Why Israel, Armenia don't benefit from hijab spat between Turkey, Azerbaijan

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan is due to take part in a regional summit that kicks off in Baku on Thursday amid tensions between Turkey and Azerbaijan, its closest Turkic ally, over Azerbaijan’s fresh restrictions on religious garb in state schools and its close ties with Israel. Relations between Turkey and Israel have hit rock bottom over Gaza and, more recently, Syria. Israeli leaders now equate Turkey with Iran in terms of the threats both pose to Israel.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog arrived in Baku on Wednesday, where he will hold talks with his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev. Herzog will also take part in the 7th Summit on the Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia, where Fidan will represent Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi will attend the summit, Azerbaijani media reported on Wednesday. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is expected to attend as well.

In theory, the CICA gathering offers opportunities for hostile countries and intermediaries to engage in dialogue on the sidelines. Aliyev played a critical role in helping establish a deconfliction mechanism between Turkey and Israel, bringing the two sides together at a meeting in Baku in April 2025. But fears of an accidental clash persist following Israel’s Aug. 18 bombing of Abu al-Duhur Air Base in northwestern Syria. Israel said it had acted on intelligence indicating that Turkey was preparing to deploy troops and radar systems at the facility. Damascus condemned the strikes as an unjustified act of aggression.

Such diplomatic efforts may take a back seat to Fidan’s efforts to mend fences with Baku. Azerbaijan’s ruling party issued a sharp statement on Wednesday, blasting Erdogan’s top adviser for criticizing restrictions on school uniforms and teachers’ attire in state schools.

Demonstrations outside individual schools in Azerbaijan are continuing, albeit on a smaller scale than they had been, amid a widening government crackdown on protesters that began on Oct. 12, according to local media.

Erdogan’s nationalist ally, Devlet Bahceli, weighed in on the dispute on Wednesday. He cautioned, “It is of great importance that, in the face of any attempts aimed at undermining the brotherly ties between the two countries, we act on the basis of common sense, mutual understanding and collective wisdom.” Bahceli added, "From the Aegean to the Caspian, from the past to the present, these are two strong states spanning the same geography of the heart."

Yet pro-Islamist media continued to blast the headscarf restrictions on Wednesday, with incendiary headlines that also took aim at Israel. “The Zionists are the masterminds,” the daily newspaper Yeni Akit declared. Delivering a blow to relations between Azerbaijan, the Turkic world and Islam was part of the “plan,” the newspaper claimed.

The steady stream of anti-Erdogan vitriol from Israeli leaders, which Turkey has reciprocated in kind, may suggest that Israel would not be displeased to see relations between Ankara and Baku sour.

Aliyev’s thinly veiled jabs at Turkey during an October speech at a congress of his New Azerbaijan Party could presage embarrassing revelations about the nature of some of Azerbaijan’s dealings with Erdogan’s government, notably in the energy and defense sectors.

The remarks also signal the Azerbaijani strongman’s growing confidence as a regional actor and his push for recognition of that status, said Tigran Grigoryan, who heads the Regional Center for Democracy and Security, a think tank in Yerevan.

Aliyev spoke of unnamed arms suppliers that had charged his government above-market prices for some of their products. The TB2 Bayraktar drones produced by Erdogan’s son-in-law Selcuk Bayraktar were deployed extensively in Azerbaijan’s 2020 war against Armenia.

Bayraktar, who was decorated by Aliyev in recognition of his company’s contribution to Azerbaijan’s victory, last met with the Azerbaijani president in Baku in July, according to local media.

Allegations of graft targeting the Aliyev and Erdogan families have swirled for years. A report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project revealed how an Azerbaijani businessman who used to have close ties to Aliyev had gifted a multimillion-dollar oil tanker to Erdogan’s brother-in-law. 

Azerbaijan, a regional oil and gas powerhouse, remains a geostrategic linchpin in Turkey’s ambition to become an energy and logistics hub connecting Europe to Central Asia and beyond. The interests cut both ways. Turkey remains Azerbaijan's principal gateway to Europe and the Middle East. 

Moreover, despite its hostility to Turkey, Israel may not see a breakdown in Turkish-Azerbaijani relations as serving its interests, some analysts say. For one, Azerbaijan is Israel’s largest supplier of crude oil, which is shipped through a pipeline to export terminals on Turkey’s southern Mediterranean coast. Erdogan’s Islamist base has exerted sustained pressure to halt the flow. Flight-tracking data indicated that Herzog’s plane flew over Turkish airspace on its way to Baku.

Contrary to conspiracy theories about Israeli involvement in Baku’s headscarf ban, Israel was caught off guard by the demonstrations in Azerbaijan and the escalation in tensions between Ankara and Baku, said Gallia Lindenstrauss, a Turkey expert at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

“The only actor to truly benefit from the destabilization of Azerbaijan is Iran,” Lindenstrauss told Al-Monitor. Hence, the anti-government protests that have spread across the country in recent days and drawn Azerbaijanis from diverse ideological backgrounds “are seen as a negative development in Israeli eyes,” she said.

Azerbaijan’s Media and Broadcasting Council accused Iran’s Sahar TV on Wednesday of misrepresenting footage from a religious rally in Diyarbakir, Turkey’s Kurdish-majority city, as a demonstration against Azerbaijan. Iran rejected the claims.

Unlike their Turkish counterparts, Iranian officials and politicians have remained conspicuously silent over the restrictions. Azerbaijan, a majority-Shiite country, has long accused its southeastern neighbor of seeking to convert Azerbaijanis to its own ideology, notably through alleged operatives recruited from the Persian-speaking Talysh minority.

Iran, in turn, believes Azerbaijan has become a staging ground for Israeli mischief on Iranian soil, particularly since the first conflict between Iran and Israel in June last year.

Foreign meddling, however, has yet to be conclusively established. Several Azerbaijani analysts who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity said the protests were largely organic.

Azerbaijan’s historic foe, Armenia, may have little to cheer about either. Azerbaijan has long held an effective veto over Turkey’s relations with its eastern neighbor. Turkey says it cannot fully normalize relations with Armenia until Azerbaijan has done so first. The land border between Turkey and Armenia has remained closed since 1993, despite a 2022 pledge to open it to third-country nationals.

Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan struck an optimistic note on Wednesday, telling an EU conference in Warsaw, “We may see in tomorrow morning’s news the headline ‘The Armenian-Turkish border has opened.’” If anything, Turkey’s efforts to assuage Azerbaijan mean that any opening of the border, even to third-country nationals, will likely be delayed, Grigoryan said.