerbaycan’daki başörtüsü yasağına kitlesel protesto! https://t.co/L6yG91mLXA

— Karar Haber (@KararHaber) October 3, 2026

Several Turkish social media accounts also condemned President Aliyev’s close ties with Israel, and criticized the hijab ban, with several noting that Aliyev did not walk out of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s UN General Assembly speech last month, as many other leaders of Muslim nations did. 

President Aliyev’s New Azerbaijan Party (YAP) rebuked the Turkish criticism in a statement released earlier this week. 

Claiming restraint so as not to jeopardize the “historic bonds of friendship that unite the peoples of Azerbaijan and Turkey,” the party called out an “information campaign targeting Azerbaijan” coming from Turkish parties. 

“The recent escalation of this information campaign targeting Azerbaijan, which has become more aggressive, systematic, and openly defamatory, and in particular the involvement in it of a person holding the position of Chief Adviser to the President of Turkey and members of parliament from the ruling Justice and Development Party, makes it necessary for us to state our position publicly,” the YAP statement said, while warning of harm to bilateral ties between the nations. 

“We believe that using sensitive issues such as head coverings as instruments of political manipulation and division serves neither the unity of the Turkish people nor the solidarity of the Muslim world as a whole,” the statement continued. 

“Using issues of this kind as a means of political pressure against Azerbaijan is particularly unacceptable. We call on the AKP government to refrain from this harmful policy.” 

President Aliyev himself slammed interference in Azerbaijan’s affairs in a speech to his party earlier this month. 

“Everyone should know their place; they should not interfere in our affairs, stick their noses into our way of life, or tell us what to do. Everyone should mind their own nation and state,” Aliyev said in his speech, without identifying the parties interfering. 

The Azerbaijani parliament’s Turkey Friendship Caucasus also accused Erdoğan’s AKP party of allowing “provocations” against Azerbaijan. 

Azerbaijan and Turkey have enjoyed strong ties over the past few decades, owing partly to the fact that much of the population in Azerbaijan are ethnically Turkic.

Both countries speak similar dialects of the Turkish language, and the two countries have cooperated in military campaigns, including the 2020 war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh province, which belonged to Armenia. 

However, Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic, has a predominantly Shiite Muslim population, in contrast to the mostly Sunni Muslim population in Turkey. 

Both nations are officially secular. However, Turkey has been shifting more and more towards an openly Islamic identity. 

The Azerbaijani constitution legally enshrines separation of religion from the state, while guaranteeing freedom of religion. The ban on religious dress only covers public education institutions, and is not broad ban on the hijab in public. 

Azerbaijan has also maintained good ties with Israel, and is a major oil supplier of the Jewish state. 

Israeli government officials, including President Isaac Herzog, have visited the country in recent years, receiving a warm welcome from President Aliyev. 

During the recent conflicts with Iran, Azerbaijan also helped prevent Iranian terror plots against Jewish and Israeli targets, and the country allowed Israeli commandos to operate there as part of attacks on Iranian targets. This may have led to an Iranian drone attack on Azerbaijan in March, during Operation Roaring Lion. 

Ethnic Azeris make up between 16-24% of the Iranian population, and the Iranian regime has looked critically at Azerbaijan’s growing relations with Israel.