“The Azeri-Turkish Brotherhood Is Going Through Some Trouble” after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized hijab bans in his UNGA speech right before the adaptation of allied Azerbaijan’s new school uniform policy that was interpreted by some school administrators in this way. His Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev then criticized unnamed countries for meddling in his country’s affairs in a speech to the ruling party just as Turks on social media began criticizing Azerbaijan over its alleged ban.
Some pro-hijab protests have since taken place in Azerbaijan amidst reports that the authorities have banned several social media sites that could be exploited to coordinate such activity. For background, Azerbaijani is a majority-Shiite but historically secular society, while allied Turkiye is a majority-Sunni but increasingly Islamist society. Both of their titular people are Turkic, and their leaders have famously described bilateral relations for decades as being between “one nation, two states”.
Nevertheless, the Azeri-Turkish brotherhood is being tested by Azerbaijan’s pro-hijab protests since some suspect that Turkish actors are playing an unclear role in organizing them, and speculation is swirling about whether they’re independent activists or somehow connected to the state. To be fair, the same suspicions are circulating regarding an alleged Iranian role in events as well, but the salience is that some Azeris are now wondering whether their Turkish brothers are stabbing them in the back.
Iran’s hatred of Azerbaijan’s close ties with Israel is well-known, but it wasn’t till the Turkish-Israeli split over Gaza that Ankara started worrying about its ally’s ties with Tel Aviv. For background, Foreign Policy reported in 2012 that Israel planned to use Azerbaijan as a clandestine military staging ground against Iran. Iran’s state broadcaster then aired testimony in summer 2025 from locals near the border who reported seeing Israeli jets and drones crossing into the country from Azerbaijan during the 12-Day War.
More recently, CNN reported that Israeli commandos in southern Azerbaijan “carried out intelligence-gathering missions and drone operations” against Iran during the Third Gulf War, but Azerbaijan denied the allegation and is now reportedly suing CNN after it refused to retract the article. Be that as it may, Israel is one of Azerbaijan’s top military partners, and Aliyev just attended the opening ceremony of the first Israeli arms factory in Azerbaijan. All of this certainly riles Turkiye given its new rivalry with Israel.
It’s therefore plausible that Turkish actors, whether truly independent or somehow connected to the state, are playing a role in organizing Azerbaijan’s pro-hijab protests as revenge for such ties with Israel. While it’s premature to conclude that this is the case, if Aliyev assesses that it’s so, then he might reconsider allowing August 2025’s “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” to be exploited as a Turkish-led NATO military logistics corridor along Russia’s entire southern periphery.
Azerbaijan might then meaningfully improve its relations with Russia and double down on its military ties with Israel to balance Turkiye if he suspects that Erdogan has hegemonic ambitions. In that scenario, it can’t be ruled out that he’d symbolically join the Abraham Accords like Kazakhstan did last year to snub Erdogan, not to mention encouraging his other Central Asian counterparts to follow suit. Israel could then replace Turkiye’s role in their balancing acts vis-à-vis Russia with no objections from the Kremlin.
