Türkiye Must Ease Tensions with Azerbaijan Before Another Foreign Policy Problem Emerges

Today marks the anniversary of Azerbaijan’s restoration of independence on October 18, 1991, during the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This year, the anniversary comes at a time when Türkiye-Azerbaijan relations are seriously strained.

The situation has deteriorated to the point that Türkiye’s Embassy in Baku had to issue a denial on X yesterday, rejecting reports that Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan had held secret contacts against Azerbaijan while visiting Baku on October 15. The statement said that reports published by websites including Qafqazinfo, described in Azerbaijan as “government-oriented,” or pro-government, contained allegations of “plans to interfere in internal affairs,” “intelligence operations,” “coup and chaos plots,” and “recruiting agents of influence.” These were nothing but “deliberate falsehoods intended to provoke the brotherly people of Azerbaijan against Türkiye,” the embassy said, urging the public not to give them credence.

Let us look at the reports that were denied from another angle. A foreign minister with exactly 13 years of experience running Türkiye’s intelligence service supposedly organized a coup by visiting the Youth Assistance Fund, established under Azerbaijani law in 1994, and posing for photographs there, during an international meeting he attended to represent President Tayyip Erdoğan, precisely when relations between the two countries were under strain. And he supposedly did this while carrying a message from Erdoğan to President Ilham Aliyev to ease those tensions, simply because he happened to be in Baku. Is that really plausible? Such a scenario runs counter to the normal course of events.

It is fair to say that these developments are pleasing to countries and interest groups that stand to benefit from continued tensions between Türkiye and Azerbaijan.

Relations Have Never Been This Strained

Relations with Azerbaijan have never been this strained. Not even during the 1995 coup attempt. Information that individuals within the Turkish state apparatus, some linked to underground interest groups, had collaborated with Colonel Rovshan Javadov, who moved against Heydar Aliyev while the Azerbaijani leader was abroad, in an attempt to overthrow him, was conveyed to President Süleyman Demirel by Sönmez Köksal, then head of Türkiye’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT). Demirel called Aliyev and told him, “Return to your country immediately; a coup is under way.” The attempt was thwarted. At the time, Demirel and the elder Aliyev put out the fire with the slogan “Two states, one nation.”

Today’s tensions have emerged just as Azerbaijan has liberated its territories from Armenian occupation, advanced its political, military and economic ties with Türkiye, and come closer than ever to a peace agreement with Armenia.

For Türkiye, meanwhile, the tensions with Azerbaijan have come at a time when things in foreign policy are not going quite as hoped.

Foreign Policy Friction

For example, although President Tayyip Erdoğan and US President Donald Trump lavishly praise each other as “my friend,” no tangible progress is being made. Indeed, Türkiye’s Ministry of National Defence said that the United States’ refusal to deliver six F-35 aircraft that Türkiye has already paid for, along with the CAATSA sanctions more broadly, “is incompatible with the spirit of alliance.” A week before that statement, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said during a visit to Athens that the F-35 issue could not be resolved without first settling the dispute over Russia’s S-400 missile system.

Ankara is also disturbed by the support the United States and France are giving Greece, the Greek Cypriot administration and Israel in their efforts to put Türkiye under pressure in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Last week, it was said that the Mecca Defence Agreement with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan would be submitted to the Turkish Grand National Assembly. It was not. It remains unclear whether what will be presented to parliament will be the full text of the agreement or merely a summary resembling a press statement.

The Russia-Ukraine war is raising the risk of clashes in the Black Sea.

At the intersection of domestic and foreign policy, meanwhile, the government is being given a headache by recent statements suggesting that the PKK has made disarmament conditional on Öcalan.

It was against this backdrop that the tensions with Azerbaijan erupted.

How the Tensions with Azerbaijan Began

Azerbaijan’s September 21 ban on clothing deemed “incompatible with the principle of secularism” in primary and secondary schools attracted little attention in Türkiye in the early days, apart from comments by a few political Islamist commentators.

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the UN General Assembly on September 24, most delegations walked out. Azerbaijan did not, a fact that displeased Türkiye, although Ankara did not publicly react.

Besides Türkiye, which has supported Azerbaijan’s armed forces since Azerbaijan restored its independence on October 18, 1991, Pakistan and Israel also helped Azerbaijan liberate Karabakh from Armenian occupation. Israel also sourced nearly half of its crude oil needs from Azerbaijan through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which runs through Türkiye. Although Türkiye severed its trade ties with Israel over its genocidal policy against Palestinians in Gaza, the BTC pipeline continued to operate. Ultimately, the decision was Azerbaijan’s to make.

Aliyev: Keep Your Nose Out of Our Affairs

Meanwhile, condemnations of Azerbaijan and protests outside Azerbaijani diplomatic missions began to emerge from the World Union of Muslim Scholars, aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood—whose name survives even though its physical presence in the Middle East has largely faded—and from some Turkish politicians, including AK Party MPs, as well as political Islamist commentators, particularly those at Yeni Akit.

On October 2, speaking at a congress of the New Azerbaijan Party (YAP), which he leads, Ilham Aliyev delivered the following remarks. Although he did not mention Türkiye by name, it was clear whom he was addressing:

• “Everyone should know their place, stay out of our affairs, keep their noses out of our way of life, and stop telling us what to do. Everyone should focus on the problems of their own people and state.”

Aliyev was sending Erdoğan a message: prevent interference from Türkiye in Azerbaijan’s domestic policy, including the headscarf issue, and its foreign policy, particularly its relations with Israel. At the same time, he used harsh language, insisting that nobody had helped Azerbaijan and that it had bought its weapons with its own money, and at inflated prices to boot.

On October 7, AK Party spokesperson Ömer Çelik said that the groups targeting Azerbaijan had no connection with the government.

Not Just the Headscarf, but Israel Too

However, the tensions flared up again on October 12 after a statement by Oktay Saral, a chief adviser to President Erdoğan. Emphasizing that “preventing female students who wear headscarves from exercising their right to education is unacceptable,” Saral said, “We expect Azerbaijan to correct this mistake as soon as possible.”

On October 13, YAP sent a message to the AK Party that the principle of “one nation, two states” could not justify one state interfering in the internal affairs of the other. It demanded that Azerbaijan’s domestic affairs be left alone and called on the AK Party to “refrain from this harmful policy.”

Three developments followed on October 14.

– MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli stepped in, saying that members of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) should respect one another’s sovereignty and domestic laws.

– Binali Yıldırım, Türkiye’s co-chair of the OTS, declared: “Who has the right to interfere in Azerbaijan’s internal affairs? Anyone who attempts to do so will be punished in the harshest possible manner.”

– Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who had previously been unable to travel to Azerbaijan because Türkiye had closed its airspace to him, flew to Baku for the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA), crossing Turkish airspace on a scheduled Azerbaijan Airlines flight.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

Türkiye was represented at the CICA meeting not by President Tayyip Erdoğan but by Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan. Fidan also discussed the tensions with Aliyev on October 15.

Subsequently, Kürşad Zorlu, deputy chairman of the AK Party, called for Türkiye’s position in international politics to be taken only from the President and the Foreign Ministry.

Ankara did not want this dispute to drag on.

The timing of Bahçeli’s message congratulating Azerbaijan on its October 18 Restoration of Independence Day also pointed in that direction.

Time will tell whether Erdoğan’s entourage, whose members each seem to imagine themselves an Erdoğan in their own right, has truly understood the message that neither Azerbaijan nor the other OTS members want Türkiye to play a paternalistic “big brother” role, particularly on foreign policy and matters of “lifestyle” related to religious belief.

On the other hand, Aliyev directed his reaction at Türkiye as a whole while sending Erdoğan a message without naming him. That, too, was unfair.

Will Aliyev Visit Ankara?

Erdoğan received a warning from Aliyev, whom he considers one of his closest partners, that other states—particularly OTS members concerned about the spread of radical Islamist movements originating in both Iran and Afghanistan—would not look kindly on Türkiye interfering in their affairs, especially over “lifestyle” issues.

Following Republic Day on October 29, President Erdoğan is scheduled to host OTS leaders in Ankara on October 30. Despite the tensions, Aliyev is expected to attend. It can also be said that his absence would please certain capitals, particularly Tel Aviv, Tehran, Athens and Moscow.

But more importantly, Türkiye-Azerbaijan relations are too important to be derailed either by Israel or by a headscarf ban. Both Erdoğan and Aliyev have enough experience to appreciate their value.