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The discord in relations between Azerbaijan and Turkey, traditionally considered fraternal, turned out to be deeper than the topic of hijabs, which were banned in Azerbaijani schools and were outraged in Turkey. Obviously, Baku is trying to get out of the position of being a warded “younger brother”. It could also be a matter of money.
“Those who seek to weaken this brotherhood […] will never, neither today nor tomorrow, achieve their goals, just as they failed to do so in the past. By the will of Allah, our unity will remain unshakable forever,” said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a visit to Azerbaijan last weekend for another celebration of victory in the 2020 Karabakh war.
But these words of his were preceded by a series of scandals, behind which were not unnamed forces, but the authorities of the countries themselves and the journalists they controlled.
Aliyev usually did not miss meetings with his “dear brother” Erdogan, but at the end of October he did not go to the summit of Turkic states in Ankara. Aliyev usually attended these summits and was generally considered the locomotive of the idea of a “Turkic world” - closer cooperation between Turkic states, but in the last two months, discord has been noticeable between Turkey and Azerbaijan against the backdrop of a ban on wearing hijabs in Azerbaijani schools.
Many in more religious Turkey condemned the ban. Protests began in Azerbaijani schools, and Turkish journalists took the side of the protesters.
The Azerbaijani prosecutor's office has put seven Turkish journalists on the international wanted list, who, in its opinion, called for a violent seizure of power in the country and incited religious hatred.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry declared 31 Turkish citizens persona non grata, including an adviser to President Erdogan who criticized the ban on hijabs. The adviser was later fired.
"Not little brother"
Presidents Erdogan and Aliyev continue to call each other brothers, but many believe that Azerbaijan is unhappy with the position of the “little brother”.
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Almost from the very beginning of its independence, Azerbaijan chose Turkey as its closest political ally. A line from a poem written in 1991 by the nomenklatura poet Bakhtiyar Vahabzade that Türkiye and Azerbaijan are “two countries - one people” eventually became a political slogan.
The nationalists who were in power at that time, and then Heydar Aliyev, and then his son Ilham Aliyev, also oriented towards Turkey.
Azerbaijan was then, and still is now, under the great cultural influence of Turkey: people listen to Turkish music, some words are replaced by Turkish ones in everyday speech, and part of the intelligentsia seriously believes that the Azerbaijani language is just a dialect of Turkish.
The countries were and remain military allies. Türkiye supplies Azerbaijan with weapons, the Turkish military trains the Azerbaijani, and the Azerbaijani army is built on the NATO model of the Turkish one.
But after the victory in Karabakh, people started talking about Azerbaijan as an important regional player that strengthened its position in the South Caucasus. And recently, Aliyev, seemingly forgetting about Turkey’s help, said that during the 2020 war, “nobody helped us” and the country bought weapons at world prices.
Unequal cooperation?
The conflict of words between the countries began in October with episodes that appeared unrelated.
The representative of Azerbaijan did not leave the meeting of the UN General Assembly, following the representatives of Turkey and many other countries, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke.
Then the Ministry of Education of Azerbaijan introduced a ban on wearing the hijab in schools. Then Erdogan condemned this ban, and Aliyev later stated that Azerbaijan managed the war in Karabakh on its own, without outside help.
At the same time, neither Erdogan mentioned Azerbaijan in his speech, nor did Aliyev mention Turkey. The press spoke more specifically for them.
Recently, articles were published in the Azerbaijani media that Türkiye has been trying for many years to use Azerbaijan as a kind of bank to solve its own economic problems. And the texts of these articles were similar both in content and stylistically.
“If Day.az (one of these publications is the BBC) reflects the mood in the government, then Baku’s message can be interpreted as follows: Azerbaijan will remain one of Turkey’s largest investors and closest allies, but it does not want to become its financial support,” writes BBC Azerbaijan Service editor Kenul Khalilova.
The Azerbaijani state energy company SOCAR is the largest foreign investor in Turkey. But economic dependence is mutual. Türkiye (along with Georgia) is the main transit country for Azerbaijani gas to Europe, and Azerbaijan is one of the important gas suppliers for Turkey itself.
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"We are not your bank"
The economic side of these relations was for a long time in the shadow of that very slogan “two countries - one people,” until the pro-government media in Azerbaijan sent a signal to Turkey: “We are not your bank.”
In 2021, as the lira depreciated sharply, Khalilova notes, Ankara sought currency swap agreements between various countries and central banks to support its currency. At that time, the Azerbaijan Oil Fund placed a deposit of 1 billion euros with the Central Bank of Turkey for a six-month period, but this was not presented as support for the lira.
A currency swap creates a financial obligation between the central banks of two countries and can be interpreted as a political message: "We support your currency." Türkiye received the money, but Baku did not present it as financial assistance or a political guarantee.
Perhaps, the author writes, it is not the policy itself that has changed this fall, but its more explicit expression.
First, accepting the role of fiscal sponsor could tie Azerbaijan's reserves and Oil Fund funds to Turkish monetary policy, which Baku does not control.
Secondly, according to analysts, Azerbaijan is positioning itself, especially after 2020, as a sovereign and equal ally, and not as a junior partner of Turkey.
What they don't understand in Turkey
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Problems have arisen in relations between Azerbaijan and Turkey before.
President Elchibey, a nationalist leader and pan-Turkist, was unhappy when, in the spring of 1993, Turkey refused to hand over weapons to Azerbaijan or even provide helicopters to help evacuate civilians from the conflict zone. This happened during the 1992–1994 Karabakh war as Armenian forces advanced.
Tensions then erupted between the countries in 2009 during a period referred to in the region as “football diplomacy” or the “flag crisis.”
Then Turkey, without agreement with Azerbaijan, moved towards rapprochement with Armenia: it opened its diplomatic mission in Yerevan, signed a protocol on the imminent opening of the border (in fact, the borders between Armenia and Turkey are still not open).
Then, for the first time, the football teams of the two countries played a friendly match in Bursa, Turkey, and people who came with Azerbaijani flags were not allowed into the stadium.
Baku did not like all this, and then Aliyev also did not go to Turkey for an international forum, and Azerbaijan also spoke about unequal economic cooperation.
But the war in Karabakh is over, and the origins of the new tension are different.
According to Turkish political scientist and Eurasian expert Umit Nazmi Redi, one of the reasons for the conflict was that Islamist circles in Turkey, while opposing the ban on the hijab in Azerbaijani schools, lost sight of the fact that weakening secularism could make Azerbaijan more open to Iranian influence, rather than bring it closer to Turkey. Türkiye is still a Sunni country, and Azerbaijan is Shiite, just like Iran, with which Azerbaijan has the longest land border.
Azerbaijani political scientist Farhad Mamedov writes that critics in Turkey poorly understood what was happening inside Azerbaijan, and believes that they also did not take into account the changing situation in the region after the 44-day war with Armenia.
Next after Russia
Member of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, political scientist Rizvan Huseynov, before Erdogan’s visit to Baku, in an interview with the expert organization Daily Europe Online, said that after the 2020 war, the situation in the region has changed and “Azerbaijan is trying to gently explain that Azerbaijan has its own special role in the new emerging regional order.”
He associates this change in the country's role with the deterioration of relations with Russia. But the difference, as he notes, is that Türkiye is still the closest country to Azerbaijan, and no joint projects have been affected by the current tension.
“I think the current tension will subside over time. Aliyev, as a rule, does not agree to a long-term deterioration in relations with partners, and they understand this. However, the fundamental differences that emerged in this situation will remain,” says Altay Goyushov, a researcher at the Sciences Po Institute in Paris.
He believes that strengthening the role of Azerbaijan in the region is a narrative of Baku’s own propaganda.
In fact, the major regional players Russia, Iran and Türkiye are busy with their own problems, and against the background of this, Azerbaijan is trying to earn greater independence for itself.
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