Azerbaijan’s ruling party has strongly condemned senior Turkish government officials for launching a “defamatory” campaign of “political manipulations” against it, amid a public rift between the historic allies.
The tensions come amid burgeoning ties between Israel and Azerbaijan, and follow recent Azeri school uniform regulations prohibiting clothing that violates the predominantly Shi’ite Muslim country’s constitutional principle of secular education.
“For a long time, a number of media outlets and social media platforms in Türkiye, including information resources known to be close to the [Turkish] government, have been spreading false, biased, defamatory and slanderous information about Azerbaijan,” the Azerbaijani Press Agency (APA) quoted the Press Service of the ruling New Azerbaijan Party (YAP) as saying last week.
“Taking into account the existing partnership relations ... as well as the historical bonds of brotherhood and friendship uniting the peoples of Azerbaijan and Türkiye, we have so far exercised restraint regarding such cases,” it continued.
The statement said that the fact that the campaign recently became “more aggressive, systematic and openly defamatory,” and that the chief adviser to the president of Turkey and members of parliament from the ruling AK Party have joined it, made it necessary for Azerbaijan to speak out openly.
“We categorically reject attempts to deliberately distort Azerbaijan-Israel relations, portray these ties as allegedly exceptional, and use this to put forward political accusations against Azerbaijan,” the statement continued. “The Republic of Azerbaijan has normal interstate relations with Israel based on international law and mutual interests.”
The New Azerbaijan Party condemned “populist and irresponsible” Turkish statements over the new school uniform regulations, which, while not explicitly mentioning the hijab, have been interpreted as applying to headscarves.
“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,” the statement said. “We believe that using sensitive issues such as the headscarf as a tool of political manipulation and division serves neither the unity of the Turkish people nor the solidarity of the Muslim world as a whole.”
(Azeris, or Azerbaijani Turks, are a Turkic ethnic group. Former Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev often described Azerbaijan and Turkey as being “one nation, two states.”)
The response came amid a concomitant Iranian campaign against Azerbaijan, which included a cyberattack targeting more than 100 state domains within Azerbaijan’s national information infrastructure last week, and Iranian claims linking the school uniform to “Zionist ideology.”
Roman Gurevich, honorary ambassador of the Jewish Agency in Azerbaijan, told JNS on Monday, “The unprecedented and brazen attack on Azerbaijan and its sovereignty, currently being carried out by certain circles outside the country, demonstrates that this issue goes far beyond the introduction of a standardized school uniform. What happens in Azerbaijan is for Azerbaijan alone to decide, including what uniforms schoolchildren should wear.
“Certain circles in Iran and Turkey find it difficult to accept that Azerbaijan, a Muslim-majority country, has chosen a secular path of development,” he continued. “Any attempts by outside circles to impose an alien extremist ideology on Azerbaijan are doomed to fail.”
Three years ago, Azerbaijan made history by becoming the first Shi’ite Muslim country to open an embassy in Israel, defying threats from Iran and making Baku’s longstanding friendship with Israel public.
