The Azeri-Turkish brotherhood has been badly bruised by their ongoing feud that officially only concerns the first banning the hijab in schools but informally involves Turkiye’s perception that Azerbaijan has become an Israeli puppet and Azerbaijan’s perception that Turkiye has Neo-Ottoman ambitions. Readers can learn more about its rapid evolution here, here, here, and here, while the Middle East Eye’s report here shared additional details about the growing state-to-state dimension of their dispute.
That report highlighted the ruling Azerbaijani party’s complaint against Turkiye. It declared that “In the Islamic world, no state has the right to dictate its will to other Muslim peoples, interfere in their internal affairs, or consider itself superior to others. Claims of serving the unity of the Muslim world should be demonstrated not through hegemonic tendencies, but through equal cooperation and mutual respect. The Azerbaijani people have historically opposed imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonial approaches.”
These extremely strong words that were shared in the increasingly tense context of bilateral ties suggest that Azerbaijan will likely soon step back from the Turkish-led “Organization of Turkic States” (OTS) in favor of prioritizing the “Central Asian Community” (CAC) instead. The OTS includes three of the four Turkic Central Asian Republics (CARs), Azerbaijan, and Turkiye, while the CAC includes the five CARs and Azerbaijan as of last year. That was also when it was proposed to become an ASEAN-like integration bloc.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev is expected to favor the CAC over the OTS for five reasons. First, none of the CAC’s members are suspected of aspiring for hegemony over the rest, unlike the case with Turkiye through the OTS as suggested by the ruling Azerbaijani party’s complaint against it. Second, the CAC isn’t perceived as a latent security threat by Russia like the OTS is due to NATO member Turkiye’s exclusion, so Moscow doesn’t fear that it could function as a Trojan Horse for NATO’s expansion into Central Asia.
Azerbaijan’s prioritization of the CAC over the OTS would thus end Russia’s latent threat perception of Azerbaijan regarding the role that it could play in transforming August 2025’s “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” into a Turkish-led NATO military logistics corridor. Third, security cooperation among the CAC’s members could accelerate without being perceived as threatening by Russia, thus bolstering their ability to counter shared threats like ISIS-K in partnership with Russia.
Fourth, economic and political ties with Russia could more easily be scaled through the CAC too, and the same can be said for security, economic, and political ties with other major players with interests in the region like China, the EU, India, Iran, Israel, Turkiye, and the US. The summits that some of them already hold with the CARs could become CAC ones as the means to this end. And finally, Azerbaijan can play a leading role in the CAC’s global engagement, unlike the junior role that it’ll always play in the OTS.
Former Turkish Deputy Undersecretary Omer Kayir recently criticized the CAC as “a Turkic Union without Turkiye” (or an OTS minus Turkiye) and argued that its formation is part of a Western plot, and while the first description is somewhat accurate, his speculation about its envisaged role isn’t. In reality, the CAC is the most promising platform through which Azerbaijan can become a major player in Eurasian affairs, and that’s why Aliyev is expected to prioritize it over the OTS amidst Azerbaijan’s rift with Turkiye.
