Arab News | Erdogan says to visit Azerbaijan on November 8 amid headscarf row

ISTANBUL: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday he planned to visit Azerbaijan on Sunday, as a dispute over Baku’s new rules restricting Islamic headscarves in schools strained ties between the regional allies.

“November 8 is Azerbaijan’s Victory Day. Unless there are extraordinary circumstances, I plan to visit Azerbaijan on November 8,” Erdogan told reporters aboard his return flight from South Korea, according to a transcript released by his office.

Tensions flared after Baku changed school uniform regulations in September, banning additions deemed incompatible with secular education.

Erdogan dismissed one of his advisers, Oktay Saral, after he criticized the restrictions on headscarves in Azerbaijani schools, prompting President Ilham Aliyev’s ruling party to accuse Turkish figures of meddling in Azerbaijan’s domestic affairs.

Last week Aliyev skipped a summit of Turkic leaders in the Turkish capital, Ankara. Azerbaijan was instead represented by its foreign minister.

Erdogan said ties between Turkiye and Azerbaijan extended beyond conventional diplomatic relations.

“There is no obstacle that the brotherhood between Turkiye and Azerbaijan cannot overcome,” he said.

Turkiye and Azerbaijan usually enjoy close political and military ties, describing their relationship as “one nation, two states.”

A former Soviet republic, Azerbaijan is a predominantly Shiite Muslim country but, after decades of Soviet rule, emerged as one of the most secular states in the Muslim world.

The headscarf dispute also highlighted tensions over the growing rapprochement between Azerbaijan and Israel since Baku’s 2020 Karabakh war with arch-foe Armenia, when the Israelis supplied them with drones and other weaponry.

Turkiye’s ties with Israel, by contrast, could hardly be worse, with Erdogan accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza and Ankara regularly releasing images of top-level talks with the leaders of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement whose October 2023 attacks on Israel sparked its war in Gaza.