School headscarf ban sparks rare protests in Azerbaijan and row with Turkey

ByRayhan Demytrie Caucasus correspondent.

Key points

• On the night of 13 October, Azerbaijan's State Service for Special Communications and Information Security remarked a "foreign hacker group" had attacked more than 100 state websites.
• While most Turks are Sunni, but like Iran to the south, Azerbaijan is mainly Shia – over 60% of its individuals identify as Shia Muslims.
• Most of the protests have been in religiously conservative neighbourhoods in Baku's outlying settlements and in southern districts near the 765km (475-mile) border with Iran.
• A pro-Iranian group calling itself the 313 Team (Cyber Islamic Resistance) asserted responsibility.
• President Ilham Aliyev has been in power since 2003 and has little tolerance for dissent.

"You are telling me, I can't come to school?" notes a teenage girl in a navy blue Islamic headscarf, captured on video challenging a staff member at the entrance to her school.

Meanwhile, the footage has been shared widely on social media, and demonstrates a group of girls in hijabs standing behind her applauding as she continues: "Why should I have to give up my religion?"

Last Monday the education ministry in Azerbaijan began enforcing new uniform rules, turning away female pupils wearing hijabs. Protests began outside state schools in the capital, Baku, and in a number of southern districts including Masally and Jalilabad.

Protests are rare in this oil- and gas-producing country of 10.5 million individuals. Azerbaijan is constitutionally secular and the administration strongly enforces that.

President Ilham Aliyev has been in power since 2003 and has little tolerance for dissent. Opposition politicians and plenty of independent journalists are in jail.

Azerbaijan is pulled between two neighbours, Turkey and Iran. Azerbaijanis belong to a Turkic group of nations, speaking a language close to Turkish, and Turkey is its closest ally.

In practice, the interior ministry remarked it had detained 37 residents on Monday who tried to obstruct the rules and "grossly violate public order".

Meanwhile, the rules, approved on 21 September, ban clothing which contradict "the principle of secularism in education" in state schools. They do not mention the hijab. Similar guidelines were extended to teachers on 6 October.

In one video, pupils outside School No. 69 in Balakhany, outside Baku, hold a banner reading: "The hijab does not prevent anyone from getting an education."

Shahiza Huseynova, a mother who was protesting outside a school in the Mashtaga district of the capital, was detained on Tuesday.

In an interview with Meydan TV, an independent Azerbaijani-language channel based in Germany, Huseynova's husband Agha remarked she had been given a warning: "Either you take off your child's hijab and send them to school, or you go to prison."

Friends have additionally lost contact with Ilkin Huseynov, an activist who on Tuesday rolled out an online platform called "Let Leyli Go to School". It offers free lessons from volunteer teachers to pupils barred from class.

According to a friend, Huseynov left his home in Baku with unidentified men at regarding 16: 00 on Wednesday, and his phone has been switched off ever since.

In practice, the authorities have not commented, but friends believe he has been detained. On Thursday, the platform's Instagram page could not be accessed.

Since the protests began, users have documented difficulties accessing Instagram and TikTok without a virtual private network (VPN).

Notably, the authorities have long been wary of religious influence from Iran, where more ethnic Azerbaijanis live than in Azerbaijan itself.

Meanwhile, a pro-Iranian group calling itself the 313 Team (Cyber Islamic Resistance) asserted responsibility.

Azerbaijani authorities have defended the rules. One MP, Nigar Arpadarai, informed the 1news.az website that children did not choose to wear the hijab themselves but were influenced by their families.

"A child has no freedom to choose a religion. This is a conscious prerogative of adults, " she remarked. Azerbaijan pardons Frenchman after EU lifts sanctions on Russian billionaire.

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In practice, the row has now spilled over into Turkey, Baku's closest ally. It provided vital backing during Azerbaijan's 2020 war with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh. The two countries call themselves "one nation, two states".

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a devout Muslim, has spoken of creating a "pious generation".

His chief adviser, Oktay Saral, has called the Azerbaijani restrictions "unacceptable" and pressed Baku to "reverse this mistake".

"A headscarf is not an obstacle; it is a requirement of one's faith!" Saral wrote on X. A number of MPs from Turkey's governing AK Party joined in.

Small demonstrations were held outside Azerbaijan's embassy in Ankara, organised by Köklü Değişim, an Islamist movement linked to Hizb ut-Tahrir, and outside its consulate in Istanbul, organised by conservative Islamist group Özgür-Der.

President Aliyev's New Azerbaijan Party accused Turkish authorities of an "openly defamatory" information campaign and of "baseless accusations", warning that Oktay Saral's comments risked harming ties, and cautioned against interference in Azerbaijan's internal affairs.

Earlier this month, Ilham Aliyev himself remarked no one should "stick their noses into our way of life".

Behind the dispute there may lie another source of friction. Turkish protesters have linked the headscarf rules to Azerbaijan's close ties with Israel. It sells weapons to Baku and buys Azerbaijani oil.

Turkey's relations with Israel have collapsed over Gaza, but Azerbaijan has tried to maintain relationships with both countries.

That is a tough balancing act. When Israel's President Isaac Herzog addressed a regional security summit hosted by Azerbaijan in Baku, delegations from Turkey, Iran and other countries walked out of the hall, on Thursday.

For now, school headscarf ban sparks rare protests in Azerbaijan and row with Turkey remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.