Iran mum as Azerbaijan’s school hijab ban, Israel ties test alliance with Turkey

Tensions between the ruling parties of Turkey and one of its closest regional allies, Azerbaijan, continued to escalate on Tuesday over Baku’s effective ban on Islamic-style outfits for pupils and teachers in state-run schools, amid ongoing protests against the rules across the energy-rich former Soviet Turkic state.

The New Azerbaijan Party (YAP), led by the country’s strongman President Ilham Aliyev, took sharp aim at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s top adviser, Oktay Saral, on Tuesday over comments he made on social media describing the hijab as a “requirement of faith” and calling on Baku to “reverse this mistake as soon as possible.”

Saral’s remarks followed an outcry among Islamic activists in Turkey in response to viral footage of tearful Azerbaijani female students and their parents slamming the changes, which were introduced through a government decree issued in mid-September. Similar restrictions for teachers followed on Oct. 6. “The right to education should not be sacrificed to any ideological impositions,” Saral said in his Oct. 12 post on X, calling the measures “unacceptable.” It was a tipping point.

Aliyev’s party said it had exercised restraint thus far so as not to jeopardize the “historic bonds of friendship that unite the peoples of Azerbaijan and Turkey.” “However,” the party's statement continued, “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 [Turkey’s] ruling Justice and Development Party, makes it necessary for us to state our position publicly.” Should the rebukes not stop, bilateral ties would suffer, it warned.